Morning Routine: A Journey to Balance and Productivity

One of the habits I've been trying to adopt since working for myself is establishing routines and structure to keep me focused and moving forward. Anyone who's read the book The 5 AM Club will know about the principle of spending an hour each morning doing three different activities: 20 minutes of mindfulness, 20 minutes of exercise, and 20 minutes of learning. It's a wonderful idea, but it can be quite challenging to incorporate into day-to-day practice, especially when you have a hypervigilant nervous system that processes sensory information and gets overwhelmed.

Fifteen years ago, I experienced high anxiety and thought I had traits of OCD. After a series of extreme emotional events, including a fatal crash, my thinking was literally rewired. Soon after, I discovered meditation as a practice, and I've been doing it ever since. I believe it's one of the healthiest tools we can use to help balance our brains.

Meeting the 5 AM goals realistically never happens at 5 AM for me, but I do aim to spend 20 minutes on each activity. A few years ago, I discovered Blinkist, which provides insights from many different books in just 15 to 20 minutes. This perfectly fits the time it takes for me to do my makeup in the morning, so I incorporated it into my routine.

At the beginning of the year, I found myself spending long days indoors. I decided I needed to build a routine that included fresh air, so I started a morning walk. Every day, my daughter and I walk to school for 20 minutes, giving us an opportunity to have lots of conversations and bond. The fresh air gives me a boost of oxygen, and on my walk back I listen to an audiobook or Blinkist summary, which provides a rush of learning. A tiny bit of yoga to stretch the muscles, and then a long day at the desk doesn't feel so bad, because my brain has started with all the chemicals it needs to smash it.

My makeup moments are now spent reflecting on my thoughts and observations from my morning walk. My goal is to turn these reflections into something I can share. Thanks to the advice from some amazing connections I've made through my network, I've decided to just put it out there.

Thankfully, my little helper, Copilot, assists with editing and organising my thoughts, making it much easier to turn my random ideas into something readable. Leveraging AI is about understanding our own brains and how they work, as well as understanding the AI brain and how it works. By using these two capabilities together, we can achieve our goals. It's a win-win.

The only problem is, I'm not sure my makeup is quite right.

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