Some musings on getting up early

by aajohannas

First, a little update on my November goals. This month has been a little difficult for me. I’ve made considerable progress on the paper I was supposed to be working on, but the rest of the goals have not really worked out.

The Russian had to take the backseat to a programming project (implementing the simplex method in C++), and getting up early has been … challenging.

I’m struggling a lot with just finding the motivation to get up early in the mornings. I go to bed on time, wake up right before my alarm goes off, and then just stay in bed. There are a few factors I’ll try to work on. One of my goals for December will be to instead of getting up early, develop a proper morning routine. I think one of the reasons I can’t get up is that I first need to figure out what I need to do, and plan out my morning.

I’m a creature of habits. I hate it when my environment is disturbed and I can’t follow through on my plans; yet I don’t have a proper routine even for when to take a shower. Sometimes I shower when I come home from work, sometimes right before bed, sometimes in the morning. Sometimes I have breakfast first thing when I get up, other times I wait for an hour or two. Sometimes I have a proper cooked breakfast, other times I make microwave oatmeal. Clearly, I need to fix this.

Here is my suggestion for the basic routine:

Shower when I get home from work. I like taking half an hour to reset after work, so I can relax properly or get started on my personal projects.

1) First thing in the morning: get up and wash my face.

2) Make a cup of tea, and drink it while reading the news.

3) Make breakfast consisting of oatmeal with nuts and dried fruits.

4) Enjoy breakfast while listening to a podcast (my current favourite is History of Philosophy without any gaps.

5) Get dressed, brush my teeth, deal with makeup and hair.

6) Go to campus / get started on the day.

I’ll probably have to tweak this considerably as my month goes on, but this is what I’m going to start with. Ideally, I want to fit meditation and exercise / stretching in there as well. That’s a later project though: right now my focus is on getting some kind of basic ritual started.

What does your morning routine look like?