Morning Routine and the Author's Hour

What gives me energy for the whole day: eight habits before I touch my phone, plus a separate author's hour when my head is at its freshest.

What gives me energy for the whole day?

There is a practice called a morning routine. It is a set of habits a person does every day. It is time for yourself, to fill up on energy and motivation and give the new day a good start.

I once heard Tony Robbins say that “if you don’t have ten minutes for yourself in the morning, you don’t have a life.” I am inclined to agree.

My own morning routine takes far more than ten minutes, but you can start with a single habit.

When I wake up, I head straight for the shower. I alternate cold and warm water. It wakes me up. I wash my face with a special cleanser, then apply toner and moisturiser.

The most important thing is not to pick up the phone for the first two or three hours after waking. Once I plug into the digital world, my productivity and creativity drop tenfold. I have tested this on myself many times.

Next I drink slightly alkaline water and do a light set of exercises for my back. It takes ten to fifteen minutes but gives a good charge of energy and wakes the brain up.

Then comes time for spiritual growth. I read the Bible (currently through the YouVersion app) and pray. It is a simple conversation with God, where I thank Him for the wonderful things in my life, ask for the wisdom to act rightly, pray for the people close to me, and ask forgiveness for the things I did or thought wrongly. The form and structure of a prayer matter far less than sincerity and the attempt to tune into a spiritual wavelength.

Then I read. Business literature, books about relationships, and something from fiction as well (right now I am rereading Stefan Zweig’s novellas). All told, reading can take anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour and a half, depending on my mood.

I take my vitamins and a tablespoon of “Amosov’s paste,” and I watch motivational videos — the Ben Lionel Scott channel on YouTube, for example. That kind of footage tunes me for a productive day. I consider planning your motivation a very important thing in general.

And since 23 November I have added one more habit to my morning routine: writing every day.

I do it in the morning, disconnected from the digital world of social media and messengers. My head is clear, ideas come easily, my mood is good. It is the very best window for creating something new. It does not matter whether it is a social media post, a script for a new video, a couple of paragraphs of a new book, or work on documents for the team. What matters is starting the day by creating something useful.

And a text we have written can go on living its own life for a very long time and bring steady returns, if we know how to put it in the right place.

After that I open my paper planner and write out the day’s tasks. I pick the most important one and get to it as soon as the morning routine is over.

The order of these habits can differ from day to day.

When I get through all eight of them in the morning, I feel wonderful, and I understand that even if I do nothing else productive for the rest of the day, I have already moved meaningfully closer to my goals.

P.S. Not every day of mine is this planned and effective. Sometimes I go a couple of days without the habit tracker and start my morning on the phone. Sometimes I spend a whole day watching films or series on the TV.

For me, discipline is not about iron will and being infallible. It is more about returning my focus to the course I chose for myself. I do not scold myself for the occasional “lazy day.” I am not a robot, I am a living person.