I’ve always struggled with keeping my morning routine to a reasonable length of time. I’m spacey and unfocused in the morning, and it can be hard to stay aware of “when” I am in the morning.
I don’t want to come down too hard on this part of the day, because it also feels healthy and important, but I also want to rein it in a bit.
I’m looking for suggestions that might help with keeping my meandering mornings to a reasonable length of time. Currently they often run up to around four hours before I “clock in” and start my productive work. I’m working alone right now, so there’s not a lot of outside pressure, although sometime I take morning meetings which does help with this problem.
A small part of this problem is maintaining a consistent bedtime, but that isn’t the crux, I’m generally reasonably good at that part.
morning walks, as close as possible to waking, fixed decades of sleep problems when all the other heavy duty interventions didn’t.
Science has known for decades that exposure to sunlight has something to do with maintaining a healthy (strong) circadian rhythm.
Only in the last few years however, has science found out that sunlight when the sun is high in the sky has very little effect on the circadian rhythm: the effect is mediated by two classes of receptors in the retina, one sensitive mostly to blue light, the other sensitive mostly to yellow light, and sunlight only affects the circadian rhythm when the ratio of the activation of the two classes of receptors is what is produced when the sun is low in the sky.
But at least among my acquaintances, the recent knowledge is unknown—maybe partly because people think they already know and have known for decades what they need to know about the effect of sunlight on the circadian rhythm.
If the sky is cloudless, only 5 minutes of exposure is sufficient. On a very overcast day, 20 minutes is needed. The aforementioned receptors are only in the half of the retina (namely, the bottom half) that gets light from the top half of the field of vision, but they are all over that half of the retina, so for example you wouldn’t want a brim of a hat obstructing your view of the sky because that could easily leave half of the relevant receptors in your retina unstimulated by light, which assuming the simplest model of the system, would tend to double (e.g., from 5 minutes to 10 minutes if the sky is cloudless) the duration of exposure to sunlight necessary to have the desired effect (on your circadian rhythm).
I take my morning walk right around sunrise, at which time the sun is almost always obscured by some house or another with result that almost all the light entering my eyes is “indirect” sunlight (scattered by the atmosphere). (In coastal California, the houses are large, and separated by only ten feet or so from each other.) But this “indirect” sunlight is in my experience at least as effective as direct sunlight is at keeping my bed time nice and early in the night.
The sky at sunrise does not seem that bright, but that is basically an optical illusion whereby humans overestimate the brightness of point sources of light and underestimate the brightness of light spread over a significant fraction of one’s field of vision.
In addition to getting sun in the morning while the sun is still low in the sky, to maintain a good circadian rhythm it is important to avoid even dim light between the hours of 11 PM and 4 AM.
(I realize that getting to bed at a sufficiently early hour is only tangential to the OP’s question, but I couldn’t resist chiming in on Romeo’s comment.)
The only reliable technique is exercise. Cardio at a pretty decent effort level—got to really work up a sweat. If this is also done outside in the sun it’s almost perfectly reliable. If indoors it’s still pretty good. Maybe 70%.
Of course the problem is doing exercise is very likely one of the things I put off while meandering in the morning. But if I am able to force myself to do it, it usually does the trick.
I find exercise super helpful as well. I’d amend the suggestion to note that you should also avoid pushing yourself so far that you’re drained or exhausted.
Next on my list is 30-60 sec of cold shower at the end of a hot shower.
And then meditation.
More generally, I find making a schedule the night before and the pomodoro technique helpful.
Like Jaques, I also use focusmate to get up and running in the morning. I try to use the 10min between sessions to get ready. This timebox is helpful to me because I would otherwise drag it out. During these sessions, I find it beneficial to do the same things every morning. This way, I can go on autopilot until I am fully awake and don’t have to will myself into doing stuff.
When I notice this happens to me (sometimes when working alone from home), I set up a https://www.focusmate.com session. There’s some EAs on there too so it’s nice to see EAs once in a while. And I make sure to be specific about what I’ll work on during that session.
This doesn’t always work. Sometimes it takes a session or two to get into the flow of things. I usually only have sessions in the morning so it forces me to get up and get to work.
Use alarms and don’t ignore them, ever. Set the alarms to go off at the time when you want to start setting up for the next part of your day; e.g. getting ready for bed instead of lights-out time, setting up your workspace for the day instead of time to be fully productive, checking if you’re hungry instead of lunchtime, &c. You can set as many labeled alarms as you like on your phone and many watches, and you can schedule them to repeat regularly. If you don’t want to disturb people around you, set the alarm to vibrate and keep the device on your person. (A smart watch is exceptionally useful for this.)
If you need additional alarms to remind you to actually get started, set those too. I prefer to use just one alarm and let setup naturally flow into the intended activity, but do what you have to do to keep your day moving the way you want it to. Remember: never ignore your alarm. If you didn’t want to do the thing, you shouldn’t set the alarm in the first place! If you can’t actually start “getting ready for bed” (or whatever) when the alarm goes off, acknowledge the alarm and begin moving toward that goal. The setup phase can start with whatever you’re doing right now and ends when you’re ready to do the next thing, but it’s important to get that process moving!
Revisit your alarms as often as you need to to make sure you’re cueing the right habits/systems. This will be more frequently at first, but as you settle in to the routine you want you can review less often. And don’t be afraid to make changes if life takes an unexpected turn. If you think you might need an alarm later, turn it off instead of deleting it. That way you can just turn it back on again or reconsider deletion when you’re more sure.
Keep alarms only for your normal schedule. For events that occur irregularly, infrequently, or just once (e.g. next month’s game day, maintenance schedules, dentist appointments) schedule calendar reminders with appropriate lead times instead of setting alarms. This kind of reminder will vanish from your active systems automatically after it has fired, and you won’t clutter up your alarm cluster with dead items.
If a consistent bedtime is a problem for you, try working from the other end. Getting up at the same time every day means that if you didn’t get enough sleep you will be more tired in the evening and it will be easier to go to bed when you want. You can use this to explore how much sleep is optimal for your body and establish a bedtime you will want to keep.
Not a direct answer, but this post has a ton of useful advice that I think would be applicable here: https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-19-on-systems-living-a-life-of-zero-willpower