7/23/2019 11 Morning Habits That Will Change Your Life http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/11-morning-habits-that-will-change-your-life 1/11 11 Morning Habits That Will Change Your Life (And Make You More Creative) Your alarm clock goes off and it’s time to mindlessly shower, brush your teeth, eat breakfast, then head to work. Is that really all there is? In order to prime yourself to think creatively in the day ahead, your morning shouldn’t be a thoughtless drag. The author Annie Dillard once wrote that “how we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives, but she might have been being too general. !ecent studies show that it’s not how we spend our days that’s most important to our lifelong happiness and creativity but how we spend our mornings. "ur mornings set us up either to be primed for creative insights or to be numbed and mindless, merely trudging through our day. #ome of us identify as “morning people while others are anything but$ yet either way it matters less what time we wake up at but what we do with that time. %reative people live life differently in a variety of ways, but perhaps none more importantly than what they do with their morning hours. #o check out a few of the scientifically proven habits that the most creative individuals use each morning and see if it’s not &ust your mornings that are transformed but your lifelong creativity as well. 01. Make tie to be indful
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7/23/2019 11 Morning Habits That Will Change Your Life
eople only have so much time to focus and stay creative so wasting that time
on relatively thoughtless pursuits in the morning is a poor management of both
your time and your creative &uices. Avoid tasks like checking emails or writing
out lists or memos as the first thing you do and instead focus that precious timeand attention towards more rigorous, creatively trying tasks that re-uire the very
best from you.
If, however, emails or similar morning tasks are hyper time*sensitive, it’s
probably worth it to get up a touch earlier so you can focus first on creative
tasks then get to emails and such later. (e’re all granted small windows of time
at which we’re most creative + it’s a shame to waste them.
0'. $o ee $rinking Coffee
Design' une Digann
/reat news. %affeine makes us more alert, yes, but perhaps more importantly, it
also increases our brain’s production of dopamine, which gives us a feeling of
reward and motivation when we start having good ideas. )aking it a habit to
grab a morning latte in the morning adds structure to a morning and helps create
the aforementioned windows of creativity.
0*. +e intentional about #our %hoi%es for the da#Apple co*founder #teve obs said that every day when he woke up he would go
to the mirror and ask himself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I
want to do what I am about to do today0 If the answer were “no for too long
then he knew he’d have to make a big change in his life. (e’re nothing without
intentionally and waking up each morning should be a time to review our
motivations in life. Intentionality can be as e1istentially deep as obs’ self*
-uestioning, but it can also be as simple as writing down what you want to getdone for the day. If you’re proud of the list + of the work you’ll be doing in the
day ahead + and you’re satisfied with where your life is going then you can
rest assured that you’re living with intention.
If, however, your daily tasks boil down to things that you find dull or pointless
then perhaps it’s time to reconsider why you’re doing them in the first place.
2ecause if you don’t live intentionally + if you don’t check in with yourself
often + it becomes far too easy to move through life without ever having lived
on your own terms. As Dillard said, our days comprise our lives. Intentionality
means taking stock of our lives and making changes if we’re dissatisfied.
%reativity can only flourish if we’re in touch with ourselves and our aspirations.
0,. $on-t +e in a ush to /et
7/23/2019 11 Morning Habits That Will Change Your Life
81ercise stimulates creativity not only because it fires off endorphins and gets
blood flowing to our brains but also because it helps break up the monotony of
sitting and working, leading to more creative insights.
American Vogue editor*in*chief Anna (intour plays an hour*long tennis match
most mornings in 5ew 9ork at :';:am sharp. !ussian composer Tchaikovksy,
“believed he had to take a walk of e1actly two hours a day and that if he
returned even a few minutes early, great misfortunes would befall
him, according to The Guardian. And while both of these instances seem
perhaps obsessive, creating a habit around morning e1ercise and movement is a
sure*fire way to avoid getting stuck in a creative rut.
02. edu%e Your Morning Choi%es
Don’t waste your precious morning creative energy choosing between, say, a
wide array of clothes or different types of coffee. !educing variation in your
morning routine may seem dull or uncreative, but it’s a matter of conserving
your cognitive stimulation for activities in the day ahead that actually deserve
6like brainstorming, writing, or problem*solving7. 2arack "bama, for instance,wears only grey or blue suits because, as he said, “I have too many other
decisions to make.
#o too with <acebook founder )ark =uckerberg, who puts on the same grey t*
shirt each morning. “I’m not doing my &ob if I spend any of my energy on things
that are silly or frivolous about my life, he told The Financial Times.#implify
your life so that you can spend your time thinking not about the color of your
as anyone who’s made a 5ew 9ear’s resolution knows, it’s relatively easy to
create a routine or a goal for oneself, but then sticking to it is a different story.
There are always e1cuses to break habits like proper sleep, morning e1ercise, or
staying disconnected in the morning, especially when we’re on holiday or on a business trip, but breaking habits “&ust once is a slippery slope that can erode
the creative habits we’ve worked hard to form.
11. 6lan #our orning the night before
)aking to*do lists and designing your morning routine before your alarm clock
goes off can go a long way in getting you up and out of bed and into your
routine without wasted time. It also cuts down on the amount of analyticalthinking we need to do in the morning, which frees us up to think more
abstractly and creatively. 2y spending a block of time figuring out a routine for
the ne1t week or two, we can simply get up and e!ecute rather than spending
our mornings dallying, trying to figure out what we want to eat or who we need
to call or coordinate with in the day ahead.
Let the adventure begin7 start being ore
%reative8
7/23/2019 11 Morning Habits That Will Change Your Life