IRL Experience Design

Morning Ritual

Here’s how I used to try to start new habits:

  1. Decide why, what, where, when, and how I’m going to do something.
  2. Do it.
  3. Keep doing it.
  4. Eventually from some reason or another, stop doing it.

As you can see, item #4 was causing me problems.

Here’s the my improved process:

  1. Decide why, what, where, when, and how I’m going to do something.
  2. Do it.
  3. Review how #2 went, find problem areas and adjust the why, wht, where, when, and how as necesary.
  4. Go to step #2

The thing about the “review your strategy” part is that it’s often boring and/or hard. And it doesn’t appear to be that important. But I’ve found that when trying to develop habits the devil is almost always hiding in the details.

Here’s how I developed and manage my morning routine. I warn you that it is excrutiatingly boring and seemingly “not that important to do”.

Strategy Review of Morning Routine Management (Warning: Super Boring Read)

First, I made a list of the things I want to do in the morning:

  • Shower
  • Coffee
  • Meditate
  • Walk
  • Make breakfast
  • Eat breakfast and sort of journal
  • Journal if I haven’t (but I usually forget this)
  • Plan day. 
  • Read 

Then I put the list into Random.org to rearrange them randomly.

This is a gut test. A gut test is when you propose something as “they way it will be” and then see how your gut reacts. This is useful when you have lots of options but don’t (appear to) feel very strongly about any of them.

The Randomized list result:

  • Shower
  • Walk
  • Meditate
  • Read
  • Blog work.
  • Make coffee
  • Make / Eat breakfast.
  • Journal and Plan Day

My Gut Reaction:

This is a good one. It solves the issue of “oh shit I gotta walk before it gets hot”. I also like the Meditate-Read-Blog combo because between meditation and reading I might have some thoughts on what to blog. The lack of coffee might be an issue, so maybe I wake up, shower, make coffee, walk, then do the “idea” work.  Then I make breakfast as a “divider” for my day and do that.

Then, since I’m thinking about all these steps, this thought appears in my head:

Another observation is that eating breakfast triggers my “get on the internet and goof off” habit. What if I did it  *away* from the computer? It only takes about 5 minutes to eat it. Realitically could do it in 1 minute. So why risk getting off track? I can savor breakfast more and do it elsewhere.

Then part of me has this thought:

Digging this deep into the details of my morning routine is a ridiculous effort. But remember what I’m doing is to find those little tiny mindless moments that throws the whole thing out of wack. I know how to do all these tasks. It’s about finding a secure safe for new habits to grow and creating a more waterproof system.

I use Random.org to generate another ordering:

  • Journal and Plan Day
  • Meditate
  • Shower
  • Walk
  • Make coffee
  • Read
  • Make / Eat breakfast.
  • Blog work.

Gut Reaction:

I wake up and plan my day. Ack. That’s the last way I want to wake up. But it might be helpful to know how much I can fuss around in the morning with idea generating. I meditate to calm down from my schedule. Wow this one is all over the place. Thinking. Relaxing. Shower. Relaxing. Thinking. Relaxing thinking.  Sounds awful. But maybe in a way that is informative?

Another spin of the Random.org wheel:

  • Make coffee
  • Read
  • Journal and Plan Day
  • Walk
  • Shower
  • Blog work.
  • Meditate
  • Make / Eat breakfast.

Gut Reaction (You don’t have to understand what I’m saying, just understand that I am really considering the consequences of these small actions):

Ok, we got the coffee part right. I’m not liking the planning day being early. Because usually that is my “work day” and I start bringing in day job stuff. So if I did this it would be like coffee. Relaxing but brain not super alert to read. Then I think of my day. Then I go for a walk (which is usually where I revelate about what my day should be, so no way here.)  Maybe the walk is the thing to do before I plan. Also, the meditation can be a great idea generator and so can the walk. But maybe walk before plan.

Spin it again!

  • Walk
  • Shower
  • Make coffee
  • Meditate
  • Blog work.
  • Journal and Plan Day
  • Read
  • Make / Eat breakfast.

Reaction:

Get up and walk. Ok, I’ve done this and that’s kind of nice. It’s as early as I’ll get in the day and it connects me to the world first thing. Then I can come back and shower, make coffee and meditate. Ok not bad so far. Sort of like what I do now. Then I blog. Then I get into my day planning, then read. What do I mean by read? What am I reading? This isn’t well defined right now.

Aha! I realize I need to dig more into this “reading” item. Let’s do that right here right now.

Internal dialog: “The reading task is subject to wide variation because I could read all kinds of things. What is reading about? It used mean reading 10 pages. But since I finished a book and the current ones aren’t as important to my work then I haven’t done it. Maybe it wasn’t about the 10 pages but about the purpose of the book. Sales, design, self improvement. So that’s an observation. When I went and did the other book for entertainment it felt like I was  escaping or just upsetting the flow. So ok, it means 10 pages of a book related to my work.”

Now I’ve got the reading task more defined.

From the previous tests I’ve learned about a few constraints and observations:

  • Coffee needs to come early.
  • Meditate-read-blog is a grouping that should be together in that order.
  • Make-Eat breakfast is not done with any other tasks or by a computer. I think this might turn out to be the best idea. To not have temptations while eating.
  • Journal and Plan Day is last because it starts cracking open universes which take mental horsepower and attention whether I try avoid it or not.

But there’s a few unaccounted for tasks:

Where do Shower and Walk go? And what if I decide I want to run in the morning? I think I can do that in the planning part and just make it part of the plan for the day. So the question is really just down to where do walking and showering go? I much prefer to walk EARLY as possible. Since the blogging and stuff can take a while, maybe I try it like.

I finally get to 3 ideas I can test:

POSSIBLE ORDER #1

  • Make Coffee
  • WALK
  • Meditate-read-blog
  • Make-eat breakfast
  • Journal and plan day.
  • SHOWER AFTER EXERCISE

POSSIBLE ORDER #2

  • SHOWER
  • Make Coffee
  • WALK
  • Meditate-read-blog
  • Make-eat breakfast
  • Journal and plan day.

POSSIBLE ORDER #3

  • Make Coffee
  • Meditate-read-blog
  • Make-eat breakfast
  • WALK
  • Journal and plan day.
  • SHOWER AFTER EXERCISE

I review my options:

So there’s three options. I really like getting the walk out of the way for some reason. Just getting up and starting to metate and work. Which I guess I’m sort of doing now leaves this nagging “it’s getting lighter out you better walk soon” feeling. I don’t get that awesome “I am up super early before the world and this is amazing!” feeling from my walk if I go out at 10am – despite the temperature. 

Finally I decide to test one of these out:

This week try (#1) every day and see how it goes.

End Notes

If you try this method, I recommend writing down your gut reactions and thoughts – don’t just keep them in your head. Often we feel we have a full thought but in reality we don’t. Choosing to write it down makes the brain form the thought into something we can work with much more easily.