How To Build A Morning Routine That Works | Cal Newport

All right. So the idea of a morning routine is not new. I actually looked into this. Probably the earliest written discussion of a morning routine goes back to the Jewish Talmud. If you look in tractate Barokat, I'm saying the Hebrew wrong, the plural of Baraka. So sorry. Sorry, rad eyes. The rabbis debate the worship obligations of the Jewish people, and they make it clear that morning prayers, which are known as tefillah shakrit, are an obligation. So if you read these morning prayers, they're pretty quite moving. When you wake up, you're acknowledging God. You're giving thanks for the fact that you woke up. It's not a given. You go to sleep, it's like a mini death, that you live another day. It's a great morning routine. So we've been talking about morning routines since the very beginning of the common era. But the point is, they're old. We've been talking about for a long time. In recent years, morning routines have come back into vogue, and there's a particular interest in them from young people. And I say this because there's a lot of morning routine content on YouTube right now, and the audience at YouTube heavily skews towards young people. This is what got me interested. why is there a resurgence? Even though this is an old idea of having a morning routine, why is there a resurgence and interest in this concept right now among young people? So I have an explanation I want to offer that I haven't heard discussed that often recently, but I think once we understand it, it'll help all of us who are thinking about morning routines build better rituals. All right, so let's just like start right away with what that factor is. All right, so Jesse, here's what I think is going on. I think morning routines right now are particularly interesting to young people because of a need to escape technology. And let me explain this, right? If you're like me, you're a little bit older, you're in your 40s, you have kids and like an office job, you don't think as much about morning routines because you have one whether you want one or not, right? Like I have to get my kids to school. So it's a very clear morning routine. Wake up, make coffee. make sure they have breakfast, get everyone packed up and out the door. I walk them to the bus stop, walk home from the bus stop, and then I can move into work for the day. That's a very clear structured routine that I have no choice but to do or not because I got to get those kids out the door and it's very structured what has to happen. But if you're younger and you don't have a family and maybe you have a remote work job or something like this, your morning might be wide open. And so what will happen if you don't have a routine for your morning? You're going to pick up that phone. And then that algorithmically curated content is going to capture your attention. Like this is really engaging. And then maybe when you're trying to start work, you're like, well, I'm going to, let me go to email and Slack first, because again, this is more engaging. I don't, I can kind of just like be passing messages back and forth or looking for something interesting to happen. And also I'm on my phone at the same time. And you can look up and it's like 11 AM. Like I've really done nothing but look at my phone and sort of answer emails. I'm not doing anything really useful. I've got trapped. by the engagement of technology. This then is why I think young people are more interested in morning routines because if you can structure your morning, it can prevent you from falling into technological quicksand and it can get you into doing actual useful stuff much more quickly and then you feel much better about your day and your day is much more productive. So I think once we understand that, which I think is a very good use for morning routines. Once we understand that being a primary goal of these routines, I think we can identify then some points that anyone can think about then, about what makes an effective or non-effective morning routine. So I'm going to bring up a blackboard here to draw on. God help us when I draw. For those who are listening, instead of just watching, on this blackboard right now, it says morning routine principles. All right, so I want to go through four principles for a good morning routine that is inspired by this idea of our goal here is to get into productive work without getting lost in technology. All right. So here's the first principle. I'll just do pictures on here, Jesse, because people think my drawing is fantastic and you got to give people what they want. All right. That's clearly a clock, right? Yep. All right. So here's what I mean by that. There's no need for an overly long routine, right? 10 to 20 minutes should be enough max. to help get your brain activated and focused and switch to like whatever productive thing you want to do in the morning. You don't need a three hour routine or a four hour routine or God help us. Didn't we look at like a six hour routine when Brad was here a couple of weeks ago? Once you're past like 10 or 20 minutes can help you like reorient and get oriented for the day. Going past that, there's no continued aggregation of benefits. So especially if you're like losing sleep to get up super early or find yourself having to do like hours of effort, like that's crazy for our goal of helping you to avoid technology traps. So 10, 20 minutes, that should be enough. All right. Principle number two. Let's see here. Does it look like someone doing a yoga pose? Yeah. Right. Down dog. Right. So here's like someone outside on a yoga mat, you know, doing a fantastically done. yoga pose. Here's the principle I want to make here. You should find whatever like flavor or twist or motivation makes a morning routine compelling to you. Because if it's not compelling, you're not going to do it. If you don't do it, you don't get the benefits. Now, this is something I think that people often misunderstand because they think about things that make sense to them. And then think about the twists that are compelling to other people as somehow like, well, that's just weird, right? Like, that's no good. That must be... you know, you're wrong or it's grifty or something like that, right? But the point is, is like, you got to find what makes it compelling. So for some people, like I drew here, a spiritual hook is what's compelling. It's like, I want to greet the sun in the morning. It's like I'm greeting Mother Earth or like I want to, through yoga and breathing, I'm going to like connect to the ground in like the morning sun or something. And for like a lot of people, that's a really good hook. Other people... They want to throw some like science at it, right? So they're like, no, no, no. I want to go out and look at the sun because like Huberman told me it hit certain receptors in my visual cortex, which creates a hormonal cascade, which is going to help my circadian rhythm reset or something like that. Like maybe that's exaggerated. Maybe that's not like a hundred percent true, but we're not trying to get FDA approval for a drug here. We're just trying to look for something to get you motivated. So some people like that sort of science-y type stuff around it. If that's what, if protocols is like what makes you, you know, do it, then that's fine too. Like whatever it is that works for you, that's what you should use because the worst morning routine is the one that you actually don't follow. All right. Principle number three. I'm going to draw here. These are like numbers. I'm drawing like a time block plan here, Jesse. Okay. So why am I drawing a time block plan here? Well, my principle is... You need a clear off-ramp from the morning routine into the productive activity that follows. So you have to somehow connect. You're doing this ritual to try to reorient your brain, get it ready to do stuff that it might not want to do. But you then need the help get from there to the actual work, some sort of off-ramp into your day. So it might be like at the end of your routine, you sit down, you draw out your time block plan for the day, and then you start. Or it might be you go for a final walk where you organize what you're going to write that morning if you're a writer, and then you come right down to your keyboard and just start writing. Or whatever it is, but have a well-defined off-ramp that gets you from this into your day. Because if you do this whole ritual to orient your brain and get you ready for activity, and then you just go into checking your phone, you've defeated the whole purpose, at least the technological escape purpose. All right, the fourth principle here. Let's see. I'm going to draw this. I have an idea here. So this is... This is like someone holding up a, it's like a trophy or a championship cup. Like someone who's like really excited about it. Don't have unreasonable expectations for what your morning routine actually delivers. This is much more clear. Once we realize our goal here is not to get trapped in our technology and lose our morning, get rid of other expectations. All right. For example. Your morning routine is not a major driver of your health. We get a lot of this of like you do 70 different things involving supplements and this and that, and I have to go into into this cold plunge to stimulate exactly this type of response or whatever it is. And you try to get the sense of like by doing all of these steps each morning, I'm going to be very healthy. You're going to have longevity. Most of that's just BS, right? Like there's super minor benefits you might get along the way But they're minimal. Stolberg had like a good, I forget exactly what the quote was, but he like went through the research on like cold plunges and he was like the positive affect it gives you was so small. It was like the equivalent of like eating a pastry you like. Like, it was like, great. Yes, you get some minor. That's not like the driver of all of your health, right? So don't have expectations that these routines are going to. be a major driver of your health. Don't have the expectation that these routines are going to be a major driver of your success, that if you do like these right 15 things in the morning, you're going to be super successful. You're not. I mean, it's going to save you from getting trapped in your technology, but the work you do is still hard, and becoming successful is still hard. You still have to build skills, and it's rare and valuable skills, and it's complicated, and it's stressful, and it might not work out. And the morning routine can't make that easier for you, and the morning routine can't guarantee you. What they can help you do is wasting time. with a messy start to your day. That's what they do. So set your expectations reasonably that that's what I'm trying to do. And then you're going to have a much better experience. So let's look at these four principles all together. Let's do a quick focus. Don't make it too long. For people who are watching, I'll even use my pointer. All right. I've been teaching with my iPad, so I'm used to this now. Don't make it too long. 10 to 20 minutes is enough. Don't be embarrassed about whatever hook gets you to actually do it. whether it's pseudoscience or pseudo-spirituality, have a clear off-ramp into your day out of the morning routine, and don't have unreasonable expectations about what your morning routine is going to deliver you. It is a way to avoid wasting your morning. I think that's why it's becoming popular among young people, and I think that's a good reason for anyone to try to think about their morning routine. And I think those four principles help you have something sane and get those benefits without going off the deep end. So there we go. So like, I'm not anti morning routines. It's got to know what you're doing with it. And if you do like they're much, it's a much lower stakes thing. You can design useful ones. They help. They don't change your life, but they make your mornings better. There we go. Morning routines. Hey, if you liked this video, I think you'll really like this one as well. Check it out.

Cal Newport provides the details of effective morning routines in this clip from episode 391 of the Deep Questions podcast.

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0:00 Effective morning routines
1:20 Resurgence of morning routines
4:00 Principles that work
8:40 Eliminate expectations

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About Cal Newport:
Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University. In addition to his academic research, he writes about the intersection of digital technology and culture. Cal's particularly interested in our struggle to deploy these tools in ways that support instead of subvert the things we care about in both our personal and professional lives.

Cal is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including, most recently, A World Without Email, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work. He's also the creator of The Time-Block Planner.

The videos are considered to be used under the "Fair Use Doctrine" of United States Copyright Law, Title 17 U.S. Code Sections 107-118. Videos are used for editorial and educational purposes only and I do not claim ownership of any original video content. I don't use said video clips in advertisements, marketing or for direct financial gain. All video content in each clip is considered owned by the individual broadcast companies.

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