I’ve been playing around with a morning routine, or ritual, for a few weeks now.

Why?

Well, I know of some people who swear by their morning routine. So I thought I’d give it a go. Plus, I know from observing myself that when I’ve had some form of routine in the morning that kick-starts me and focuses me it can help to avoid the admittedly infrequent occasions when I don’t really get started and I end up having one of those unproductive, frustrating days that drive me nuts.

So, a wee while ago I put together my first proper morning routine. It looks like this –

1. Get Up – good start.

Set the alarm and allow myself one press of the “snooze” button. When it goes off a second time I get up. That’s 18 minutes snoozing.

2. Drink – loads.

Descend stairs and drink a large glass of water while the kettle boils. Make coffee.

3. Exercise – so early!

Do 30 minutes of stretching and weights whilst listening to Mahler in my 37^th attempt to get into classical music.

4. Plan The Day – it’s not the plan that matters, it’s the planning (General MacArthur).

Most of what I need to do is already in the diary: client facing time; high-payoff activities. But I just make sure I am absolutely clear what else I must do before the working day is over.

5. Eat – full English!

You must be joking. I’m talking protein shake. I love eating but this is not part of the love. It is a system reboot. Just do it.

6. Get presentable – you may get run over.

Shower/dress etc.

That’s it. Fifty to sixty minutes all in.

It covers the bases –

• Physical – exercise is great and eating is good.
• Mental – planning the day is good for the psyche.
• Emotional – the major emotional component is also the exercise. I cannot tell you how relieved I am after doing thirty reps of the trunk twist while lying on my back with my knees in the air, clutching a 6kg medicine ball between the aforementioned knees. I have dropped the ball once. That will not happen again. Plus, with the exercise I’m wired on endorphins (and Guatemalan coffee).

Keeping to the routine was a bit hard for the first two weeks. As always, I overdid it and tried to stick to it for 7 days/week. Now it’s 5 days/week – the working days. I do get up earlier so that I can have it done by 8/830-ish. Now it’s been about three weeks and it is still a wee bit hard but getting easier.

I am aware that it takes about twenty to thirty days to establish a habit but once you have the habit things get easier. You make your habits and then your habits make you. (Many people claim to have coined this phrase but the first guy was my main man Aristotle).

So, has this been worthwhile?

A resounding “yes!” to that:

I think the key is the exercise. It stretches my muscles and kick-starts my system. And equally importantly, exercise also touches me emotionally – it just lifts me. It makes me happy. Endorphins. So the exercise is a big, big plus.

Eating is also good. I have never, ever felt hungry in the morning so the great temptation is to skip breakfast. But when I actually eat breakfast (especially a protein shake) it’s like a massive switch inside me has been slammed into the ON position.

And finally, despite invariably having my day filled with high-payoff activities, it is good just to spend ten minutes really, really defining what tasks I must do today and I will not stop until they are done. Never start the day until you have finished the day on paper (as Jim Rohn said. Aristotle would have liked Jim).

I still resist the discipline of the morning ritual but I am beginning to love it and it has huge benefits.

I guess I’m about twenty days in now. It takes thirty days to make a habit. So if I persevere for another ten days or so my morning routine will become a habit that I will have made and then I can allow the habit to make me…

As 2010 draws to a snowy close I reflect on the completion of my third year in business and I ask myself “What have I learned?”

Quite a lot really…

There is abundant opportunity…

I never really “got” this. But now I do. Life really isn’t a zero sum game at any level. It’s just that sometimes it can seem that way if we set low goals and miss them, do the wrong things, fail to do enough of the right things, target the wrong markets, and go about our business fearfully and defensively. Then it’s a struggle.

But with clarity, focus, confidence, real personal productivity and a laser like focus on what we need, it comes to us, once we know what it looks like.

We’ve got to love what we do…

This is about values. If we spend huge amounts of time doing stuff that doesn’t accord tightly with our values we’re running on the wrong fuel. Values drive behaviour and behaviour drives results.

I finally realised my one core value that isn’t banal is that I believe the greatest thing on earth is human potential and I will do what I can do make sure more of it is realised. This has been hugely clarifying for me. I guess I kind of knew it, but sitting down in a darkened room and homing in on my one core value has really helped me. I now do more of the right stuff and I have cut out a lot of the stuff that was not value-driven. Relief! It’s like being let out of jail.

We have everything we need…

It’s all here. Centuries of human endeavour, experience, knowledge. And all the people around us right now. Here’s a great question to ask someone. It gets a positive and valuable response 95 times out of a hundred. “Can you help me with……?” Try it.

If you boil a kettle it boils at a hundred degrees. Every time. If you do the things that people have done before you will get their results. This is not weird. It would be weird if it was not so.

The past is gone…

Good and bad. To relive it is a choice. Not a destiny. We are all conditioned to an almost frightening extent. But the conditioning process is not over. We are alive to conditioning now…right now. And we can do it to ourselves. And it doesn’t take long. Some people say 21 days to recondition ourselves in any area. I think that’s about right.

Our future is unwritten…

But it will be written. We can write it. We should write it. Because if we don’t someone else will. If we don’t have our own plan, we will be a part of someone else’s plan. Stark choice.

Our brain is beyond fantastic…

But it isn’t user friendly and it doesn’t come with a manual. We need to manage ourselves first and foremost, before we try to manage anything else. Deal with fear.  Change the level of fear attributed to an action. As Jim Rohn said “we are destined to suffer from one of two pains – the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.” Learn to fear regret with a vengeance. As a child fears monsters. Then the fear of discipline seems trivial. And procrastination and all the other stuff that hold us back are revealed to be just mice wearing monster suits.

We need to sharpen the saw…

I am amazed at how the people I consider to be successful switch off all the screens and take the time out to reflect on what they’ve done, to plan, to spend really good time with their families and come back renewed, refreshed, sharper than before, ready for the next chapter.

And so, to that end, I shall disappear for the first week in January to sharpen my saw. All being well with the weather, I shall be back with your next Pearl on 10^th January.

I wish you a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.

This week’s Pearl of Leadership Wisdom is on….

Procrastination – Part II – Solution to

“We are destined to suffer from one of two pains – the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.” – Jim Rohn

Blowing bubbles…

This advice on how to overcome procrastination is for those with “normal” levels of it. If you really never start anything ever, go and see a doctor, unless you are a goldfish for whom this is normal.

Ok – so what to do?

Set goals and achieve them. That’s it. Dead simple.

Any idiot…

…can write a goal. It’s the achievement that’s a bit tougher. So to increase your chances of success, make sure it’s your goal, not your partner’s, children’s or society’s.

The good, the bad and the ugly…

Get motivated by going through all the good stuff that happens when you achieve your goal, and all the bad stuff avoided. Bad stuff avoided is better – we take more action to avoid pain than to get pleasure. We’ll come back to bad stuff.

Be accountable – it’s you that’s doing it and nobody cares about your pressures, childcare, lack of money or any other externality that you have chosen to blame in order to avoid the pain of discipline. Find a way. Overcome. Avoid regret.

Goal-directed action – is there another kind?

Know what your key activities are to achieve your goal and do them with maximum prejudice – anything or anyone who gets in your way will feel your wrath, unless you’re sleeping with them, sired them, gave birth to them or they fit in some other extremely limited group, and even then…. remember you are the most important person in your life. That’s not selfishness. It’s the truth.

Now, the really bad stuff…

The quote above by Jim Rohn, an American writer, puts a lump in my throat. The pain of regret. I’m not sure I can think of anything worse. The massive, self-inflicted pain of regret. Yet we procrastinate. Why? Because the pain of discipline, although small, is here, right now. Whereas the pain of regret, although massive, is in the future.

But when you feel the pain of regret it is too late to do anything about it. And I don’t think I could bear that. So I’m not going to.

This time it’s personal…

Choose a goal now. No – call it a promise. Make a promise to do something. Something you can do in one week, that you’ve been putting off. Decide what the first step is. Put it in your diary. Guard that time with your life and when the time comes, take the step and schedule the next step.

“I promise myself that by this time next week I will……”

Avoid the pain of regret.

Mark