Slow down, be thoughtful, stay consistent and enjoy life
We’re often told that you should get a morning routine. These are often predicated on the notion that you should get up at 4 o’clock and go out and dominate the world—this is of course an exaggeration, but you get the point. Advice like doing fasted cardio while listening to an audiobook on 2x normal speed before 6:00 is common advice in the productivity/get fit industry.
The idea behind this perspective comes from a noble place. If you get up early and get right at it, you get a head start—and over time this will have a compounding effect. We wrote about this topic a couple of articles back and we still believe that being consistent is the best way going forward, but as with all things in life—you should try to avoid extremes. Excessive or restrictive behaviour should, as a general rule, be avoided and be replaced with a more sustainable and enjoyable daily routine.
We Coffee Talkers have started a little book/podcast club in the last couple of months. If one of us finds a rabbit hole, we make sure that we have company all the way down to the bottom. This makes for good coffee talks but also alters our perspective on things from time to time. We listened to a podcast from 2015 a couple of weeks ago—it was a conversation between Pavel Tsatsouline and Tim Ferris. What caught our attention was when Tim asked Pavel about his morning routine.
Pavel is a very fit and productive human that makes his living by training Navy Seals and Spetsnaz soldiers, and we assumed that he was the get up early and dominate the world type of human. But to our surprise his morning was about relaxing with a cup of coffee, talking to his wife and reading the newspaper. Afterwards, he went down to the beach with a kettlebell for a quick dip and short training session.
When asked what he then did in the weekend Pavel answered, “The same thing—besides going to church on Sundays.”
“So, Coffee Talkers what’s the point to all of this?” you might say. Well, our coffee drinking friends—fear not, we’ll get to that right now…
Pavel’s routine was a big surprise for us and was the pivotal point for a lot of subsequent coffee talks. What really resonated with us, is that we both, intuitively, had similar morning routines as Pavel, but always thought that this was an area that needed improvement. But when we actually thought it through, we realised that this fits in really well with our general life philosophy—which goes something like—aim for a routine/life that is productive, but which you can sustain and actually enjoy.
When you ease into the day, like Pavel, you allow yourself to be thoughtful about your actions, habits and goals. You can enjoy the fact that you were blessed with another day and can enjoy the company of the people around you—instead of stressing from the get-go. We wrote an article about setting the bar low and building momentum. That article focused on compounding the fruits of daily labour, but we think that this philosophy also applies to every individual day.
Start slow, be grateful, be thoughtful of your actions and goals, and build momentum throughout the day.
We’re confident that this will make your daily life more enjoyable and meaningful.
Until next time
Scott and Lennart