- wake up to one or more toddlers invading my bed and wriggling around.

- avoid being kicked in the head by above

- make sure to head off preemptive tantrums before calories can be put into hungry child-faces who are unwilling to admit that they're hungry but totally are.

- make coffee and breakfast for 3-5 people

- pick up random scattered items across apartment

- have a poo

- see family off for the day's adventures

- check email

- start feeling annoyed that i'm not at work already

- resign myself to a lyft or dig out bicycle from awkward but child-proof storage location and bike to work.

I'm not sure where i'm supposed to get in 30 minutes of quiet meditation and jounaling, but i think i have the exercise covered...

Yeah. Up at 7:00, kid morning routine and transport for 2hrs, log in (WFH). And no, I’m not gonna get up earlier, 7’s already inhumanely-early for about half the year.

i have to get up at 6:20 to get my meditation in before anyone stirs

You make a great point. I actually do all this after waking up earlyish to get my daughter ready for daycare and walk her there and back. I'm also very lucky in that I work from home, so skipping the commute helps a lot.

Perhaps a better title would have been a "day-kickstarting" routine...

That sounds a lot like mine except my kids are slightly older so it also involves a school run. And I live in London so there's an ~1 hour commute to follow it.

possibly try getting up before the toddlers

"self, wake up sometime before any time between 06:45 and 10:30".

OK.

* Wake up

* Make coffee

* Consume coffee

edit: I'm only being half-flippant here. The routine of making a pour-over coffee for the wife, then an espresso for myself is a great way to clear the fog and get my mind prepared for the day ahead. I tend to start my work day immediately after these steps, coffee in hand I can knock out the low-hanging fruit from the previous night's emails. After an hour or so I can walk the dog, take a shower, and then get back to work to dig into the day's problems that take a little more energy and focus.

I find the idea of exercise after waking up very appealing but also totally unachievable. No matter how good my intentions the night before, when I wake up it feels totally out of the question to do just 5 minutes exercise, or even 5 seconds! Doing some meditation first is an interesting idea, I might give it a try. I have to admit it seems a bit unlikely to work though for me though.

I used to exercise in the morning but I've found it so depressing because I have to get up super early to do it. Also my muscles aren't as limber either so stretching is difficult.

The downside to exercising in the evening is it's very easy for undisiplined people to skip it. Although I don't do it daily which really helps staying motivated, especially if you make a routine that lasts about 2-4 hours, not including the shower and clean up afterward.

As for someone like you who doesn't do it, just start with cardio. Do it for like 30 minutes to an hour every day or every other day. If you miss a day, get a little upset at yourself and do it that day then. Treat your days off as an earned reward. Then once you've disiplined yourself with the easy stuff, start adding in more.

I've personally found that adding little by little over time makes it easier to feel like it's something you "just do" versus actual work.

For me, the key was not exercising immediately after waking up. The issue was that when the alarm sounded, I knew the next thing I had to do was exercise. So I'd find excuses.

Instead, I made it to the first thing I did was wake up, have coffee, and read the newspaper. By the time that is done I am awake and somewhat relaxed, and in a much better state to contemplate exercise.

Completely agree, I don't even try it anymore after many many failures. That's why I meditate and do some journaling first. I intersperse pushups at the beginning of the routine, but the core workout happens at the end, and for good reason.

According to a zen meditation monk that I watched in a youtube video, you can meditate any time, anywhere, just by stopping and focusing on manually breathing.

Make sure that you are aware of every single breath in, and every single breath out. If your mind wanders and thinks about other things, that's ok, don't stress about it. Just make sure that you are focusing on your breathing while your mind is wondering.

If this is true, then it should be easy to meditate in the mornings whenever you do mundane time-consuming things like taking a shower or driving to work, for example.

Thanks but actually I was pondering whether meditating on the morning would allow me to go on to do exercise, not whether I could manage the meditation bit.

I think you might have taken that video a little too literally. I'm not a meditation expert by any means, and I acknowledge that you shouldn't stress about other thoughts entering your mind, but you should then allow those thoughts to pass rather than lingering on them. Imagine the thought is "a lorry has just pulled out in front of me"! Driving and meditation are surely incompatible.

Same here. I'm really good about getting in 30-60 minutes of weight lifting or cardio a day; I just can't do it after waking up. Most days I go after work, and on the weekends I need a big breakfast and time before I can get going at 100%.

Most of the article is cruft that could be cut out. The authors main points:

> In my case, it is a combination of meditation (10 minutes), journaling (10 minutes) and working out at home (40 minutes). Almost always I shower after that – and the day is always different after that. And it is a rare day where I feel I don’t have the strength to actually get the routine started – I might procrastinate a while, but eventually it gets done and everything else follows.

He also tries to do it all as one activity, e.g. made them all one "indivisible unit", so that you do all of them.

What I would love to learn is how do you develop a routine that sticks.

All I want to do in the morning is go back to sleep.

I can highly recommend James Clear's Atomic Habits book. A lot of what has worked for me in terms of habits comes from there.

Morning routines blow. That's why I switched over to the evening. I prefer it mostly because I like to sleep too, but mostly because I hate wasting a morning on a stressful activity. Mornings are quite possibly the most relaxing part of my day.