“The way you spend your morning has an outsized effect on the rest of your day. The choices we make during the first hour or so of our morning determines whether we have productivity and peace of mind for the rest of the day, or whether it will clobber us over the head. Unfortunately for most of us, good days don’t just happen by accident. Unforeseen events will step forward to challenge your best-laid plans. If you don’t dip into your inner reservoirs of energy, focus, and calm first thing, you won’t stand a chance. Start your mornings with intentionality, and you can then bring those ‘wins’ with you into the rest of your day. …
Our hope is that you use this book—part instruction manual, part someone else’s diary—both as a handbook on how to create (and stick to) a positive, focused, and calm morning routine, and as a flip-book of inspiring stories. Reading these interviews affords keyholes into the most beautiful, private moments of our day. They form a patchwork study of who we are and how we live.”
I got a pre-release copy of this book from Penguin Random House (thanks, guys!).
I thought it looked great, put it on the stacks of books in my office and then, a week or two later, Daily Rituals by Mason Currey (our last Note) started barking at me from my bookshelf so I read that book then realized this one would be the perfect follow up. And, here we are.
My Morning Ritual is, indeed, a great follow-up to Daily Rituals. Whereas Mason Currey tells us about “How Artists Work” by sharing a super-diverse range of vignettes on 161 great thinkers over the last 400 years (some more Optimized than others! hah), this book is a much more practical look at, as per the sub-title: “How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired.”
Benjamin Spall and Michael Xander created a popular site and interview series called “My Morning Routine” (they’ve now interviewed over 250 people) and this book is a distillation of the best stuff they’ve learned.
As they say, it’s “Part instruction manual, part someone else’s diary.” If you’re looking for some simple, practical ideas and inspiring examples of how to Optimize your mornings I think you’ll dig it, too. (Get a copy here.)
Of course, I’m a big fan of starting your day right (see Masterpiece Days 101, Notes on The Miracle Morning, Manage Your Day-to-Day, The Compound Effect, etc.) and I really enjoyed seeing how some (sixty-four to be precise) of the most successful people out there start their days—ranging from Olympic gold medal winners to Generals and bestselling authors and CEOs. (We’ve even featured six of them, including: Ryan Holiday, Geoff Colvin, Todd Henry, Chris Guillebeau, Dave Asprey, and Austin Kleon.)
It’s packed with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!
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