What I read:
The ‘5 to 9 Before 9 to 5’ Trend Isn’t for Everybody, but It May Be for You
Harvard happiness expert’s 6-step morning routine for better productivity
The Best Morning Routine to Help You Live a Longer Life
5 to 9 before 9 to 5: Why TikTok is obsessed with the hours before work
What I’m thinking:
I’ve been blogging about very early mornings for almost as long as the blog has existed. See here and here and here. That’s just three. There are many more!
These days my new health news is affecting my mornings. There’s already medication I need to take in the morning one hour before I eat. So I usually take that at 6 am and eat at 7, roughly. But now I have a new medication that also needs to be taken on an empty stomach, an hour before I eat, but it can’t be taken with the first one. Don’t ask. This means I’m getting up at 5 am and eating breakfast at 7.
So what to do with those two hours?
It’s not quite the full four hours of self care that people are talking about in the “5-9 before your 9-5” but it’s something. At 7, I’m switching modes to the usual morning stuff– shower, breakfast, packing lunch etc.
I don’t think of any of that as self- care. It’s just my usual before work daily routine. Also, my work day often starts at 8 or 8:30 so I don’t have the full 5-9 anyway.
From 5-7 am, I have a goal.
I’m trying to avoid lying in bed, doomscrolling. It’s bad for my health, my mental health, and generally starting the day upset and anxious isn’t the best for my stomach, my heart, my soul, my mood.
So at 5 am I’ve been gratitude posting, sharing my #ThreeGoodThings on social media. I do Wordle. And then at 6 am, I share the blog’s daily morning post to social media.
But there’s still time to do more.
Here’s my list of things to choose from:
🕰 Write. I joined a monthly writing challenge where the goal is to write 400 words a day, 5 out of 7 days a week.
📚 Read. I have a new reading lamp and a big stack of books.
🐕 Walk Cheddar. He loves early morning walks.
🚴♂️ Bike rides on Zwift. The Herd has a bunch of low key social early morning rides that I like.
🧘♀️ Home physio.
I want to resist the wildly ambitious “do all the things before work” mentality. I don’t want a strict schedule. In the Atlantic there’s piece called The Logic of the ‘9 to 5’ Is Creeping Into the Rest of the Day in which Julie Beck writes “When life revolves around work, even leisure becomes labor.” I don’t want that. I don’t need a wildly productive morning. I’m happy with a gentle start to my day.
So I think I’m going to let myself pick one or two each morning to focus on. The idea, for me, is just to do something that’s not scrolling. I’m already awake.
Today I did physio and walked Cheddar.
What do you do in the mornings before work?
Sunrise over the mountains, line drawing, Unsplash