tl;dr: Your day may not go as planned, but if you win the morning, you increase your odds of success. You also feel better

One of the things you learn in the practice of meditation is that your mind IS going to wander.

While I haven’t asked him about it, I would guess that even the Dalai Lama’s mind wanders during meditation. It’s just part of the human condition.

The practice lies in generating awareness that the mind has wandered. Then, gently returning attention to the object of intention (breath, a rock, a tree, or a poem).

Accepting that humans have minds that will wander is actually empowering.

Once we accept that, we can build habits and practices that minimize the damage we do to the daily goals we set for ourselves.

One catchphrase I heard recently summed it up nicely.

Win the morning

Don’t Touch the Phone

With the possible exception of swiping off your alarm, I would argue that the key to winning the morning is to not look at your phone until the “morning recipe” is over.

While we all believe that the phone is a tool of great empowerment (and it is), it is also a black hole for attention.

I suppose it’s fortunate that Moses didn’t have a phone at Mt. Sinai and Siddhartha didn’t have one when he left the palace, because if they did, who knows what would have happened?

My advice. Don’t touch it.

If you’re really daring, turn off notifications to all but “essential services” (up to you).

Double bonus: put it on Do Not Disturb for the “Win the Morning” phase of your day.

That can be 3 minutes or 3 hours. It doesn’t matter.

What does matter is to have a set of “atomic habits” that can be stacked together in a row

[for a deeper dive see Flow and the Disciplined Pursuit of Accountable Creativity].

These habits can be simple:

• “Before I look at my phone in the morning, I will do 10 pushups”
• “I will walk the dog without my phone and just enjoy the peace of the neighborhood.”
• “I will write in my gratitude journal.”

It literally doesn’t matter what you choose. The shorter, the better.

For me, the first thing is “I will do 4 sun salutations right when I get out of bed.”

Start there.

Habit Stacking

Once you’ve built the habit (whether it’s 21 days or not is up to you, you’ll know), then you can “habit stack.”

“When I get out bed in the morning, the first thing I will do is 4 sun salutations.

Then, I will do 10 pushups.”

Do that for the next 21 days.

From there, you can add micro habits on top that become automatic to you.

One of them might be blogging..

Summiting Morning Mountain

Eventually, your mornings can become strong routines.

By the end, you have a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

You think back and say, “wow, over the last xx minutes/hours, I’ve gotten yy things done that were important to me.”

Once your “win the morning” routine is over, then you can look at your phone.

Let the distraction begin.

But no matter what happens the rest of the day, you’ll have the strong sense of accomplishment that comes from Winning the Morning.

And yes, there will be days where you don’t win the morning. That’s life.

The important thing is that you have a way to win it. You’ll get it tomorrow. Good luck.