The Easiest Hack To Take Back My Mornings
How you can boost your productivity by making this small change.
I grew up in the early 90s like a lot of millennials.
Back then even connecting to the internet was an event. One which everyone would hear about. This video could either be super triggering or bring up some childhood nostalgia.
The phones back then only served one function; calling people. Ironically it is the least used function on smartphones today. It's safe to say that phones do way more than they used to and have become an integral part of our lives.
About a month ago, I took a 90-day break from coffee.
I documented what the first month was like in this article. After binging my third rerun of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, I realized that I had replaced one mind-altering drug with another. I was clocking 10 hours on my phone each day after quitting coffee.
My phone was the first thing I looked at before falling asleep and the first thing I would look at after starting a new day.
Before deciding what I wanted to do during the day, the phone influenced my decision-making. There were days when I spent over an hour doom scrolling on my phone after waking up. From Memes on Instagram to threads on Twitter to cringe-worthy motivation posts on LinkedIn, I chose to expose myself to the outside world before a single moment to myself.
People were in my head before I even stepped out of bed on a new day.
I used to complain about not having enough time and yet gave most of it away for free. Besides the wasted time, poor posture, and chronic neck pain were the other major side effects.
This unhealthy pattern had to stop.
The Hack
As an experiment for a week, I will not use my phone until noon and capture the progress as I go through this process. Today was day two and I already feel there have been some positive effects from this experiment.
Earlier, looking at my phone would put the ADHD into overdrive.
There was constant context-switching, and it took forever to finish tasks. I noticed a greater clarity this morning and a meta-awareness of every task I did. Even doing the dishes after breakfast seemed meditative. I finished most of the morning tasks in half the time.
I started the day with what I wanted to do, and not what I had to do. Instead of looking at bills or apartments or reading news that made me miserable, I was able to sit with a nice cup of tea and set the intention for the day: a clear list of goals that would ensure greater productivity and less confusion about what to do. I have managed to get a lot more done before noon today than most days.
The best positive effect this morning was the shift in mood. Using the phone first thing after waking up always amplified my current mood. Today wasn't off to a pleasant start. I was aching all over and groggy. But there was nothing to do without my phone. No free dopamine hit to distract me. I decided to acknowledge the pain without judgment. And this did the trick.
I felt much better after just being present with my current experience and not trying to change it with a drug.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn on July 5, 2022
I had a similar experience when I quit coffee for 30 days. Yes, I proved that I could control my life - that tiny, unimportant aspect, anyway. But, was it worth all the time spent on surpressing the cravings? Write it off as self-discovery. Even more revealing was then I resolved to make a - as much as possible - major lifestyle change - "offline til lunchtime". The temptation to check for messages, notices, and calls can be terribly distracting, especially in the first days. But there is no doubt that I get more done of the things I have selected rather than putting out fires - somebody else's emergency - or being dragged into another hour of watching cat videos.