Morning Routine
- Woke up between 5.45am and 6.15am
- Drank 1/2l water just after wake up, took a (partly) cold shower
- Worked out in the gym
- Did my knee-strengthening exercises
- Listened an audiobook — (I’m going through Will Durant’s History of Civilization, now in Volume IV. It’s fantastic)
- Journaled and wrote my affirmations 15 times (both in Danish)
- Did 10 mins of Wim Hof breathing exercises and 10 mins meditation
- Did 5 mins of Anki cards — Danish vocabulary for now
- Stayed out of the internet until 8.30am
At Work
- Started the workday by writing my “most important” tasks (in Danish)
- Worked 606030 in the morning — (I wrote about this in the book. It’s like razor-focused, no-distractions deep work for two hours with a short ten minute break in between.)
- Worked standing up for 80 mins
- Had a one-on-one informal coffee with a colleague (or, alternatively, with a friend after work).
- Finished the workday with a quick “daily debrief” of what went good, bad, etc.
Personal Projects
- Did the “6 Mins Networking” drill (more on it below) — e.g. reached out to an old contact to reconnect
- Did a 80 mins of deep work on a personal project after work
- Studied Danish for 20 mins (on top of Anki — usually preparing new Anki cards)
Evening Habits
- Did a second 10 mins meditation
- Did a second round of (evening) journaling (again in Danish)
- Played the guitar for at least 5 mins
- “Switched off” the internet from 8.30pm on
Meta Habits
- Didn’t check the news, limited to five minutes in social media
- NOMNOLATE — (A variation of Tim Ferriss’ NOBNOM)
- Completed all my pending Anki cards
- Took a “daily photo” — of something meaningful from that day (in that day, a selfie after a dip in the ocean)
(While I do change items on the list every month, the 25 items are by and large the same for now many years).
- I get 80-88% of all the Lights on average — I almost always complete my morning routine and work habits, plus guitar, the photo, etc.
- The big, tricky ones have always been the ones planned for the late afternoon/after work: the 80 mins of personal project (e.g. writing a newsletter like this), the networking drill and the second meditation.
- Then, even in the days I complete all the “hard ones”, something small happens — e.g. no coffee with colleague (me busy, whatever), I’m late by two mins to get somewhere, or I’m too tired to play the guitar.
- (By the way, I absolutely suck with the guitar — but at least I get the chords right XD)
+ I need to be home to work on this. (I don’t do Lights during my trips).
The 5 Min Networking — I joined the (free) course from Jordan Harbinger on networking here. It’s simple stuff, but effective. I’m using now the “reconnection” technique, which is to:
- Reach out to old friends, contacts you haven’t talked in a while and check how they’re doing — like, two sentences and no commitments.
- Do that by SMS (if you’ve their phone), or by mail/social media (secondary option).
- + a lot of simple, similar techniques, too.
The 25 Lights Keep Changing — I’ve kept ~80% of them for a while now, but always tweak and add/remove Lights depending on my priorities:
- Like, when I was writing my second book, there was as book Light.
- I’ll soon switch all Danish Lights to Japanese.
- (Thinking!) For May, I’m leaning to do outdoor swims in cold water every day — I’ve the “sea” (the Copenhagen canal) four mins walk from my place, and two crazy friends to join (they’re already doing it). Maybe!