My Billion Dollar Morning Routine
The Amplified Impact Podcast
June 3rd, 2023
Today, I want to dive into a topic that I’ve covered before, but it’s one that keeps popping up, so I figured it’s worth revisiting.
It’s that one question I get asked so often…the ever-elusive morning routine.
I’m always curious about what successful people do in the mornings. Is it a variation of the famed “miracle morning” by Hal Elrod, or do they have a completely different approach? Do they even follow a morning routine?
We’ve all heard the saying that winning the morning means winning the day, and when I embarked on my own journey of personal growth and success, everyone emphasized the importance of starting with a structured morning routine.
I fell into the trap of believing that I needed a meticulously planned morning checklist to set myself up for success, mentally and physically.
But here’s the thing…it became a double-edged sword.
Some days, life just happens. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we miss our wake-up time or fail to check all the boxes on our morning routine checklist.
And when that happened to me, I felt like the entire day was ruined. I believed that if I didn’t win the morning, I’d lose the day. It became a source of frustration and stress.
I had to eventually pivot away from that fragile system I’d made for myself and learn how to tweak things around to make way for something better.
And so, if you find yourself in a morning routine that does more harm than good, then maybe it’s time to change things up.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“I fell into this trap of thinking that I needed to have this really highly structured morning. And I had to tick certain boxes, and that if I didn’t do that, that I wasn’t gonna be mentally primed and ready to work at my best.'”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Hey, what’s up all you beautiful people. Welcome back to the podcast. I want to talk about 1 of the most common questions that I get. I’ve done so many episodes on this, but I thought it would be a really good 1 to revisit because, um, it just, it’s a question that gets asked so frequently and strangely the answer changes with time so the question I get a lot is what’s your morning routine and I find That it’s I’m actually really interested in this question too when it comes to other people.
I’m always wondering like when talking to high achievers, like what do you do with your morning? Is it similar to the miracle morning from Hal Elrond? Is it something different? Do you even have a morning routine? Because we all hear Like it’s so important to win the morning and then you’ll win the day and and a lot of people as they start on this Peak performance journey and want to you know, take control of life turn turn it around like I know when I was like 28 I started on this journey the first thing that everybody was saying was like you have to start with your morning routine and there were some very very strong opinions about like what would make for a good morning routine. And I fell into this trap of thinking that I needed to have this really highly structured morning. And I had to tick certain boxes, and that if I didn’t do that, that I wasn’t gonna be mentally primed and ready to work at my best.
And what would often happen is, if I missed, say, my wake-up time, which at the time, I was like, oh, you gotta wake up at 5 a.m. Everybody says, oh, to be an entrepreneur, to be a high achiever, you gotta wake up at 5 a.m. Because that’s gonna be the best time to get work done before the world wakes up and if you’re not doing that then you’re falling Behind and all this stuff and I’m sure you’ve heard this before So what would happen then is I would have like this 2 or 3 hour morning routine that started at 5 a.m And if I ended up waking up late, if I ever woke up at 5.30, well then that’s kind of like screwed up everything.
And as a result, I would feel like shit the rest of the day. I’d feel like shit on the days where I couldn’t execute the morning routine perfectly and on the days where I did execute it perfectly, well, cool, I was mentally primed and ready to go, but it did take a couple of hours to get through it. And what I started to realize is I was building fragility into my own life, my routine, that I was becoming highly dependent on this very narrow band of structure that if it didn’t go just right, I had a hard time mentally and physically recovering for the rest of the day. I kind of almost thought like, you know, if the idea that you win the morning, you win the day is true, then the alternative of that is if you lose the morning, then you lose the day.
And that’s how I felt about it for a long time. And it was very, very difficult in those years to turn that mindset around and actually still have a productive day despite how the morning went. So I want to share with you guys my morning routine now because It’s evolved over time. It’s very different than it used to be. It’s way less structured. It’s a lot more freedom, a lot more flexibility. And as a result, it gives me the ability to have a higher percentage of successful days.
Now, I also recognize that what I’m gonna share with you guys and the structure that works for me now is very different than what would have worked for me a decade ago when I was starting on this journey and what I needed to do at the time. So, the morning routine that I had all those years ago was highly structured. And what I didn’t realize was the skill that I was really acquiring at that moment of going through the 5 a.m. Wake up calls and then doing my meditation, my journaling, and then all this other stuff, right? What I was actually doing was I was developing the skill of discipline. I was becoming the type of person who could show up and make myself wake up early despite the fact that I didn’t feel like it.
That could make myself journal despite the fact that I didn’t feel like I had anything to say. I was developing the skill of discipline and that was very very important. Where I’m at now in my life I know I have the discipline to wake up at 5 a.m. If I want if I may if I want to do that I know I can make myself do anything that I tell myself to do because I’ve developed a high level of discipline that’s not no any longer that the limiting factor. Now I need to figure out ways to get the highest and best work done in my life.
And so my morning routine is a little bit of a reflection of that. But that might be different for you. If you’re Just starting off on this journey and you’ve been a slacker and you’re like out of shape and sleeping too long and you’re eating like Crap, then yes, you need to discipline yourself and you probably need to do it in an uncomfortable way And you guys if you’ve been around this part these parts long enough, you know I am a Fan of creating daily discipline practices, which is something I still practice Which is you intentionally go and you do hard things and you do that so that you are Developing that muscle of discipline and grit and hard work which for me in my late 20s I didn’t have that and so the morning routine I didn’t realize that this is what I was doing but this is what was the result is that that morning routine was helping me develop discipline. I don’t need that now.
So my morning routine is different. So take this for what it’s worth, depending on where you are on the journey. And a lot of people hearing that might think, Oh, I have disciplines, whatever. I encourage you to sit with this and really reflect and execute extreme self-awareness. Really look and don’t just say, oh, I have discipline and therefore I don’t need to wake up early and do this. Like a lot of times we lie to ourselves. And as Richard Feynman, the famed physicist said, we must never lie. We must never fool ourselves. And also you are the easiest 1 to fool. And so with that in mind, here’s my morning routine as it currently is these days.
I do not have a wake up time. I do not wake up to an alarm. I haven’t woken up to an alarm in a long time, except for on the occasions when Jamie and I are traveling. And then I still do not set an alarm I’d ask Jamie to wake me up at a certain time. Now you might not have a lovely life partner like I have that will that wakes up before she wakes up early on her own so like she’s up before regardless You might not have that dynamic and so maybe you maybe you do need alarm But I found waking up to an alarm was stressing me out.
It was this feeling of like foreboding and dread always Linking in the back of my mind like if I would wake up at 2 a.m. And I knew the alarm was gonna go off at 5, I knew I only had 3 hours left and that would then stress me out so that I couldn’t get back to sleep and as a consequence I was getting subpar sleep. And for me these days, the most important thing to winning my day is a good night’s sleep. And so that’s the 1 non-negotiable in my life. I have to get to bed at the same time, 10 p.m. Every night, and I don’t care when I wake up.
My body is gonna wake me up when it’s ready to go. And I firmly believe that the damage that we do to ourselves by chronically under sleeping is going to be revealed in the next decade as 1 of the leading causes of early deaths in entrepreneurs and high achievers. It’s the fact that this rise and grind, 5 hours, 4 hours of sleep, consistently for long periods of time, it’s killing us. It’s shortening your life. And truthfully, if you want to do your best work, you need sleep. So I don’t sleep with an alarm. I wake up when I want to, but I have a bedtime. Every night I go to bed at 10 p.m., or at least I’m in bed, and I might be reading a book and maybe falling asleep at 10.30, but I’m in bed every night at 10 and then I wake up when my body wants to get up. And typically, some days, it really depends. Usually I’m up around 6 or 6.30. Some days, it’s around 7.30. Rarely do I sleep, I can’t even think of a time that I slept past 8 usually 6 to 6 30 and then some days 7 to 7 30 if I’m like particularly Fatigued or exhausted from say jiu-jitsu the night before And that’s okay.
Your body needs that time When I’m in a high energy state and I’m really motivated towards goals and I have my nutrition dialed in, I easily wake up at 5 a.m. Sometimes 4 30. So it’s just another reason to really get your nutrition dialed in as I found for myself that I then wake up like ready to go the Energizer Bunny. I have great days when I’m eating really well. I don’t sleep as long and so that’s the first part of my routine is I don’t sleep with an alarm. I wake up when I’m ready and this was very very difficult This is mentally you have to give yourself grace because I found the biggest struggle to allowing myself to sleep in Was the guilt I would inevitably feel later when I woke up at like and I’m moving in my morning and I’m only just starting to get to like doing work at 10 a.m.
Whereas others have been doing it since 5 and I’m like, I feel like a piece of shit, right? Like that is the hardest part about giving yourself the permission to sleep in and get the rest that you need. Is this feeling like you are not living up to the standard that others are, right? It’s this comparison game. And I would encourage you, you have to give yourself grace. You have to give yourself the space necessary to work within the confines of your unique biological system. I know for me, I just do my best work when I wake up feeling rested and good. And so if that means I wake up at 7.30 and I’m not really getting to work until 10 or 11, so be it.
And if that’s you, so be it. But again, I think this was the grain of salt based off what we were talking about earlier with discipline. All right now when I wake up I try not to reach for my phone because I Will immediately go to social media and start scrolling analytics. I love I don’t scroll other people’s content That’s not really the thing that’s ruining my morning. I’m immediately going there and saying like, okay, how did yesterday’s post perform and I’ll still do that while I’m in bed. So what I did was. I actually bought a separate cell phone for like $500. Um, it was like the ASUS Zen phone and I put all my social media apps on that phone and I keep that phone away from me in a different room I keep it in my office.
I don’t bring it to the bedroom and then in the bedroom I keep my actual phone which is you know set to grayscale. It’s only got text messaging It’s got my email on there so that if people need to get ahold of me, I can be reached. But when I reach for that phone, I don’t have the ability to just start mindlessly scrolling on social media. And this has actually been really helpful as I’m going out and about in my day-to-day life, having a separate social media phone makes it very hard because if you intentionally don’t bring it with you when you go out into the world, then when you’re standing in line, you’re in the elevator and you pull out your phone because you’re bored, you can’t go to social media. I mean, you could download the apps, but you’re not gonna do it in that moment because you stop and you realize the pattern has been interrupted.
You go, oh, I was gonna go scroll social media and I don’t really need to do that. Maybe I just need to sit here and be bored for a second while I move between floors. And that’s been really, really helpful for me. The next thing I do in my morning routine is I drink a little bit, I drink like a small cup of coffee while doing red light therapy. And this is a new thing, I’m experimenting with it. I’ve only been doing this for about a month, so I don’t really know what the long term results of this are, but I like experimenting. I like not becoming a slave to my routine and just saying this is how I’ve always done it, therefore this is how I always do it. I try to like sprinkle in new things every now and then. And the red light therapy is 1 of those things. I’m curious to see what the effects are. And that’s a cool, it’s a cool tool. But it also means I have to sit still more or less for 20 minutes like in front of this light as I circle around and get this exposure.
And so far it’s been great. I actually quite enjoy it. I feel energized afterwards and feel good. But it gives me, maybe if nothing else, what it gives me is 20 minutes of time where I’m just kind of sitting still and not doing anything. So I’ll use a little bit of that time to meditate. I’ll just close my eyes for 5 to 10 minutes and just kind of drift with my thoughts. I don’t go through like a structured meditation practice anymore, for me meditation is just sitting silently with my thoughts. And then I’ll spend maybe 10, 15 minutes reading a book. So while I’m stuck in front of that light, I’ll start reading a book. Right now I’m reading The House of Morgan.
It’s all about J.P. Morgan, rise over the last 150-ish years. And I try to use that time just to kind of fill up the curiosity tank and do a little bit of learning. From there, I go and I get more coffee, more coffee, I love coffee, and I go for a 20 minute walk. So if you’re watching the video on YouTube at Amplified Impact you can see like this beautiful landscape behind me, there’s a river, I go for a 20 minute walk along that river getting sunlight into my eyeballs like Mr. Huberman from the Huberman Lab recommends, and just kind of starting my morning so I don’t bring my social media phone with me. So I’m just kind of with my thoughts, with my coffee, just kind of easing into the day and kind of like starting to formulate where I want to go from here. And then I usually come back from that, go do a workout, which takes about an hour, and then when I get back from that, shower and start working.
And so, all told, this routine takes about 2 hours, 2 and a half hours, depending on how long that workout takes and if I’m slacking or not, but it’s a good way for me to feel like I am ticking some meaningful boxes in the morning of like filling up and learning, making some time to think, and then making some time to like prioritize my health with the workouts. And so that by the time I get to actually working on work stuff, I’m feeling pretty damn good. And this is a pretty flexible thing with the exception of the red light. I can do this anywhere. I can travel and it seems to work well for me. It’s very flexible and I think that’s the key to having a good morning routine.
So that’s my morning routine. I’d love to hear what you guys are doing that’s worked really well for you, that you found impactful in your own life. So find me on Instagram, that’s the Anthony Vecino, or Twitter, Anthony Vecino. Leave me a DM or shoot me a comment.
I’d love to hear, like, what are you guys finding beneficial or effective in your morning routines? What have you done in the past that you’ve really liked? What have you stopped doing? What did you find not useful? So let’s make this into a conversation. I hate just monologuing at you guys for 15, 20 minutes at a time. So reach out.
Let me know that you guys are out there That you’re getting some value out of this podcast and as always guys and gals I I’m so thankful to have you here. It means the world to me. Truly it does so like really really psyched Hopefully this brought you just a little bit of value and if not, we’ll try again here tomorrow But until then, stay hyper-focused, my friend.
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