2.1 - Morning Mastery Archives - Happy Healthy Wealthy Productive Sustainable

Schalk September 30, 2020

2.1 - Morning Mastery health, morning routine, personal development, productivity

The Morning Routine that Emerged After 5 Years of Experimentation

This could be the best investment I’ve ever made!

The morning routine may be an old favorite in the personal development community, but I still consider it underrated. As illustrated below, choices made in the first hour of the day tend to echo throughout the remaining 23 (and beyond). That’s why lives lived on the right and the left of that vertical line will turn out as different as night and day.

Since recognizing the disproportionate importance of the morning about five years ago, I’ve grown into quite the morning routine nerd. I tried many new ideas, failed with most, and tried again. And again. And again…

And then, toward the end of 2019, my morning routine just came together seamlessly. Finally! Since that beautiful day, the routine shared below has become so deeply ingrained that it’s hard to imagine life without it 🙂

Waking Up

Most days, I wake up naturally around 5:30. My first action is to start today’s morning playlist on my phone. Guided by these audio queues, I flow effortlessly from one element of my routine into the next.

First up: a 5-minute guided meditation from Headspace. This clears the fog. It centers me in the present. And most importantly, it makes getting up feel much more natural.

As I rise, my 2-minute gratitude track begins. This is basically just me playing some fingerstyle guitar and naming the three things I’m most grateful for in my life. Prosperity. Health. Freedom. Mindful of these privileges, I drink plenty of water, make my bed, and turn on the lights.

Then the third track kicks in to ramp up the energy. It’s hard to find a better candidate for this particular job than Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk:

The song is perfectly structured so I can do all the typical morning stuff like washing my face, swirling some mouthwash, and putting on deodorant in the verse, and get back to the dancefloor (a.k.a. the living room floor) for each of the three ultra-funky choruses.

Yes, this is silly. And, for the first couple of days, I sure felt silly. But trust me, your day is heading in the right direction when it starts out feeling like a well-choreographed music video 🙂

Mental Conditioning

The next three songs on my morning playlist are quite dramatic. The first of these is the perfect match for my Constitution — a set of statements describing how the ideal version of me will act. It works. After two years of daily Constitution recitals, I’ve certainly become a much better me.

The next (equally dramatic) song triggers me to record my previous day’s performance on my Graph of Life. This practice offers an instant graphical representation of my growth trajectory and has delivered several great insights into what really makes me tick.

Last in the dramatic song trilogy is my trigger to recap and prioritize my plan for the day. My habit of recording essential todos as they come up throughout the day makes this task brief and pain-free. Google Tasks is the perfect tool for this job.

Double-Time Yoga

Next up, my playlist automatically starts a sped-up version of a Rodney Yee morning yoga routine (a different one for each day of the week). I struggled for years to integrate yoga into my morning. And then, one fine day, I made an amazing discovery: the 2x playback speed button.

Since then, it’s been a breeze. The yoga routines now move at a very pleasant pace, take only half the time, and no longer put me back to sleep.

Try doubling the playback speed in the video above. At first, double-time Rodney sounds a little odd, but you’ll get used to him in no time 🙂

Reading

Next, I treat myself to 10 minutes of reading on some exciting topic, triggered by two quiet piano songs on my playlist. Since I established this habit at the start of 2019, I’ve read 15 valuable books, gaining several profound insights that drove me to make some major life changes.

There are plenty of habits I wish I started much earlier in life. This one tops the list.

Accountability Buddy

During the first two years of my morning routine experiments, I had real problems maintaining a consistent wake-up time. Like a complete amateur, I would sleep in and disrupt my pattern for days to come.

Then, one fine day, I booked a recurring 15-minute online chat with my parents, scheduled for 6:30. That was three years ago, and we’re yet to miss a single morning chat! That’s the power of an accountability buddy. The simple knowledge that someone I care about is waiting forced me to master my sleep-wake rhythm. And, as a bonus, this practice saved my relationship with my parents across an 11000 km divide.

Breakfast and Dumbells

The final element in my morning routine is a superfood breakfast composed mainly of nuts, seeds, and berries. This breakfast can be made in several variations, each of which offers a zero-compromise combo of health, taste, convenience, and price.

While enjoying a mouthful of this morning perfection, I rip through two minutes of vigorous weight training on my trusty gym chair. This simple practice keeps my upper body in great shape. No gym membership. Almost no time investment. Heck, it almost feels like cheating!

Is There Really Time for All This?

Let’s break down the time commitment involved:

Waking up: 10 minutes (the average person takes 24 minutes to get up).
Mental conditioning: 7 minutes.
Yoga and reading: 20 minutes.
Accountability buddy: 15 minutes.
Breakfast and weights: 15 minutes.

In total, this routine takes a little over an hour, after which I’m charged and ready for the workday. Interestingly, this may be considerably less time than the average person spends between waking up and going to work.

So, in summary, this morning routine actually saves time while giving me a big daily boost in health, productivity, relationships, creativity, and energy.

If you don’t have one already, please take two hours to build yourself a solid morning routine. It could be the best time investment you ever make!

All images in this article were created by Janet Cloete.

Schalk September 11, 2020

2.1 - Morning Mastery health, morning routine, personal development, productivity

The Complete Guide to Morning Mastery [Infographic Included]

Here’s an interesting question for you: What is the best possible investment we can make with two hours of the finite amount of time at our disposal?

My answer? Creating a morning routine that is so beautifully designed and choreographed that it will last a lifetime.

Yes, in two focussed hours, you can build a routine that will boost your health, productivity, creativity, relationships, and energy for the rest of your days. As far as investments go, this is as good as it gets.

Today, we’ll dive deeper into this brilliant investment, starting with the following infographic:

Why Bother Building a Morning Routine?

As illustrated below, the choices you make in the morning echo throughout your day. In addition, morning choices tend to be self-sustaining. Good choices make it easier to maintain a consistent sleep pattern that, in turn, makes it easier to make good choices the next morning. In contrast, bad choices lead to erratic sleep schedules and more bad morning choices.

Imagine the difference between a lifetime spent repeating the pattern on the left and a lifetime spent repeating the pattern on the right. Which one do you want in your own life and the lives of those you care about?

The left-hand option? Awesome 🙂 Let’s build it!

3 Steps to a Lifelong Morning Routine

Humans are not robots. We cannot simply decide to establish a good routine, download one from the internet, and live happily ever after.

Instead, we must ensure that executing our morning routine day after day remains a deeply rewarding experience. This requires three steps:

Commit. You must desire the rewards promised by a lifelong morning routine enough to invest the effort needed to complete steps 2 & 3.
Take the time needed to design a routine that is uniquely you. It should contain some of your favorite things and make it easy for you to get emotionally invested.
Choreograph your routine to a morning playlist. This extra step creates an effortless flow between the different elements of your routine.

The first step is where it all begins. The second will make sure your routine doesn’t disintegrate with the first challenge that crosses your path. And the third is the secret ingredient that makes it last a lifetime.

The Foundation: Rediscover Your Rhythm

The first step in a good morning is to wake up refreshed at an hour that allows you to comfortably complete your routine. Such a consistent sleep-wake rhythm is embedded in our genes, but, unfortunately, it often gets disrupted by all the artificial stimuli in our modern environment.

You must rediscover this natural rhythm to build a solid foundation beneath your morning routine. This can be done in three steps:

Make sure your latest allowable wake-up time is set in stone. It doesn’t need to be super-early, it only needs to be fixed (weekends included).
Build a quickfire wake-up ritual that stimulates all five senses. Repetition of such a ritual at a similar time each morning is just what your Circadian rhythm needs.
At night, allow yourself some time to wind down in a space with minimal sensory stimulation. Learn to time this wind-down just right to avoid going to bed when you know you won’t be able to sleep.

Our modern world presents many temptations that disrupt our natural Circadian rhythm. Follow these three steps to rediscover how it feels to be in sync with life, and these temptations will quickly lose their appeal.

The Morning Movement Fun Factor

Exercise is one of the most commonly recommended components of a good morning routine, with good reason. Not only is it good for your health; it’s also great for quickly getting you up to speed and energized for the day.

But none of this will matter if exercise devolves into a huge battle of will every morning. No, you must make sure that your morning movement is fun and convenient. Without these elements, your noble morning exercise ambitions won’t last a month, let alone a lifetime.

Finding such activities is easier than you might think, especially if you smartly integrate them into your choreographed morning playlist. I found five, including gems like bad dancing and double-time yoga. If you think about it, I’m sure you can find some of your own.

The Value of a Good Plan

It gets a lot easier to have a great day if you have a clear sense of where you’re going. That’s why a quick revision of your most important tasks deserves a slot in your morning routine.

But we must be wary here. Planning can easily turn into a tedious chore and, if it does, it threatens the permanence of your routine. That’s why I recommend doing your planning organically throughout the day and in the evening, only to add the final touches each morning.

This natural way of planning requires a system that allows you to easily note down tasks whenever they pop into your head and organize them with minimal effort. For me, this system is Google Tasks.

Accept the World’s Wisdom

Read. The wisdom of the world is at the disposal of anyone who does. And there’s no better time to fit some valuable non-fiction reading into your schedule than the morning.

A quick 10-minute session every morning will bestow upon you the wisdom of about ten great thinkers each year. For me, this turned out to be a lifechanging habit — one I wish I’d started many years ago.

The key to sustaining this precious habit is to read in areas that genuinely interest you. It pays to do your research beforehand to make sure you buy books that will grab your attention. Also, there’s no shame in not finishing a book that fails to live up to expectations.

Discover the Perfect Breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. A perfect morning meal will deliver you energized and craving-free to your lunch break, helping you stay healthy and get more done.

This is the morning routine element I’ve spent the most time perfecting. And after years of trial and error, I think I’ve finally found the best solution.

My ideal breakfast contains 16 healthy ingredients (mainly nuts, seeds, and berries) that can be combined into a delicious meal in 2 minutes flat.

This blend is a pure joy to eat and boasts the perfect breakfast nutritional profile. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Taking Things to the Next Level

The points outlined above deserve a place in any good morning routine. But, like most things in life, there’s another level available to enthusiasts.

First, try to incorporate a practice to gradually condition your mind towards a calm and positive space. Journalling and meditation are common candidates. My preference is an advanced form of affirmation training I like to call my Personal Constitution.

Second, I highly recommend taking one or two minutes out of your morning to score how you performed yesterday. This habit is great for keeping you securely on your growth path and helping you to really get to know yourself. I use a spreadsheet called a Graph of Life for this purpose.

Third, consider getting yourself an accountability buddy to maximize your consistency, while simultaneously improving an important relationship. An accountability buddy is someone who will be waiting for your call early in the morning and be disappointed if you don’t show up. If there is someone in your life you know you should be spending more time with but never seem to get to, this is your chance.

Start Simple, Keep Innovating

Try to be as pragmatic as possible when you embark on this journey. Avoid designing an overly complex and time-consuming routine. Start simple, including only the elements you think you’ll enjoy the most.

After your first dabble into morning routine choreography, you may well find it to be surprisingly interesting and engaging. Then, you can ride that natural motivation to experiment with new elements.

If you just go with the flow and keep innovating, it’s only a matter of time before you attain the coveted rank of MORNING MASTER 🙂

Unless otherwise stated, all images were created by Janet Cloete.

Schalk September 8, 2020

2.1 - Morning Mastery personal development, personal growth

How to Graph Your Way to Success

Microsoft Excel is used by almost a billion people, myself included. On average, I spend about one hour per day with this evergreen software, doing typical spreadsheet stuff. But the first minute of my daily Excel experience is dedicated to something else entirely: personal growth.

There may be an app for almost everything, but personal growth is just too complex and specific to the individual to capture in a simple mobile app.

That’s where Excel really shines. With a little bit of upfront tinkering, you can set up a customized spreadsheet that helps you get the most out of life in as little as one minute per day.

I like to call such a spreadsheet a “Graph of Life.” And I’ve been keeping mine for almost a decade.

The Benefits of Keeping a Graph of Life

Daily tracking of your personal growth in Excel brings five great benefits:

1. Awareness and consistency

The awareness created by regular measurement often leads to significant improvement all by itself. A Graph of Life measures your ability to consistently do the right things in life. You can probably imagine that improving this skill will bring you much joy in the years ahead.

2. Early warning system

A run of consecutive bad days can easily trap you in a destructive downward spiral. Your Graph of Life will help you spot such spirals early and motivate you to take corrective action before they gain serious momentum.

3. Motivation to keep growing

A prolonged streak of good days looks very pretty on your Graph of Life. The more it grows, the more motivated you’ll become to sustain it.

4. Insights into what makes you tick

The data from a year of daily growth tracking can tell you a lot about yourself. One of my first Medium articles shared an analysis of seven years’ worth of data that helped me become a much better version of myself.

5. See the real impact of major life changes

If you’ve read this far, it’s safe to say that you are interested in improving your life. Unfortunately, most of your attempts to build a better life will have little or no real impact. But sooner or later, you’ll find one that really works. Your Graph of Life can help you identify these gems much more clearly.

My 2019 Graph of Life showing the lasting positive effect from my decision to reduce my degree of employment to 60% and start blogging more seriously.

Getting Started

Start by downloading a basic template for your Graph of Life from this post. The linked post also has a 3-minute video tutorial explaining how to get started. For those without access to Excel, there is also a template and instructional video for Google Sheets (free software).

Here are the necessary steps:

Define some important items you’d like to track. These might include things like Eating Habits, Exercise, Social Interactions, and Work.
Define a range over which you’d like to score each item every day.
Create a graph that automatically trends upwards if you have an above-average day and downwards if you have a below-average day. This feature is already implemented in the template in the aforementioned post.

Using Your Graph of Life

Once you have everything set up, it’s time to build the habit of logging your daily performance. And the best way to do this is to incorporate your Graph of Life into a beautifully choreographed morning routine.

It doesn’t take much to establish this habit. Even if you’ve never used a spreadsheet before, the simplicity and utility offered by the Graph of Life will keep you going. Soon enough, taking a minute each morning to score your yesterday will become as natural as brushing your teeth.

Be sure to note down any big events in your life in the “Comments” column of your Graph of Life. At the end of each year, you can invest some time to indicate these events on your graph (as shown above), so you get a clear picture of which events made a lasting difference.

I also recommend starting a new graph every year. A new year presents an opportunity to add new items or to stop tracking items that proved to have little or no influence after your annual data analysis (described below).

Analyzing your Data

A year of daily growth tracking can teach you a lot about yourself. Investing an hour or two at the end of the year to extract these insights can add great value to your life.

The simplest and most valuable way of doing this in Excel is an analysis of the correlations between the different elements you tracked.

To get started, make sure you have access to Excel’s analysis tools. Once you have activated this feature, you can click on the “Data Analysis” button on the far right of the “Data” ribbon and select the “Correlation” tool.

Here is a snapshot of the first month of my 2019 data and the Correlation tool dialogue box. I recommend copying your data into a new sheet so that the top row contains your data labels. Then you can simply select all the data in the “Input Range” and tick the “Labels in First Row” button.

Once this is done, click OK to view your correlations in a new sheet. Try playing around with some of the “Conditional Formatting” options you can find in the “Home” tab to add a splash of color to your correlation matrix.

A formatted correlation matrix created from my 2019 data.

Positive numbers (green cells) indicate a positive correlation. For example, Cell J11 in the matrix above shows that my Energy is generally high when my Motivation is high. Negative numbers (red cells) indicate a negative correlation. For example, cell D5 shows that the amount of Work (my research job) I do reduces on days I do lots of Extra Work (mostly blogging). Numbers close to zero (yellow cells) show that no clear correlation exists.

The simplest way to show what makes you tick is to plot a column chart of each tracked element’s correlation with your total score for the day (row 12 in the correlation matrix above). In my case, it looks like this:

It only needs one glance at this graph to establish that I should do all I can to maintain healthy eating habits, a high level of control over my daily schedule, and high energy and motivation levels. These actionable insights have greatly improved my life in recent years.

Give it a try!

Go on, take a few minutes to set up your Graph of Life, and give it a chance to become part of your life. If it doesn’t work for you, no worries.

But I’m confident that you’ll develop the intrinsic motivation needed to keep going after only a week or two. If you do, you’d have gained a lifelong ally to keep you on the right track and bless you with invaluable self-knowledge.

Schalk August 18, 2020

2.1 - Morning Mastery exercise, fitness, health, yoga

An Inflexible Guy’s Favorite Yoga Poses

Complete with photographs and detailed instructions

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

My inability to touch my ankles (let alone my toes) has always been a source of mild frustration. So, about eight years ago, I armed myself with some Rodney Yee yoga DVDs and embarked on a noble flexibility quest.

But my enthusiasm didn’t last very long. All that stretching felt like a chore and, while my flexibility did improve, the results were nowhere near as dramatic as I hoped.

In hindsight, doing yoga for the sake of becoming bendier was never a good idea. It was only when I properly integrated yoga into my life via a handcrafted morning routine that it became a daily staple.

Today, after two years of consistent yoga practice every morning and most evenings, I finally feel qualified to share some of my favorite yoga poses with others who are not blessed with the flexibility of a ragdoll.

Standing Forward Bend

Let’s start with the arch-nemesis of all of us “inflexibles” — that classic touch-your-toes pose.

If you have some annoyingly short hamstrings, the key to this pose is letting go of that innate need to reach your toes with straight legs. Instead, commit to just enough of a knee-bend to comfortably touch the floor.

While bending forward, focus on lengthening your lower back as much as possible. Ideally, your back would be straight, but that’s just not realistic for most of us. A mild bend in your back is fine, as long as it feels comfortable.

Once you have found the minimum knee bend required to comfortably touch the floor, slowly straighten the legs. Cross your arms and draw them into their sockets, giving yourself a little more play in your hamstrings.

Keep your focus on your lower back and hamstrings. The bend in your lower back should never feel uncomfortable, and you should feel the stretch along the entire length of your hamstrings. If you lose either of these feelings, add a little more bend to your knees.

When done correctly, this post is deeply relaxing. So, next time you feel a bit anxious or stressed, try it out! Start by standing straight with your arms above your head and then do a swan-dive over your (slightly bent) legs, while keeping as much length in your lower back as possible. Then just relax and observe what happens to your emotional state 🙂

Other Standing Poses

While we’re standing up, let’s go through three other deeply satisfying standing poses that require minimal flexibility and create a lovely flow.

Start with your feet wide apart and turn your front foot out by 90 degrees. The distance between your feet should be just right so that you can bend your front leg to almost 90 degrees by the time your knee arrives directly over your heel, creating the classic Warrior 2 pose:

While taking a deep breath, elongate your lower back, put a very slight backbend in your upper back, and open your chest. Then, on the out-breath, make sure the angle in your front leg is close enough to 90 degrees so that you feel a nice burn in your quadriceps.

When the burn starts getting uncomfortable, it’s time to transition into Standing Side Angle pose. To do this, bend your front arm to 90 degrees and rest your elbow on your front knee. Then bring your top arm parallel to your torso and look up to the ceiling.

This transition takes a lot of weight off your upper leg, creating a lovely relaxed sensation after the burn from Warrior 2. Elongate your lower back and stretch your torso towards your upper arm.

Next, we can transition into Triangle pose. Slowly straighten your front leg, keeping the contact with your bottom arm to support the weight of your torso. Your bottom hand should end up in a position on your shin that results in a good leg stretch without creating discomfort.

The key here is to tilt your hips further towards your back leg so that you feel a nice and even stretch throughout the entire length of your front leg. Again, elongate your lower back and keep your torso reasonably straight.

After a few seconds in this position, bring your torso to an upright position with your arms horizontal to the sides, turn your feet in the opposite direction, and repeat this 3-pose series to the other side.

This quick series of standing poses is great for when you have been sitting a little bit too long, and your legs are feeling stiff. It only needs 30 seconds to restore blood flow and full mobility to your legs.

Hip Openers

My favorite type of hip stretch is the Cross-Legged Forward Bend. In fact, this is my second-favorite yoga pose of all!

Start by sitting in a simple cross-legged position. Then press your fists into the floor so that your behind lifts slightly off the mat, allowing for a natural elongation of your lower back. Take a deep breath and look slightly upwards with a relaxed expression on your face.

While maintaining the length in your lower back, breathe out and slowly fold forward over your crossed legs. Rest your forearms on the floor in front of you and let your head relax downwards.

Don’t push. Only go to the point where you feel a satisfying opening in your hips and no strain in your lower back. Then just enjoy the deep relaxation.

After a while, use your arms to help you sit up again, cross your legs the other way, and repeat the process.

The Cross-Legged Forward Bend is an excellent pose for relaxation and winding down after a hectic day. As an inflexible person, you should also be able to bend forward further in this pose than most others, which is quite rewarding in itself.

Interestingly, you can also get a reasonable assessment of your general health by evaluating how much help you need from your arms to transition from standing to a cross-legged position and back to standing.

Groin Stretch

There’s no better way to get a good groin stretch than the classic Cobbler’s pose. Let’s start with the Lying Cobbler, using the floor for natural spine alignment.

While keeping your back straight, pull your feet gently towards your chest up to the point where you feel a satisfying stretch in your groin. Draw your arms into their sockets and breathe in deeply.

Then make the transition to the conventional Cobbler’s pose. Try rolling up to a sitting position, while keeping hold of your feet. This move is good fun, and you should be able to do it quite elegantly after a bit of practice 🙂

Once in a seated position, start by sitting up straight with a similar alignment as in the lying position above. Then breathe out while slowly bending forward. Don’t go too far. It’s better to establish the groin stretch by letting your knees fall open instead of bending forward too much.

Cobbler’s pose is great for winding down in the evening, especially the lying down variant. It also offers a great stretch before or after any vigorous exercise.

Core Workout

Want to get a solid six-pack without resorting to back-breaking sit-ups? Try making Boat pose a permanent feature of your daily morning routine.

Boat pose is pretty much a full-body workout, but the abdominal region works the hardest. Start with the Half-Boat variety where your torso and legs are lifted just a comfortable distance from the ground. Make sure you balance yourself on your sacrum and not your lower back while actively using your arms to maintain that balance.

After spending a while in this position, lift your legs and torso as far as they can comfortably go. This lift brings you into Full Boat pose, which offers a real abdominal workout. Maintain this position until you feel a good burn in your core.

I spend about one minute in Boat pose every morning. In each of my morning yoga routines, I drop my least favorite pose and replace it with the Boat, alternating between the Half and Full varieties at 10-second intervals. This minute is all I need to maintain a solid set of abs.

Back Stretches

If you have tight hamstrings, you’ve likely developed the bad habit of bending more in your lower back than your hips. In this case, it becomes even more crucial to look after your back. This little series can help.

We start with Cobra pose. Begin by lying flat on your stomach and placing your hands next to your chest so that your elbows approach a 90-degree angle. When you lift your torso into Cobra pose, your arms should be perpendicular to the floor.

This hand positioning is crucial. If your hands are too far forward, you can easily bend your back too much, doing more harm than good. Be very mindful of your lower back, and make sure you never bend to the point of discomfort.

If your hips lift a little bit off the floor, that’s fine. In fact, this creates a lovely natural elongation of your lower back. Take a big breath, lift your chest, lower your shoulders, and look mystically upwards.

After spending a few seconds in Cobra pose, we can transition into Child’s pose. Keep your hands and knees fixed in place, and slowly swing your body backward to end up in this position:

Elongate your back into the stretch of your arms, gently rest your head on the ground, and simply enjoy this deeply relaxing position. After a good Cobra, Child’s pose feels fantastic 🙂

You might find yourself spending quite a while in Child’s pose. But when you feel it’s time to move on, end off with a Thunderbolt pose (which is nowhere near as dramatic as it sounds). Simply push yourself up with your hands to sit on your heels.

The great thing about this pose is how it naturally creates the perfect back posture. Lift your chest with a big inhalation, and feel your spine align.

This series is perfect for when you’ve been sitting for a long time and feel a little discomfort in your back. I prefer to start in Thunderbolt, transition through Child to Cobra, and then reverse the sequence to return to Thunderbolt (as illustrated above).

The Child-to-Cobra transition is a fun one. Keep your head and chest close to the floor as you sweep your body forward, and only start lifting your chest when it passes between your hands. It’s a delightful motion 🙂

As an extra little fitness test, try transitioning from standing to Thunderbolt and back to standing without using your arms. I reckon this motion should be a similarly good predictor of general health as the sitting-rising-test mentioned earlier.

Twist

Last but not least, we get to my favorite yoga pose of all: Half Fish pose. Strange name aside, this delightful pose will improve your day whenever you need it.

Start building your Half Fish pose from a simple cross-legged position. Take hold of your bottom foot and pull it a little backward to the opposite sitting bone. Then lift your top foot over your bottom knee.

Twist your upper body slightly towards your bottom foot, while elongating your torso with the help of a big inhalation. Then complete the twist on your exhalation without compromising the length in your back. Only twist as far as you feel comfortable.

The position of your front elbow is a good twist adjustor. For a mild twist, simply wrap your arm around your knee so that your elbow is slightly on the inside of the knee. For the intermediate version shown above, place your elbow on the outside of your knee. Then there’s also the advanced version where you straighten your top arm to grab your front toe while keeping your elbow on the outside of your knee. That one’s a bit much for me, I must admit.

Being my favorite yoga pose, I employ the Half Fish pose whenever I get an irrational craving. Often a good Half Fish can convince my mind to drop its unreasonable demands for a Whole Chocolate 🙂

So, there you have it. These poses add great value to my life day after day. I hope they can do the same for you!

All photos were taken and processed by Janet Cloete.

Schalk August 14, 2020

2.1 - Morning Mastery exercise, fitness, health, morning routine

5 Fun Ways to Move Your Body in the Morning

Maximum value, minimum willpower

Modern Homo sapiens stagnate too much. That much we know. What we’re less sure about is how to get ourselves to move more, consistently. Where do we find time for regular exercise in our hectic lives?

The answer to that question is simple: the morning. After all,

The early morning is the time of day when we have the most freedom to take care of ourselves.
Morning movement has the benefit of waking us up faster and boosting energy, so it can help us get more out of each day.

That’s nice and all, but this logic is not going to get us moving all by itself. To guarantee daily bodily motion, we must make it fun and fully automatic.

Which brings us to today’s article. Here are the five types of movement that are now so deeply ingrained in my morning routine that I have little doubt they will last a (substantially longer) lifetime.

Movement 1: Dancing (Badly)

I bet you don’t exactly feel like tearing up the dancefloor (or living room floor) shortly after waking up. Neither do I. But it takes only a few bars of my morning dance song (below) to switch me on.

The key is to remove the choice of whether to dance or not to dance. Your morning dance song must start playing automatically at just the right moment to push you over that threshold. After that, you never look back!

That’s why a choreographed morning routine is so vital. Such a handcrafted routine takes time to set up, but it will boost your health, productivity, energy, relationships, and inspiration for the rest of your life. You’ll struggle to find an investment with a better rate of return.

My morning dance song is third on my playlist and ensures I’m up and running (and in a great mood) 10 minutes after opening my eyes. It’s also ideally structured so that I can do typical morning stuff like washing my face, swirling some mouthwash, and weighing myself in the verse, and be back on the dancefloor just in time for each of the three funky choruses.

Go on, dance like nobody’s watching! And if you live with family, try to get them to participate. You’ll all benefit from such a natural boost in morning mood and energy 🙂

Movement 2: Double-Time Yoga

Yoga is a great way to loosen up in the morning. The only problem is that most routines are so slow that they either put you back to sleep or bore you to the point where you drop this great habit. That was a genuine problem for me until I made a miraculous discovery: the 2x speedup button.

For example, I have seven different morning yoga routines (one for each day of the week), most of which come from Rodney Yee’s AM Yoga DVD. At normal speed, these routines take a little over 20 minutes and move way too slowly for my liking. But if I double the playback speed, I need only 10 minutes and really enjoy the pace of the routine.

Try it on the example given below! You’ll find the playback speed under the little gear icon on the bottom right.

It took a day or two to get used to rapidly-speaking-Rodney, but today, more than two years of daily yoga later, that’s just the way he talks.

Like dancing, the key to consistency is to remove the element of choice. Your yoga instructions should automatically start playing at precisely the right time, triggering you to start without a second thought.

Movement 3: Free Weights

Resistance training is great for health and equally great for self-image. Unfortunately, going to the gym is just so tedious, time-consuming, and expensive (and impossible with social distancing). But what else can we do?

That’s an easy one: We can buy a gym chair and a pair of compact weights and put them where we’ll see them every day. Below is a picture of the little home gym that has kept my upper body in a decent “Dorito” shape for the past eight years.

I do a combined two minutes of bicep curls, shoulder presses, and chest presses every morning. It’s not exactly fun, but it’s so short that it doesn’t matter. Besides, I do these exercises while chewing on a big mouthful of my delicious breakfast, which is a whole lot of fun!

After many years of this practice, I’m confident that two minutes of vigorous lifting daily is all that’s needed to keep me at the ideal muscle tone — not too little, not too much, but just right. No gym payment, no sweat, virtually no time investment. Heck, it almost feels like cheating 🙂

Movement 4: Constitution

My constitution is a brief description of how the ideal version of me would act, which I recite to the beat of some inspirational music each morning. It’s quite an active process, involving plenty of pacing around the living room, power poses, and sweeping gestures.

It may look downright ridiculous from the outside, but any ego-related concerns quickly fade next to the tremendous value of conditioning my mind toward its ideal state. The movement aspect is just a nice bonus.

Movement 5: Accountability Buddy

About 30 minutes of my typical morning is spent in standing Skype conversation with family, courtesy of my raise-and-lower desk. This habit played a significant role in transforming me into a consistently early riser.

Standing for these morning chats is just a bonus, given that any mechanism to cut sitting time on a daily basis adds great long-term value.

Time to get moving!

You might be surprised at how little movement we need to stay healthy. If you’re smart about it, you can incorporate the majority of that movement into your morning routine at virtually no cost while reaping tremendous benefits in terms of wakefulness, energy, and mood.

Again, I must stress the importance of choreographing this movement into your morning playlist so that you make it the default choice. Humans are lazy apes (especially just after waking up), and expecting ourselves to make the conscious choice to exercise every morning is bordering on self-delusion. Instead, we should place ourselves in a position where we must invest mental effort not to exercise. Then, good things happen 🙂

The images in this article were custom-made by Janet Cloete.

Schalk August 5, 2020

2.1 - Morning Mastery affirmation, constitution, personal development, self talk

Forget Affirmations — It’s Time to Draft Your Personal Constitution

Affirmations have been around for a long time. The idea is simple: If you tell yourself positive things over and over, you’ll eventually believe it. And once you believe it, you’ll soon achieve it.

It’s a nice thought, but I could never get it to work. My mind just refused to take the over-the-top positivity in most recommended affirmations seriously (e.g., 1, 2, 3). Hence, my attempts rarely lasted more than a week.

But the promise of a mind conditioned to automatically do all the right things drove me to keep trying. And so, after much trial and error, I eventually came up with the idea of my personal constitution.

This constitution has now served me well for about three years. And today, I want to share it with you.

What is a Personal Constitution?

In a nutshell, a personal constitution is a concise description of how the best version of you will act.

Sure, we all have some idea about the person we’d like to be. But outlining this in a concrete and formalized manner you can recite daily gives a massive boost to your chances of actually becoming that person.

In other words, a personal constitution helps you gradually become the best version of yourself. You’ll start doing more of the right things, not because you’re forcing yourself, but simply because of who you are.

A constitution is best defined in short, easily memorizable sections, dealing with specific areas of your life. Let’s run through four of them now.

1. Health

We all know what we should do to live a long and healthy life, but too few of us manage to do those things with enough consistency. A constitution can eliminate most of this unnecessary self-destruction.

Here are some helpful guidelines for drafting a good health constitution:

State why you want to be healthy.
Be specific about the healthy choices you’ll make regarding nutrition, exercise, mental health, and sleep.

As an example, my health constitution looks like this:

I commit to complete mental and physical health, so I can see the 22nd century. Today, my food intake will be moderate and nutritious, my physical activity regular and enjoyable, my mental demeanor calm and positive, and my sleep rightfully prioritized.

Your constitution should be unique to you. For example, my curiosity about the future of our planet motivates me to extend my life as long as possible. It’s a strange motivation, but it gives me all the drive I need to extend my 11-year perfect health streak indefinitely. Get yourself such a drive.

2. Creativity

Humans are inherently creative creatures, and allowing this innate creativity to flourish is essential for a happy and fulfilling life.

Sadly, today’s world is so full of distractions that few people get to experience the inspired focus needed to set their creative powers free. A few well-chosen phrases in your constitution can help you cast off these shackles.

Here are some pointers:

Openly declare the ultimate creative contribution you’d like to make to society.
State how you will deploy your creative powers today to move a tiny bit closer to this goal.

Here’s my creativity constitution as an example:

I dedicate my vast creative powers to the development of a sustainable and equitable global society. In this noble quest, I will steadily advance our CCS concepts, develop my system-scale simulation toolset, and promote life efficiency as a sustainability solution

If your environment severely constrains your creativity today, also state what you will do about it. Without an environment that facilitates focus and freedom, your creative powers will remain forever dormant.

Aside from that, be sure to make it as personal as possible. Your creativity constitution must talk about things that naturally stir your passion.

3. People

Relationships are complicated. They can bring great happiness, inspiration, and progress. But they can also veer off on all manner of painful and frustrating tangents.

The quality of any relationship is the accumulation of thousands of little moments. And a great relationship naturally emerges when the vast majority of those moments make both parties feel better.

But remember: The only person in the relationship you can hold accountable for safeguarding those moments is yourself. Once you accept this fact, a good constitution can help you put it into practice.

Here are some guidelines:

Prioritize quality and emphasize personal responsibility.
Directly state the importance of doing the small things right, preferably using the “bucket” philosophy.

The last point comes from a great little book by Tom Rath (highly recommended). It works on the idea that we all have an emotional bucket that is filled by positive interactions or emptied by negative interactions.

A full bucket makes anyone feel awesome. And developing yourself to the point where you can regularly make other people feel awesome is a surefire recipe for success.

Hence, my bucket-filling constitution looks like this:

I take full responsibility for the quality of my relationships. This means that every interaction must fill the other person’s bucket, even if it’s just one little drop.

Every little interaction counts. Your constitution will help you remember this next time you get the urge to empty some buckets.

4. Burdens

Most of us have some cross to bear. But your burden does not have to dictate your destiny (here are some inspirational examples).

When contemplating life’s burdens, it’s essential to realize that it’s not necessarily the burden itself that makes life difficult. It’s more the way we choose to respond.

Do we forever curse life’s injustice and spend our days in frustration and fear? Or do we use our burdens as resistance training to become stronger?

As an example, my burden is a stuttering problem that diluted much of my life. But, after the eye-opening McGuire Program and many personal development books, my stutter helped shape me into a highly productive scientist. Ironically, it even boosted my communication skills by helping me concentrate more meaning into my words and become a great listener.

Here are some helpful guidelines for drafting a constitution to govern your burdens:

Use your burden as a trigger for a positive action or thought process.
Be specific about how you will handle your burden today.

As an example, my version looks like this:

I maintain full focus on complete communication in all speaking situations. If I stutter today, it will serve as a trigger to refocus on my concept of holistic eloquence.

If you have any cross to bear, I’d strongly recommend giving this a try. If not, good for you!

Putting it into practice

The simple act of drafting your constitution is not going to help much all by itself. Like affirmations, it requires regular repetition to really sink in.

My constitution has a fixed slot in my carefully choreographed morning routine. It flows beautifully with the inspirational instrumental music on my morning playlist that triggers “constitution-time.”

When the music starts, I recite my constitution with maximum life in my voice and positivity in my body language. I even have some pictures on my walls that signify each element of my constitution and some simple choreographed gestures that flow with the music.

You don’t need to go that far, but it’s vital that your constitution ritual can keep you engaged day after day. If you just ramble it off like a chore, it’s never going to last long enough to make a difference.

So, set aside an hour to draft your constitution and decide how you’ll implement it. Then start experimenting. Your constitution will likely evolve over time (mine is currently at version 9), and so will the elements that help you engage emotionally (audio, visual, and body language).

Good luck, and enjoy your journey to the best you!

Schalk July 31, 2020

2.1 - Morning Mastery books, habits, morning routine, personal development, reading

10 Lifechanging Insights from Reading 10 Minutes per Day

If you cultivate just one habit, let it be this one.

My 2019 New Year’s resolution was to incorporate 10 minutes of reading into my morning routine. Looking back, it’s been one of the easiest and most valuable habits I’ve ever established 🙂

One and a half years and 14 great books later, the time has come to share the 10 most valuable insights I gained from this experience.

Willpower Doesn’t Work — Benjamin Hardy

Insight: Willpower dependence means that strategic change is needed.

The three years before reading this book were highly productive, but also highly unsustainable. Most of my work got done by making tough commitments and activating my great fear of disappointing people.

Needless to say, these were not my healthiest years. Stress levels were high, sleep quality and quantity were inadequate, and self-destructive binge-eating-binge-watching weekends were far too common.

Then I read Benjamin’s elegant breakdown of why we become so dependent on willpower:

We’re internally conflicted and uncertain about what we want
Our reason (our “why”) behind our goals is too weak
We’re not invested in ourselves and our dreams
Our environment opposes our goals

These words put me on a new path, starting with a renewed commitment to smart environment design with the aid of our next book.

Atomic Habits — James Clear

Insight: Smart lifestyle design can always be taken to the next level.

A central theme in Atomic Habits is the power of changing our environment so that good actions become attractive and bad ones unattractive. At the time of reading, this principle was already a core part of my life, resulting in 10 years of perfect health and the financial freedom needed to retire at age 34.

But it had been years since I last upgraded my environment. After all, my environment was performing well and I was far too busy to do more. Atomic Habits exposed this error in my mindset.

Inspired by James’ message, I kept finding new ways to add and remove friction in all the right places. As a result, I discovered 100 extra productive hours each month and finally reached (and maintained) my ideal weight.

Thanks to my upgraded environment, I have no doubt that these benefits will last for the rest of my life, offering tremendous compounding gains. Which brings us to the next book…

The Compound Effect — Darren Hardy

Insight: Bookend routines are crucial to activate compounding gains.

Whereas Atomic Habits focuses on the mechanics of forming good habits, The Compound Effect pays more attention to the results of consistently doing the right or the wrong things. Both good and bad actions tend to compound and, when maintained over several years, often lead to extreme outcomes.

The invaluable insight I gained from this book is the essential role of morning and evening routines in unleashing the compound effect. Following this realization, my morning routine has not wavered and, in line with the Atomic Habits philosophy, has seen continuous upgrades into a package I am confident will last for the rest of my days.

Deep Work — Cal Newport

Insight: A deep work environment is worth paying for.

This book makes an excellent case for achieving greater levels of focus in an increasingly distracted world. Cal’s arguments for deep work combined with Benjamin’s insights about willpower finally got me to commit to my dream of sustainable development research with complete creative freedom.

So, in July 2019, I reduced my degree of employment to 60% to free up more time to focus on work I find truly meaningful. To date, this newfound focus allowed me to acquire a valuable new competence (energy systems modeling) and write almost 300 blog posts that laid the foundation for the Happy Healthy Wealthy Productive Sustainable publication hosting this story, all without slowing progress in my primary career.

This commitment to deep and meaningful work has made my life incredibly interesting. So interesting, in fact, that not even the deepest of work can allow me to explore all my ideas. Which brings us to the next book…

Dream Teams — Shane Snow

Insight: Intellectual Humility is the key to successful collaboration.

To be honest, I’m much more comfortable working with computers than people. A full day of meetings takes much more out of me than an 80-hour week of focused scientific research and writing.

But still, my productive capacity is frustratingly limited. Without the help of many smart collaborators, the constant stream of ideas generated by a free and focused mind would become totally overwhelming.

The next challenge is that humans are not computers. If you want others to help you pursue your creative ideas, you must make sure that they genuinely enjoy doing so. This is where Shane’s concept of Intellectual Humility has added tremendous value. Not only did it make my collaborators happier; it opened me up to their creative ideas to improve our work.

Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman

Insight: Our peak and end emotions shape every experience.

Improved intellectual humility made me considerably easier to work with. But connection on an intellectual level is not enough for successful relationships. We also need to connect on an emotional level.

That’s where one little insight extracted from Dr. Kahneman’s huge volume of work really helped me out: Our emotional memories of any experience are shaped by our emotional peak (positive or negative) and our emotional state at the end of the experience.

This insight soon became a cornerstone of my personal and professional interactions. I made a point of always ending things on a positive note, continuously looking for peak positive experiences, and sharply reining in my ego whenever things started going downhill. The effect on my relationships has been nothing short of remarkable 🙂

The Definitive Book of Body Language — Allan & Barbara Pease

Insight: Open body language leads to open minds.

The third and final step in the emotional evolution of this socially dense scientist was the discovery of the importance of open body language in interpersonal communication. From head to toe, everything counts.

Consistently exhibiting congruent clusters of open body language signals not only opens other peoples’ minds but your own as well. A conscious focus on open body language has permanently improved the efficiency and fun-factor of my interpersonal communication. It works so well that it almost has to be experienced to be believed!

The Art of Happiness — The 14th Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler

Insight: We cannot escape suffering, but we can choose our response.

After reducing my employment and gaining greater creative freedom, I had this naive notion that life must now be all sunshine and roses. Alas, the real world had other ideas.

When you upgrade your life, you also upgrade your challenges. I soon discovered that working 60% on paper is much easier than working 60% in practice. In parallel, I was dreaming up more and more ideas and growing increasingly impatient with my finite ability to pursue them.

The Dalai Lama’s wisdom came to the rescue at just the right time. My expectation of research rainbows and butterflies was turning challenges I should feel privileged to face into major frustrations. After reading this book, I resolved to tolerate all imperfections I cannot change, thus freeing up plenty of mental capacity previously wasted on pointless frustration.

Man’s Search for Meaning — Victor Frankl

Insight: We can endure almost any suffering if it has meaning.

This book elevated my commitment to tolerate my problems of privilege to a whole new level. To put it mildly, a first-hand account of what the survivors of Nazi concentration camps managed to endure shoved a big dose of perspective straight down my throat.

The key to surviving Auschwitz? Meaning. Something to live for. A reason to take on another day. I had truckloads of that and zero excuses to sulk about my inability to pursue all my dreams at once.

In all honesty, I still experience a sense of frustration whenever my creative freedom is curtailed. But thanks to a proper sense of perspective, it’s nowhere near as disruptive as it used to be.

The 100-Year Life — Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott

Insight: Intangible assets are more important than tangible assets.

The Western world is getting old, leading to a sharp rise in the ratio of retirees to taxpayers. As a result, the traditional 3-stage life of education, work, and retirement has reached the end of the line. Those who stick to this model may see the gift of a long life transform into an ugly curse.

One of the best ways to prevent this sad outcome is to actively invest in intangible assets. The authors identify three classes of these assets: productive (e.g., skills and reputation), vitality (e.g., health and friendships), and transformational (e.g., self-knowledge and network). To enjoy the gift of a long life, investments in these assets are even more important than traditional wealth (tangible assets).

This insight doubled my commitment to creative freedom, sharpened my focus on strengthening my closest relationships, and cemented my commitment to flawless health.

And as a bonus, it led me to discover the intangible asset that inspired this publication: life efficiency. Lifelong meaning, secured 🙂

All images were custom-made for this article by Janet Cloete.

Schalk July 27, 2020

2.1 - Morning Mastery Google Tasks, planning, productivity, to-do list

The Complete Guide to Planning Your Day with Google Tasks

Simple, clean, effective.

Modern life is complicated. Most days, there are way more things happening than our limited working memories can handle. That’s why we need an efficient planning system to take some of the load off.

After several years of experimentation with different solutions, I eventually declared Google Tasks the victor. Here are the four main features that won me over:

It opens next to Google Sheets, offering the perfect integration to longer-term planning in a spreadsheet.
For computer users, the addition of multiple tasks and sub-tasks is highly streamlined, making daily planning a breeze.
Recurring tasks are supported. This feature is ideal for building the consistency needed to make real progress in life.
It has a decent mobile app, which is essential for logging tasks that randomly pop into your head when you’re not at your computer.

Hence, this article is for people who spend plenty of time on their computers and believe in the power of planning and consistency. If that’s you, here are the five steps to the complete Google Tasks experience.

1. Get Started

On the off-chance that you don’t yet have a Google Account, create one now. It gives you access to all Google’s free software, conveniently syncs your Google universe between different devices, and facilitates one-step sign-in to a wide range of other services.

Google Tasks opens as a side panel next to Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides. Just look for the Tasks icon (shown by the red arrow below). This icon will be visible on the far right of your screen next to any of the apps mentioned above.

The two most useful integrations are Gmail and Sheets. We’ll be taking a closer look at the Sheets integration in Step 5, but the Gmail integration is so simple, it only needs a single paragraph:

Whenever you get an email that requires follow-up, just right-click on it and choose “Add to tasks.” This action will automatically create a task titled according to the email subject. You can do the same thing in the Gmail mobile app by opening the appropriate mail and tapping the three dots at the top right.

2. Add Regular Tasks and Sub-Tasks

Google Tasks makes it super-convenient to add tasks on a computer. Simply click the “Add a task” button and start typing. With the intuitive keyboard shortcuts covered below, adding tasks and sub-tasks in a focussed daily planning session is a breeze.

After you’ve typed your first task, simply press Enter to jump to the next task. In this way, you can compile your daily task list in seconds. Want to delete a task? Simply navigate to it using the up or down arrows and erase it with the Backspace key.

If you have a big task you need to break down into sub-tasks, you can do that by pressing Ctrl+Enter after you have entered the name of the big task. Additional sub-tasks can then be added using the Enter key. When you have written the next main task, press Ctrl+[ (may differ on international keyboards) to remove the indent. Here is a typical example:

Entering tasks on the mobile app is less convenient, though. You need to add each task separately, and, most annoyingly, there is no voice command capability. It’s disappointing that Google has not gotten around to this yet.

Thus, Google Tasks is not yet the best solution for those who organize their lives on their phones. But if you only use the app to record occasional tasks that pop into your head when you’re away from your computer, it works just fine.

You can also add tasks with reminders, but I’ve found that other services are better suited for this purpose. For example, your Outlook or Google calendar can automatically remind you in time for all your meetings, and Google Assistant is great at setting random reminders in seconds.

Once your list is all set up, you can get to work. Every time you complete a task, simply click on the little circle to the left of that task and watch (with deep satisfaction) as it gets crossed out and disappears.

3. Set Up Recurring Tasks

Success comes from the completion of thousands of coordinated actions over time. Recurring tasks ensure that you complete these actions with the required level of consistency. And Google Tasks is the ideal companion for this effective personal development strategy.

Adding a recurring task is very simple. First, add the task you want to make recurring. Here, we’ll use “morning routine” as an example. Then, click on the little pencil symbol shown by the red arrow below.

As shown in the next figure, this takes you to the task details panel, where you can choose “Add date/time.” On the next panel, you can specify the task to “Repeat.”

Next, you get the chance to configure the repetition of the task. Most recurring tasks should happen daily. In this case, simply click “OK” and then you’re done. If you tick off this recurring task, it will automatically return to your task list the next day.

You can also specify the task to repeat only on certain days of the week, month, or year. In this case, simply click on the drop-down menu showing “day” in the image above and follow the intuitive selection process.

I have 12 such recurring tasks that keep me doing the right things day after day. Ticking them off never gets old! Two of these tasks are so-called not-to-dos — items I can only tick off at the end of the day if I have not done them. Not-to-dos offer a strong incentive for improved discipline.

4. Multiple lists

Google Tasks also offers the opportunity to create multiple task lists. Having many lists can quickly become more complicated than useful, but just one or two adds considerable value.

To create a new list, simply go to the top of the Google Tasks panel and click on the drop-down menu beneath the word “TASKS.” As shown below, you will find a “Create new list” option at the bottom of this menu. Click this button and name your list in the next panel.

In my experience, the optimal solution is to have two lists: Today and Later. I often add tasks that do not have specific near-term deadlines. Sometimes, these tasks keep hanging around on my “Today” list, taking up space and making my list look unnecessarily intimidating. That’s where the “Later” list comes in handy.

Moving a task between lists is easy. Start by clicking the pencil symbol to the right of the task. In the next panel, you can change the list in the drop-down menu directly above the “Add date/time” button we used to create the recurring tasks in Step 3 above.

Using the sub-tasks mentioned in Step 2 makes such moves between lists extra convenient. If you move the main task, all its sub-tasks automatically go with it, saving you the effort of having to move each sub-task.

So, whenever a task on your list is not getting done because it’s not of sufficiently high priority, move it to the “Later” list. Every morning, you can take a quick scan through your “Later” list and move tasks back to the “Today” list when their time has come.

5. Using Tasks next to Sheets

Finally, one of the best features of Google Tasks is that it opens next to Google Sheets. This integration creates the perfect opportunity to coordinate your short-term planning in Tasks with your longer-term planning in Sheets.

Spreadsheet applications offer endless possibilities for structured longer-term planning, which we’ll get to in a future article. For now, let’s just find the most convenient way of opening Tasks next to Sheets.

First, go to Google Sheets and choose your desired template from the “Start a new spreadsheet” menu (above). Your new sheet will open (below). Then, give it a name on the top left and click the Google Tasks button on the far right. And Voila! Your combined short- and long-term planning solution is good to go.

For maximum convenience, copy the URL of this page and make it one of your startup pages. In this way, your planning sheet will open automatically each time you open Google Chrome.

If you’re a heavy MS Excel user like me, you can sync your Excel planning file to Sheets. To do this, start by installing the Google Drive desktop application. Once installed, you can select any folder on your computer and sync it to Google Drive. Simply right-click on the selected folder, find the “Google Drive” line, hover over it, and choose “Sync this folder.”

Any Excel file you put in this folder will then be available for selection in Google Sheets. Upon selection in Sheets, the file opens in exactly the same way. You can then set the URL as your starting page, as described previously.

Once this connection is established, any changes you make to this file in Excel will automatically update in Sheets and vice versa.

That’s it!

I hope you derive as much value from this awesome free Google app as I have. Happy planning!

Schalk July 21, 2020

2.1 - Morning Mastery breakfast, food, health, healthy eating

The Ideal Breakfast: 16 Whole Ingredients, 2 Minutes Prep Time, 1 Fine Culinary Experience

And all the protein and healthy fats a good breakfast needs

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. — Adelle Davis

Despite all the noise on the internet, science suggests that breakfast remains the most important meal of the day (1, 2, 3, 4). But, like most things in life, it’s not quite that simple. If you’re the kind of king who enjoys pastries or sugary breakfast cereals a little too much, following Adelle’s famous advice will cut your reign painfully short.

Yes, breakfast should be even healthier than it is large. And that’s not all. It should also be tasty, highly practical, and reasonably priced.

Does such a zero-compromise breakfast really exist? Read on, and see for yourself 🙂

Ingredients

Here is the impressive list of 16 whole food ingredients:

*Four different seeds: hemp, flax, pumpkin, and sunflower.*

*A standard nut mix: peanuts, almonds, cashews, raisins, papaya.*

*Five different berries: blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, red- and blackcurrants.*

*Plain Greek yogurt and All-Bran flakes.*

Preparation and Practicality

The trick is to have your seed, nut, and berry mixes readily available so that they can be combined in under two minutes. Getting hold of a convenient and affordable seed mixture is the biggest challenge, so let’s start there.

Practical seed management

If you’re lucky enough to have a supermarket or local health food store that stocks a good selection of seeds at reasonable prices, feel free to skip this section.

Everyone else, don’t despair! There is a great alternative solution: Buy your seeds in bulk online. Seeds have a long shelf life, and bulk purchases are generally about 3x cheaper than the small packets sold in local stores. This saving is particularly useful for more expensive seeds like hemp and chia.

So, jump on the internet and check out the health food suppliers in your region. There’s a good chance you’ll find some suppliers who can deliver right to your doorstep. Just make sure to look at the sell-by date to give yourself enough time to enjoy your purchase.

When your bulk seeds arrive, mix them in a large container in roughly equal ratios. Then distribute the mixture in food-grade plastic bags and press out as much air as possible. In my experience, vacuum packing is not necessary if you make sure you store these bags in a cool and dark place.

Finally, get a convenient plastic container that can hold enough seeds for a week or two. When it gets empty, simply refill straight from one of the plastic bags with your stored seed mixture.

*Seed mixture in a plastic bag for storage and a convenient container for daily use.*

I’ll admit, setting up this sophisticated seed management system is a bit of a mission. But, once it’s up and running, it will cost you a mere 20 seconds per meal and save you lots of money through bulk purchases. And as a bonus, you can have some good laughs showing off your “seed bank” to friends and family 🙂

Other ingredients

Convenient nut mixtures are commonly available in supermarkets at reasonable prices. You could save some money by setting up a similar bulk purchase system for nuts, but not as much as with seeds. I also find nut mixtures a little bit too tempting as a snack, so sticking to the limited weekly portion from the supermarket works best for me.

Most supermarkets also have frozen berry mixes available. These products are highly convenient and circumvent the seasonality of berries. If you cannot find a ready mix, buying two or three different packs of frozen berries to add to your breakfast is almost just as convenient.

Greek yogurt and All-Bran flakes are easily accessible. The only little pro tip I have here is to get a relatively big breakfast bowl, which makes it easier to blend the thick Greek yogurt into the mixture without making a mess.

Health profile

Nuts, seeds, berries, wheat bran, and plain Greek yogurt all boast glowing health credentials. Even raisins and dried papaya bring something to the table. When mixed as described above, this combo amounts to nothing less than the perfect nutritional start to the day.

For breakfast purposes, the high protein and unsaturated fat content is a big bonus. These macronutrients are broken down gradually to supply your body with a reliable energy supply throughout the morning. It also helps to keep you feeling full to avoid the pre-lunch munchies.

A snapshot of the nutritional profile of this breakfast is shown below, as given by the nutritionvalue.org calculator.

When looking at the % Daily Value column, the high content of protein and healthy (unsaturated) fat is clearly visible. On the other hand, the amount of carbohydrates is relatively low, with a disproportionate representation of gut-healthy dietary fiber.

The micronutrient profile is strong too, supplying 40–80% of the daily requirement of vitamins A, C & K, and several B-vitamins. This breakfast is also a great source of all important minerals, except for sodium (which most people get too much of anyway).

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a breakfast with a better nutritional profile.

Culinary experience

Perhaps most important of all, this breakfast mix is a pure joy to eat! It just gets the day started on a lovely note — no sugar required 🙂

The wide range of flavors combines surprisingly well, and each bite is unique, both in taste and texture. It also comes with a satisfying crunch that makes it easy to eat more slowly and naturally respect the recommended amount of chewing.

Variations on the theme

Even the ideal breakfast can become a bit much if eaten every day. Thus, we need a variant or two to keep things interesting.

The simplest way to vary the experience is to add some fresh fruit and/or berries. You will need a bit more time to chop the fresh produce into bite-sized pieces, making this a good option for a relaxed weekend breakfast experience. Those extra ingredients make each bite even more of an adventure!

As a special treat, try substituting the All-Bran with a muesli mix containing plenty of dried fruit. But be warned: This mix can get so tasty that overeating becomes all too tempting. Luckily, as far as weekend indulgences go, this is about as healthy as it gets.

For some weekday variation, my favorite alternative combo consists of the following:

A generous helping of 3 types of seeds: chia, flax, and hemp
All-Bran flakes
Almond milk
Fresh blueberries

This one can be enjoyed either hot or cold. For the cold version, mix the seeds, All-Bran, and almond milk in a bowl and let it stand for a minute or two while you wash the blueberries. This gives the chia seeds some time to soak up the milk, creating a delightful texture.

For the hot version, simply heat the mixture in the microwave while you wash the blueberries. The heat transforms the texture from crunchy to smooth, completely changing the experience. See which one you like best! I like both, so I eat the cold version on hot days and the hot version on cold days.

If fresh blueberries are not available at a reasonable price, try substituting with frozen raspberries, crushed into smaller pieces. I find these crushed raspberries a more enjoyable substitute than frozen blueberries.

Enjoy!

The way you spend your morning echos throughout the day. When it comes to getting a good start, an ideal breakfast is a perfect companion to a handcrafted and choreographed morning routine.

In fact, this breakfast can tilt the scales even further in your favor by managing your energy and cravings and optimizing your long-term health.

But above all, it’s simply delicious 🙂 I hope you enjoy it as much as me!

All images were custom-made for this article by Janet Cloete.

Schalk July 15, 2020

2.1 - Morning Mastery lifestyle, morning routine, personal development, productivity, sleep

How to be Awake in the Morning and Sleepy at Night

And not the other way round.

“Morning is wonderful. Its only drawback is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day.” — Glen Cook

You’ve probably heard of the circadian rhythm — the natural 24-hour sleep-wake cycle governing the lives of most animals, humans included. For 99% of our history, we moved naturally to this rhythm, guided by nature’s dependable patterns of light, temperature, and sound.

But that’s all in the past. Today, we have the power to artificially manipulate the triggers that regulate our circadian rhythms. And sadly, we’re not blessed with nature’s great sense of rhythm.

The result is a society filled with millions of minds that are sleepy when they should be awake and awake when they should be sleepy. This is robbing many people of much of their lives, and the world of much of its human potential.

If you’re stuck with a deeply confused circadian rhythm, today’s article can help. It can give you back your mornings, often the most productive time of the day. For me, the advice shared below worked so well that I’m usually in full productive swing well before my 6:15 alarm was supposed to go off.

The spread of different productive activities throughout my average day for the first half of 2020, automatically tracked using RescueTime. As shown, plenty of action already happens at 6 a.m. and earlier.

So, without further ado, here are the three steps to a rediscovered circadian rhythm and a mind that’s awake at all the right times.

Step 1: Set Your Latest Allowable Wake-up Time (LAWT)

The first step is also the hardest, at least initially. You need to set your LAWT and make sure it’s set in stone. Weekends, holidays, or late nights don’t change a thing. Your LAWT is law.

Initially, this is a very tough rule, one that puts many people off. But any sleep expert you talk to will back this up. If you want the kind of sleep required for high performance, consistency is the #1 recommendation. Without it, your confused circadian rhythm traps you in a state of permanent jet lag. And that’s no fun.

You can make it easier on yourself by accounting for your natural sleep rhythm. If you’re a night owl, don’t start with a 6 a.m. LAWT. But our society rewards early risers, so it makes sense for owls to push their LAWTs a little earlier over time. It’s possible. I was a notorious late sleeper, but now, I generally get up around 5 a.m. — alarm-free!

Great, so you’re willing to give this a go. Where to start? In my book, the best way to establish this invaluable habit is to find yourself a committed Accountability Buddy.

Your Accountability Buddy is someone who will be waiting for you shortly after your LAWT and be quite disappointed if you don’t show up.

My Accountability Buddies are my parents. After I moved to Norway from South Africa, we slowly drifted apart for many years. But when my brother also moved to Norway, leaving their nest well and truly empty, it became clear that something had to be done. That was when I, somewhat reluctantly, decided to give the Accountability Buddy idea a try.

It worked like a charm! For the past 30 months, we’ve talked for about 15 minutes at 6:30 every morning. The habit is now so deeply ingrained that sleeping past 6:15 is not even an option.

And if you can’t find an Accountability Buddy? Well, there are some evil alarm clocks and apps out there that are guaranteed to drag you out of bed. You can also throw a bit of positive motivation into the mix by adding a timed coffee maker to Step 2 outlined below.

Yes, it’s tough initially, but keep your eye on the prize. Your LAWT brings back the beat to your circadian rhythm. And that steady beat will let you shine on the great dancefloor of life 😉

Step 2: Maximize Early Morning Sensory Stimulation

Getting your body and mind fully activated in the early morning is something of an art form. The secret? A quickfire stimulation of all five senses.

Like most music, the first beat of your daily rhythm should be strong and punchy. Don’t hold back!

Sight is the best place to start. If the sun is out, open every window to invite it in. If not, turn on every light you can find. Light is a key trigger for our circadian rhythm, and a healthy dose at about the same time each morning is a great way to get your life back in sync.

Next in line: hearing. If you do the smart thing and choreograph your morning routine to your unique soundtrack, this part happens automatically. A loud and inspirational song is a great way to start a fully automated, handcrafted morning routine.

While your wake-up song is playing, take care of the other three senses. For touch, a splash of cold water in the face is always a winner.

For taste and smell, coffee is undoubtedly the most popular option. That’s fine, especially if you invest in a timed coffee maker to help pull you out of bed before you LAWT. I’m not a coffee person, so I just put on some fragrant deodorant and take a mouthful of some surprisingly pleasant mouthwash to get that morning taste out of my mouth.

If you choreograph your sensory barrage well, it can wake you up in two minutes flat. Consistent repetition of this wake-up ritual is a great way to set your internal body clock for natural wakefulness every single morning.

Step 3: Minimize Evening Sensory Stimulation

When evening comes, the exact opposite applies. Everything in your environment should send out subtle signals that bedtime is approaching. Most important: no TV or any other screens.

If you want to be awake in the morning and sleepy at night, you need to give your circadian rhythm every hint imaginable. This means a powerful sensory barrage in the morning and a soothing sensory winddown at night, administered consistently day after day.

Start by defining your desired sleep opportunity — the amount of time you want to be in bed with the intention to sleep. For most people, this should be around 8 hours.

From here, your desired bedtime is only a bit of basic arithmetic away. For example, if you decide on 8 hours of sleep opportunity and your LAWT is set at 6:30 a.m., you should aim to be in bed before 10:30 p.m.

The 30 minutes before bedtime is sensory winddown time. Dim the lights, put on some soft and relaxing music, and quiet the mind with some relaxing reading, yoga, or meditation.

Initiating your winddown period at the right time takes some practice. Unlike your LAWT, your bedtime is not set in stone. Listen to your body, and start your winddown ritual only when you start feeling sleepy.

So, what to do when bedtime is approaching and you’re still wide awake? My favorite strategy for these nights is to spend some time on the most boring task on my plate. This hastens the onset of sleepiness and ticks something tedious off my to-do list — a lovely double-win.

But whatever you do, don’t indulge in digital entertainment when you should be winding down. Late-night TV or streaming seriously confuses your sleep rhythm, especially if it’s any good. Such sensory and mental stimulation is the polar opposite of what you want during this critical time.

Finally, if social duty calls for a late night out every once in awhile, no problem. Just make sure it doesn’t become a ridiculously late night and religiously maintain your LAWT. Your body will automatically demand an earlier bedtime for the next night or two, restoring balance and keeping your circadian rhythm intact.

To Sum Up

Here is the simple 1–2–3 to a restored circadian rhythm and a mind that actually wants to wake up in the morning:

Set your latest allowable wake-up time in stone. To get through the tough initiation phase, call on the power of an Accountability Buddy or an alarm clock/app that shows no mercy.
Maximize morning sensory stimulation. Build a quickfire ritual that covers all five senses and runs every morning.
Wind down at the right time. Determine your ideal bedtime to make sure you give yourself enough sleep opportunity. Your environment should send every conceivable hint that sleepytime is approaching.

In today’s technological age of badly confused circadian rhythms, being able to wake up alert and refreshed at a decent hour is a huge advantage. Rediscover your rhythm, and this advantage is yours!

All images were custom-made for this article by Janet Cloete.

1 2

2.1 – Morning Mastery

This could be the best investment I’ve ever made!

Waking Up

Mental Conditioning

Double-Time Yoga

Reading

Accountability Buddy

Breakfast and Dumbells

Is There Really Time for All This?

Why Bother Building a Morning Routine?

3 Steps to a Lifelong Morning Routine

The Foundation: Rediscover Your Rhythm

The Morning Movement Fun Factor

The Value of a Good Plan

Accept the World’s Wisdom

Discover the Perfect Breakfast

Taking Things to the Next Level

Start Simple, Keep Innovating

The Benefits of Keeping a Graph of Life

1. Awareness and consistency

2. Early warning system

3. Motivation to keep growing

4. Insights into what makes you tick

5. See the real impact of major life changes

Getting Started

Using Your Graph of Life

Analyzing your Data

Give it a try!

Complete with photographs and detailed instructions

Standing Forward Bend

Other Standing Poses

Hip Openers

Groin Stretch

Core Workout

Back Stretches

Twist

Maximum value, minimum willpower

<img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" class="graf-image" data-tf-not-load src="https://i0.wp.com/cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*_BJJLs-KgJrqoI7SmEMXAA.png?w=1165&#038;ssl=1" data-image-id="1*_BJJLs-KgJrqoI7SmEMXAA.png" data-width="1920" data-height="1080" data-is-featured="true" />

Movement 1: Dancing (Badly)

Movement 2: Double-Time Yoga

Movement 3: Free Weights

Movement 4: Constitution

Movement 5: Accountability Buddy

Time to get moving!

What is a Personal Constitution?

1. Health

2. Creativity

3. People

4. Burdens

Putting it into practice

If you cultivate just one habit, let it be this one.

Willpower Doesn’t Work — Benjamin Hardy

Atomic Habits — James Clear

The Compound Effect — Darren Hardy

Deep Work — Cal Newport

Dream Teams — Shane Snow

Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman

The Definitive Book of Body Language — Allan & Barbara Pease

The Art of Happiness — The 14th Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler

Man’s Search for Meaning — Victor Frankl

The 100-Year Life — Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott

Simple, clean, effective.

1. Get Started

2. Add Regular Tasks and Sub-Tasks

3. Set Up Recurring Tasks

4. Multiple lists

5. Using Tasks next to Sheets

That’s it!

And all the protein and healthy fats a good breakfast needs

Ingredients

Preparation and Practicality

Practical seed management

Other ingredients

Health profile

Culinary experience

Variations on the theme

<img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" class="graf-image" data-tf-not-load src="https://i0.wp.com/cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*QfKlmY8BKqJ-b7gTys4mYg.png?w=1165&#038;ssl=1" data-image-id="1*QfKlmY8BKqJ-b7gTys4mYg.png" data-width="1681" data-height="801" />

Enjoy!

And not the other way round.

Step 1: Set Your Latest Allowable Wake-up Time (LAWT)