Heroic Interview: My Morning Routine with Benjamin Spall

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimize interview series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Benjamin Spall about his great book, My Morning, How Successful People Start Every Day. Inspired. I got this book from Penguin Random House. Thank you again. And as a kind of a pre release, and I got it, I thought, that looks really cool. Put it on the stack of books. And then for whatever reason, I found myself reading Daily Rituals, which is a great look at hundreds of history's greatest, you know, know, artists and thinkers and whatnot and what they did on a daily basis, which was fascinating. But some of them had much more optimized daily routines than others. So I thought I read that book, did a note and all that, and then I read this one right afterwards and I loved it because it was a nice compliment and kind of an extension to the importance of rituals done right, you know. So anyway, that's the long prelude. Benjamin and his co author, Michael Zander have had a popular site and interview series with some of the most successful people out there talking to them about their morning routines. This book is essentially a distillation of the best stuff they've learned. I think they describe it as part kind of instructional manual and part diaries, you know, insights into other people's thought process about their own rituals. Benjamin, thanks for the great book and thanks for taking the time.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian.

All right, man. Well, I like to start at the top. My morning routine. Why are morning routines important?

Yeah, so the way we look at it and the way we've always looked at it since we started our website approximately five years ago, is the way you start the morning really is kind of the prelude to how you get into the rest of your day. And this is true for most of us. Like, some people say they're morning people, some people are more like kind of evening night owls. But really, the way you start the day, it really, it depends on what the rest of your day is going to be like. So if you have kind of a morning routine, which you're getting up, you're kind of working out, you maybe work on a side project, you're meditating, you're kind of just looking after your body and mind, you're going to have a great day. But if you have a morning routine where you get up, you're checking Twitter, you're checking Instagram, you're kind of just getting all these inputs that are just going to kind of make you feel stressed out and like not looking forward to the day ahead, your day is.

Going to go that way, therefore start strong. So let's talk about some of the ways to actually do that. Before we do that, talk to us about decision fatigue. You guys make some good distinctions on that. How would you describe decision fatigue as it relates to morning routines?

Yes. Decision fatigue is interesting in that it's kind of. It's two things. First of all, it's the problem where you cannot make a decision, so you're really stuck between, like, two or three different items. Or it's when you make a bad decision, even though you know you should be doing something else. And this typically happens when our kind of brain is clogged. We've had a long day. We've just got all these different decisions to make. So. So what we say in the book is, if you have certain decisions you need to make the next day, say what outfit you're going to wear, what you're going to do, like what sport or something, make that decision the night before. And even though you may be a little bit groggy, it may be a little bit difficult, it means in the morning, you're not making that decision and you're not peeling that decision away from your brains, where your brain could be doing something more productive at that time of day.

And the science shows that that's a real thing, that you actually quickly fall into a level of decision fatigue. Right. So then you want to routineize what you're doing, making those decisions that you talk about, and then you talk about. I think you profile seven different authors that we've covered in our optimized Philosopher's notes program, from Ryan Holiday and Scott Adams to Dave Asprey, Chris Gillebeau, and all these different great teachers and thinkers. I think it was Scott Adams who talked about the fact that he never wastes a brain cell in the morning thinking about what he's going to do. And he's happier than people that have to spend an hour thinking about what they're gonna do for an hour. Talk to us about some of the routines that you've seen from some of your kind of your favorite routines, if you will, from your favorite successful people.

Yeah, Scott was interesting in that it was fascinating to sit and speak with him and have this conversation, but then we really had to distance. God. Something like. After the transcript, it was something like 5,000 words we had to distill into this small, small interview. But, yeah, when you read the book, you'll find that what is most common, what is least surprising, actually, is how routine everyone's morning is. And that of course would be the way with the title of the book, but everybody really does. They do typically do the same thing every day. So when you talk about what is the most interesting routine, it can be those things. It could be the things to help your morning routine, or it could be the ones that are a little bit wacky, the ones that are crazy, kind of. Scott Adams is one of them. General Stalin, the crystal, he's another. He gets up at 4am, immediately goes running. So those ones are the outliers, but they're definitely some of the more impressive ones. And the ones that we say, maybe you shouldn't be aiming for this right now. Maybe you should take some of the easier elements and start from there. But it's definitely something to aspire to, if that's something that interests you.

So then let's talk about. We'll get into some of your tips on what you recommend people do. What should you not do from. From your research and understanding?

Yeah. So there are several things you should not do, and one is very. Just very clear to us, and that is checking email, checking Twitter, checking any social media. That's just going to make you kind of maybe mad, maybe frustrated, you're stressed out in the morning, because that's just a terrible way to start the day. And I've actually, I always joke that I've been hearing this advice for about three years until I actually did it. But so I was constantly hearing from people on our website. They said they kept their phone in another room overnight, so keep it in the kitchen, they would keep it in the living room, they wouldn't keep it on their bedside table. And I've been hearing that for like three years and I hadn't done it. And I eventually got around to doing it last year when my wife bought me an analog alarm clock that could go there. And it's been great, honestly. I put my phone on airplane mode overnight. I put it in the kitchen. And then on a good day, I won't check it at all until after breakfast when we're about to leave the house. I'll occasionally check it if I need to. If I have a meeting or a call that I need to check to see if anything shifted. I'll occasionally check it that way. But that has been a great way to kind of not have that input, not have all that stuff coming at me first thing in the morning.

Yeah, that's awesome. And just speaking from personal experience, once I go online, I simply cannot return to the state of creativity that I had before the inputs came in. And I'm so extreme about it. I don't use my phone, so I don't use a smartphone. My wife has dedicated her number to the very few people that have access to me. But it's a fascinating thing just to calibrate when we allow the inputs. And we'll talk about this some more as well. In terms of your five tips, let's actually go there. So then you talk about five tips for focused and productive mornings. Whether you know those five tips offhand or not, what are the top tips that you recommend we think about doing as we structure our ideal morning?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, the overall tip, I actually have a couple, so I'll go to. One of them is to get enough sleep the night before. And when actually started out with this book, the book proposal, there was a whole third of of the book was going to be focusing on sleep. And then we figured there's a lot of books on sleep by people with much better credentials than I, so we decided not to go down that path as much. But we do have a whole chapter in the book that looks at sleep and how if you don't get enough sleep the night before, you're really going to struggle to get the most out of your morning routine the next day. And I was actually recently at a conference where I was speaking with people and they told me that they had trouble forming a routine or at least sticking to one. So I quickly asked, I was like, how many hours of sleep do you get per night? And they were telling me, they were telling me five hours, five and a half hours, six hours. And so it was quite clear. It was like, these people are struggling to keep to a morning routine because they're constantly tired, especially the five hours or even less than that people. So I said to them, I was like, okay, well, you can read my book. Here's my book. But you need to really just focus on your sleep first, because if you're not getting enough sleep, you're really going to struggle to get through the day. And the second tip, which is another important one, is to keep your routine short and easy to accomplish, especially in the beginning, as this actually greatly increases your chances of sticking to it. Many people, they read the book, they'll look at the workout chapter, for example, and they'll say, okay, starting on Monday, I want to run for half an hour every single day. And we'll just go from there. Very quickly, especially if you don't normally run or do any aerobic exercises, very quickly you'll realize that this really isn't possible. It's really difficult. You may not even get through it at all. So you'll give up on the second day. What we advocate, whether for running, whether for meditation, yoga, anything else, we advocate just doing things in really small incremental steps. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and just going from there. And if, for example, you start a five minute day meditation practice and that starts to get a little frustrating, like five minutes isn't enough, you can then add to that over time. But in the beginning, just really, really start out small because then you can experiment with more things and not get tired of one or the other.

Right. And yeah, I had taken a little break in doing these interviews and the first one I brought back was James Clear in his new book, Atomic Habits. And you know, he makes the point, you got to make it easy. Less than two minutes is one of his things of make it easy to actually get it done, celebrate it, and then build on it exactly the way you described. And then the sleep. Yeah, I mean, it's insane, right? Only 5% of us or something like that can deal with less than seven hours of sleep a night. The rest of us, I'm certainly in the group that needs more than seven hours. We simply can't function at a higher level. So then if you want to have a great morning, you need to start the night before. You talk about that in the book and you reference Cal. I talk about Cal Newport a lot. His shutdown complete ritual and the fact that I forget how you describe it, but basically your day, your morning begins the night before tomorrow begins. Today is the phrase you use, which I really liked. Awesome. High fives. Thumbs up to all of that. What else? What other tips come to mind? I'm actually looking at my notes. You had the right. The to do list, which you kind of mentioned. Stick to it. Do your most important work first. I like that. Don't check your email, which you just mentioned first thing in the morning. You also talk about cutting out morning meetings and calls. Right, I'll let you riff on that.

Yeah. So that isn't that. That whole point won't be possible for everyone, but we do make a point, like depending on how senior or junior you are in the company, you can, you can push. So like, if you're very junior in the company and you're just thinking, okay, I don't want to be doing these morning meetings and calls, I want to do something more productive. You can, you know, you can speak to your boss, you can speak to your supervisor, and for a less important meeting or call, just say, okay, I've really got to do this. Is it okay if I sit out this meeting? Or call? And you know, some will say no, some will be skeptical for sure, but over time you'll start to get some yeses. And when, if you get these yeses so you can sit out these things, do work hard in this time and do what you said you're going to do. And then over time, you, you'll be able to sit out more and more. And when it gets to the point where these meetings and calls are something that you have to take, that you're running them, you of course set the agenda and maybe push them to the afternoon yourself. But this is just a great way, especially if you're employed, to actually just give yourself some more time, give yourself some more autonomy that you may not have always have.

Right on. Yeah. And I riffed in the note on the fact that John Maxwell discovered that his best time was in the morning and he used to have breakfast meetings all the time. And when he made that distinction, he never scheduled another breakfast meeting in his career. He used that time for the most important work. And you, as Cal says, you accrete that value over an extended period of time and you get some great things done. And then.

Scott Adams, I was just gonna say that. That's exactly right. And we're speaking at about 2pm California time. And this is typically, I think this is the time you chose, but this is actually when I tend to do my interviews because if I do them at nine, at ten, I, I, you know, I really struggle to get anything done the rest of the day. That time is taken from me. So if I could do interviews later on the day, it's a great way to do them, but while also not taking up my most creative block in the morning.

Yes, exactly. So then just to riff on that for a moment, Scott Adams, I was going to say, you know, his whole thing is match your best energy to the most important work. And this is important to me, but I can do this with different energy than I need to do my writing and the teaching that I did, the filming of some PNTVs, etcetera, so, you know, I never schedule anything until I've hammered my four hours of deep work. So there's no inputs coming into my life until I've done several hours of deep work. So, yeah, that's a very deliberate design and I'm glad that our schedules overlapped in a complimentary and supportive way. Right on. You talk about Ruth Ozeki. Is that how you say her name?

Yes, I believe so, yes.

So do you remember her story, the novelist and filmmaker Zen?

Yes, she. Yeah, exactly. So she, she has kind of free morning routines that she told us all of them. And one of them she's a novelist, one of them is she is a film filmmaker. And the last, which is potentially most interesting is she is a Zen Buddhist priest. And I can't remember the exact details of all of them, but I do remember that the Zen Buddhist Priest 1 was most interesting because she spent a lot of time to herself, a lot of time in meditation, a lot of time doing yoga. And it's really just a time for her to kind of relax in the morning. And I'm sure the practice itself may not be the most relaxing thing, but just it's basically a very extreme example of what we advocate in terms of our meditation chapter. And that just allowing yourself this time, this time in which you can either do nothing, you can think about the future, you can think about the past, but giving yourself this time is a great way to look at the day and kind of look forward. And many of us even like the whole. You mentioned James clue of his 2 minutes example. Whether it's 2 minutes or 5 minutes, just giving yourself an incredibly small amount of time that you definitely can find is a great way to start your day right on.

Well, what have we not talked about that you want to make sure we discuss?

Okay, so one important thing that came up time and time again, and because of this, we actually gave it its own chapter in the book is the idea of giving yourself time for self care in the morning. And many of us, particularly men, sometimes we just think we don't need this time, we don't need this time to sit back, relax and really just be one with ourselves. But it came up time and time again that when you give yourself me time in the morning, this is a great way of just taking care of yourself, taking care of your family, and just looking forward to the day ahead. And one other section, and we had a whole chapter on this as well, is traveling. So many people speak to us and they say, how do I keep my morning routine up when I'm traveling? And this is difficult, we're not going to pretend it's not. But several things that we found is many people, whether you, many people find that they can actually sleep quite well on a plane. So if you sleep well on a plane, we suggest actually having an overnight flight. So you have that time and then you wake up, you land, you wake up and you can Just go about your morning routine. It may be in a different city, it may be in a different country, but you can just get right into it. If you don't sleep well on the plane, you can make sure that you arrive in your destination city the night before, you have a good night's sleep in your hotel, and then you can start your morning routine that way. But I think it was Dave Asprey who created Bulletproof Coffee. He made this great point that when we travel, we're already kind of stressing our body. We've got all these stresses from travel. So don't beat yourself up too much if you don't follow your routine during this time. Just do what you need to do and then get back to it.

Did you guys share the ping pong robot story with Dave Asprey? Was that.

I think I. Yeah. I can't remember if it made it into the book, but if that's.

I'm not sure if I got it from Headstrong or your book, but Dave Asprey, for those who don't know, we profiled Bulletproof Diet and Headstrong, the guy wants to live to 180 years old. He takes his hundred plus supplements a day and he has a ping pong robot to work out his brain. Just absolute genius. Right on. Cool. Was there anything else that you want to share or are you feeling good?

Yeah. So the last point that I always bring up with people is the importance of just kind of giving yourself grace if you miss part of your routine. So we always ask this question at the end of our interviews, whether for the website or the book. And we say to people, what do you do if you fail to follow your morning routine? And almost without exception, sometimes people say they kind of fall apart. But almost without exception, people say they just look at it and then they're like, okay, I'll get back to that tomorrow. And that could be the full routine. That could just be a part of it. But these things happen. Sometimes our kid is sick or we just wake up late and we can't get to work. These things happen. So if you do have a bad day, if you fall off track, if you fail to follow a part of your routine, don't worry about it and just get back to it tomorrow.

Right on. And then what's the biggest routine that you've created? The most impactful routine you've created in your own life?

Yes, my own is very, very simple. And I mentioned part of it earlier about keeping my phone in the kitchen. Because if I don't keep my phone in the kitchen. Honestly, I will wake up and I'll be about an inch from my face immediately as I scroll through Instagram. So that's been a great learning for me. But just having that quiet time. And often I'll get up and then my wife will get herself ready for work and I'll just be making breakfast in the kitchen. And my routine is nowhere near as impressive as someone like Stanley McChrystal or Dave Asprey's. But just having that time where we can have breakfast together, neither of us are really looking at our phones. So we're not talking about the news, we're not talking about any emails. We're just kind of talking about our own days ahead. That's just a really nice way to do it. And I sometimes have a five or ten minute meditation in there. I'll just have a little bit of time. But it's a really, it's a nice calm way to start the day. And especially with how our days are nowadays, just very stressful for many of us. It's just nice to have that quiet moment in the morning.

So yeah, that's awesome. I mean, it's the little things I think done consistently that create the biggest impact. That again is a big part of my work is optimizing. It's just those little incremental optimizations aggregated, compounded over an extended period of time that make the biggest difference. I love the self compassion when you skip a day. Just get back at it. Don't miss two days though. If you actually want to create a habit, it's habit suicide as we've discussed in our work together. But anyway, this is great stuff. Where can people find you? My morning routine again, the book, I forget the website. Is that the website too?

Yeah. So the website is mymorningroutine.com and you can go to that address or mymorningroutine.com book to find the book. And it's on Amazon everywhere else, local bookstores. And yeah, you can find me personally@Benjaminspall.com and on Twitter and Instagram. Benjaminspall.

Right on. And then what's your favorite interview out of the hundreds you've done? Which is your favorite one? Do you think our audience. Oh man.

Yeah, I think we brought up a lot. But I really love the Stanley McChrystal interview. It's in the book. That was a transcript one. That was when I had a call with him and I have to say, after having a phone call with him, I've never been nervous about having interview. Having to interview anyone in the future because he was honestly very friendly. He was great. But just his prestige that coming into that interview. So that was something else.

Right on. Cool. Benjamin. Well, thank you so much. Keep up the great work and have a great morning tomorrow.

Yeah, you too. Thanks, Brian.