Transcript excerpt of a conversation where Jay Shetty describes his four-step 'TIME' productivity/morning routine: Thankfulness, Inspiration, Meditation, and Exercise. He recommends starting the day with grateful thoughts (even scripted the night before), feeding the mind with daily inspiration, checking in via meditation, and exercising for health; suggests even five minutes of each can improve daily baseline mood and productivity.
When you wake up to news notifications, negativity and noise, you're now at a minus five in the morning. You spend the rest of the day trying to get back up to zero. The day feels like a struggle.
You're the most productive monk I know. So, J, I'd like to ask you because I know you. You are so busy, you're all over the place. You are in so much social media. You are good at blocking out all distraction and focusing just on your daily routine. Would you share some of that routine with us?
Yeah, absolutely. So I summarized it in my book to make it even simpler, and it comes in the form of the acronym TIME T I, M E. And I believe everyone needs to make time in their day. And even if in the beginning it's just five minutes of each of this, it's 20 minutes. So the T is for thankfulness. I believe that your first thought of the day should be a thankful thought. And the way to make your first day of thought of the day a thankful thought. And I know Vishen, in your meditations, you also encourage gratitude deeply. Studies show that when you're present in gratitude, you can't be anywhere else. So you can't be in a grateful state of mind and an envious state of mind. You can't be in a grateful state of mind and an angry or an anxiety state of mind. So a lot of us wake up with anxiety. But what if you transform that to wake up with thankfulness? And if you woke up with gratitude in your first thought, now you may say, well, Jay, how do I do that? Write it down before you go to bed. What is your thankful thought that you want to wake up with? Often I'll go to sleep and your evening routine is as powerful as your morning routine at night. I will say to myself and write down sometimes three times, I am waking up happy, energized, and healthy. What I'm doing is I'm programming my mind the night before I stands for inspiration. You have to feed your mind with inspiration daily. It could be exactly what we're doing right now. It could be a podcast. It can be a paragraph of a book. What I like doing sometimes is writing down my favorite quote and I stick it on a post it next to my bed and I wake up and I read that first thing in the morning. And that way my mind is automatically in the positive. 80% of our studies show look at our phone first thing in the morning before we look at our kids or our partners. When you wake up to news notifications, negativity and noise. You're now at a minus five in the morning. You start your day with thankfulness, with inspiration. I'm going to tell you a few more. You end up your day with a plus five. Now, even if the day was tough, you end up at a plus two. And that's what it is. You're putting your shield on in the morning. M is meditation. You all know a lot about meditation at the base of it, for me, meditation is just checking in with yourself. It's just being present with yourself. How often throughout the day are you doing that? And the E is exercise. This was one that I only added properly, if I'm completely honest. In the last two, three years, and exercise has transformed my life. I'm not doing it to look a certain way. I'm not doing it to have a certain type of body. I'm doing it because I want to feel good and I want to live longer. And I don't want to die because of my own fault. Right? Like, that's basically it. Like, I'm okay with dying, but I don't want to die because I didn't take care of myself. And so I just want to put myself in the best possible state. So thankfulness, inspiration, meditation and exercise. Five minutes a day will change your life. And the more you do, the better. Amazing.
I love that. What a beautiful way to remember it. T I M E time.
