Rest in the World: My Morning Routine (Updated Edition)

The fact that I’m not a morning person doesn’t impede my ability to work well in the early morning; in fact, it probably gives me a boost. When people feel alert and active, their ability to focus on the task at hand and ignore other thoughts is high; psychologists call this ability inhibition. In contrast, when people are low energy and in need of

early birds did better on the insight questions in the late afternoon, during their circadian lows, while night owns produced more insights in the morning.

Dealing with deadlines, mastering the crafts of editing (at Encyclopedia Britannica) and consulting (at Institute for the Future), dealing with clients, and trying to fashion myself into someone who looked like a Productive Worker, didn’t leave a lot of time for reflection about why I was working the way I was.

It’s also a world that’s social media-free. I never look at Facebook or Twitter in these early hours. They’re just not attractive to me in the pre-dawn hours. I don’t check work email, and generally don’t open my personal email, either. I want to keep this time reserved for what I need to do, not what others need me to do.

The night before I program the coffeepot, set out a coffee mug, and put out clothes. I set up my working space the night before, too. I put whatever books and notebooks I’ll need on my desk. I close my email and browser so I won’t be tempted by them. I open my “Morning Music” collection, and queue up a playlist. I write a list of things to focus on

Getting out in the fresh air, experiencing the world at another species' pace, and walking in companionable silence are healthy activities, but not automatically creative ones. I need to have just been working, to still have a problem echoing in my mind, in order to have a moment of insight.

On most mornings I’m nudged out of sleep at 5:00 am by the strains of Miles Davis’ “Freddie Freeloader” or one of Bach’s solo cello pieces.

One potential problem to working outside your circadian peak is that you’re more easily distracted. However, a study by University of Arizona psychologist Cynthia May found that under the right circumstances, this effect can be turned to your advantage.

The fact that I have ideas after mornings when I’ve been working, and don’t have them on mornings when I’ve slept in, suggests that a wandering mind only thinks hard about ideas that you’ve been working hard on. It only does its work if you’ve done yours.