Moment 72 - Why You Need to Care About Your Morning Routine: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

00:01You described the three M's of a really good morning routine. What are those three M's of a good morning routine? What can I do today? How long is it going to take me? And what do you believe a good morning routine contains? Yeah. It's a big picture view here. I have a bias towards morning routines because I have found in my own life, they've really, really helped me. So let me just talk about stress for a moment, because this really plays into why I think morning routines are so important.

00:33I've got this concept of micro stress doses and stress thresholds. So every one of us have got our own unique personal stress threshold, right? That depends on your life, how you deal with things and what's going on. And when we get to that threshold, that's when things start to go wrong. That's when we snap at someone. We have a fight with our partner. Our neck goes or our back goes into spasm, right? That's when you're at your threshold, right? So I'm saying to people, and I've really found this to be true for pretty much everyone. Let's say you wake up and you are far away from your threshold. You've had a good night's sleep, right? So you're feeling good.

01:18What's the average morning for a lot of people these days? Okay, let's say the alarm goes off at 6.30, right? So they're in a deep sleep. Alarm goes off, jolts them out of that sleep, have to get it. Okay, that's microstress dose or MSD number one. Okay, pick up the phone. Oh man, I'm just gonna put it on snooze. You know, I need a bit more. Snooze, put it back. Six minutes later, it goes on again. MSD number two. You pick up your phone, you go, I'm just quickly gonna check email. Oh man, there were these three emails I didn't get back to yesterday oh man i need to do that msd number three um have a quick look on instagram someone's left you a snarky comment msd number four then you realize oh man i've been in bed for 10 minutes i have to get up get ready i've got a guest coming to shoot a podcast with i'm not talking about your life i'm just saying anyone's life you are talking about right and so here's the point at me running each one of those things right is a micro stress dose and each one of those is getting you closer and closer to that stress threshold. The mistake we make is that when something happens at three o'clock in the afternoon, right, when that email from your colleague frustrates you, you think it

02:25was that email, but it wasn't the email. It was the fact that you've already acquired 20 micro stress doses. You're right at your threshold. You've got no capacity to deal with it. So that email now bothers you. So what I suggest to people is many people leave the house in the morning having already accumulated about 15 micro stress doses. So they're already a lot closer to their threshold than they would have otherwise been, which means they've got less resilience.

02:51They won't take much for them to get triggered, right? So why I think morning routines can be so valuable is they can reduce how many micro stress doses you're exposed to first thing in the morning. So you are going into your day with much more headroom and much more resilience. but I think they're also useful if you're feeling quite stressed when you wake up and anxious I think they help almost undo the damage of micro stressors and bring you back to baseline was that clear perfectly clear so that's my kind of overarching view on why they're so important so for me I know if I do that morning routine yes it gives me perspective on my life it allows me to reflect, but it also feeds the control leg of the core happiness stool. But it also means that I'm not exposing myself to micro stress doses. In fact, I'm getting back to baseline or I'm going into negative. I'm actually giving myself a lot more resilience and capability to face the day.

03:54So I always try and simplify things to people. So I think a complete morning routine for me has got these three Ms. Mindfulness, Movement, Mindset. And that's how I orientate my own morning routine. So I started with mindfulness. Now, I've been doing this for a few years, right? And currently my morning routine is about 30 minutes, but that's because I've created a life where I can do that and it works for me. And I get up silly early. That's also because my kids have always been early risers. And I know if I don't get that time to myself, I'm just not as good a dad and I'm not as good a husband. So my bedtime has got earlier and earlier so I can get up earlier and earlier before my kids do. Right. So I start off with mindfulness, which at the moment is a practice of breath work and then meditation. Then what I do, I go to my kitchen and I put coffee on. Now, very particular with how I do my coffee. I weigh out 15 grams in the French press. I pour 250 grams of water in and I put a timer on for five minutes. Why is that important? It's not. It's the way I like my coffee. But the point is, I know for five minutes, my coffee's going to brew. So in those five minutes, I don't go on Instagram. I don't check

05:08my email. I do a workout in my kitchen in my pajamas. I'm in my pajamas. I'm not to put on any fancy gear. I might do a bodyweight workout. I might have a kettlebell kicking around. Whatever I feel like I will do. And then I get the gorgeous rewards of a hot, fresh cup of organic coffee that I like. And I sit there and I'll read something positive. Like I've got a few books kicking around in my living room. I'll just pick one that I'm drawn to. I'll probably read for about 10 minutes while sipping coffee. Something that's not negative, that's uplifting. Right? So that's what it looks like for me. Now, sometimes my daughter is currently nine. She's got a sixth sense that daddy's up and she creeps in with me. If she gets in with me, two things I want to say about that. The old wrong kid from a few years ago would have got frustrated. Man, I kind of need, I want my own space. You know, why? You know, I should have got up earlier. I don't do that anymore. I'm a lot more compassionate to myself. I use that. I go, okay, great. Okay, great. She's here. Okay, darling, just sit here. Daddy's just finishing off my meditation. And she sits there and I think, okay, this is cool. Like, I don't need to look at it as a problem. This is life,

06:17right if we think life is going to be great when everything goes our way we're going to be waiting a long time so i embrace it now go oh fantastic and then i also think as a dad well she's also now seeing daddy prioritizes his health he thinks it's important to look after his mental well-being every day i'm hoping that she also absorbs some of these ideas as she grows up but the mindset piece i don't sit there and read if my daughter's there we instead do affirmations together so there's really good research on affirmations in terms of what they do for us just short positive powerful statements so the one we do together is we just say i'm happy i'm calm i'm stress-free right so the two of us sit there we hold hands and we say that for a minute at the end of it i feel brilliant she feels amazing now i get it some people hear that okay that is cheesy as anything and maybe it is but you know what there's good research on it undergraduate students who did affirmations before their exam perform better, right? You know, how you program your mind matters. So that's what mine looks like, right? It used to be about five, 10 minutes. Now, yeah, I can do half an hour, right? But I've also become aligned. I've now,

07:33I go to bed earlier, right? And let's not forget, Stephen, you're at a different stage in life to me right i'm in my early 40s i'm happily married i've got two young kids right you're in your late 20s right was i doing morning routines when i was 29 no i wasn't it's like clue that i texted you at 2 a.m last night isn't it yeah i was like oh man like i'm getting up to do my routine and seemed to just go on to bed but but let me tell you about a patient who i saw many years ago can't remember how old she was she's probably around 42 really bad skin and I strongly felt that stress was exacerbating and really aggravating her skin and she said Dr Chachi I don't have time for any of this stuff right I'm busy I've got two kids I've got to get out to work and we tried various things but I managed to persuade her and inspire her to try a five-minute routine and this is what she did she did the three Ms in five minutes it's just one minute of what I call 3-4-5 breathing.

08:37So you breathe in for three, you hold for four, and you breathe out for five. Anytime your out-breath is longer than your in-breath, you help to lower your body's stress response and activate its relaxation response. There's many ways you can do that, but I like this breath that I call the 3-4-5 breath. So she did one minute of 3-4-5 breathing. She did two minutes of yoga. She had some of her favorite sequence, she did two minutes of yoga. and then she did two minutes of affirmations that's it and she got on with her day she came to see me a few weeks later and she thought actually i just feel so much better and her skin complaints had gone down by over 50 percent and over the course of the next few months she was hardly getting any flare-ups at all because it was a ripple effect it wasn't just that but by doing that and giving her that little bubble of resilience first thing in the morning she would then go out for a walk at lunchtime instead of just sitting in the canteen on her phone she'd go I'm gonna go for a 10 minute walk around the block you know so for me it's just you showing yourself right at the start of the day you know what I'm worth it I'm worth spending a bit of time on today and for me I'm a I've got to bias it because if I don't do stuff like that in the

09:51morning I don't do it once the day starts forget it and something that might have value for your audience, Stephen. And I, you know, I guess I'm coming in thinking Stephen Bartlett, successful businessman, loads of entrepreneurs listening, thinking about, you know, business and stuff. And I, you know, I kind of want to help people. And let's zoom into the middle M, movement. Why is it that I'm able to do a five minute workout every day? Like I've rarely missed a day for three years. That's not because I've got more motivation than anyone else. It's because I understand the science of behavior change, right? I think it's going to, I hope it's going to have value for people. There's two big rules that I've learned about human behavior. Number one is, if you make something easy, you will do it. So what's that got to do with my morning routine?

10:49Well, I made it so easy for me to do, right? I don't need to buy any equipment. Everything's there. I don't need to get change. I don't need to look up a workout. I don't need to do it. It literally happens because I don't have to think. I've made it really easy. And to zoom this out to business for a moment, it's reported that when Amazon went to one click ordering, it's reported their profits went up by $300 million a year, right? So let's rewind 10 years when they didn't have it. What did you have to do? Put in your order, go to the next screen, type in your card deals, go to the next screen, confirm audit, right? Every single step is a reason to procrastinate, pull out and not make the purchase. So what do they do? One click ordering, boom, before you blinked, something's coming that evening, right? So they're doing what I think they should do for their business. Why did Netflix roll one video or one show into the next one? It's not out of the goodness of their own hearts to go, oh, you know, let's help people. No, they're using the science of human behavior. Before you realize it's 12.30 at night, I need to go to bed. I've got to get it for work. You are straight into another episode. So you don't stop. That's why

11:58YouTube roll into the next video, right? So these guys understand human behavior. When we, as humans, try and apply it to our own health, we throw it out the window. We think, oh, it's got to be hard. It's got to be really tough. I've got to go running one hour, four times a week. and we, again, first two weeks in January, we managed to do it. Then we fall off the wagon because we think motivation is going to last forever and it doesn't. In the science, it's called the motivation wave. Motivation comes up, motivation goes down. Plan your behaviors for when your motivation is down, not when it's up. Then you will still do it. So number one is you make it easy. I've made it easy. Number two, which is just as important is where are you going to put this behavior. You can't just think about it. Oh, I'm going to meditate. I'm going to move.

12:44No, you need to be very intentional. Now, every single behavior we do needs a trigger, right? So a trigger could be, oh, I remembered to do it. Sure, that works. It's just the most unreliable trigger that exists. The next best trigger is like a notification. Like, you know, oh, you've got to be here to record a podcast with Stephen. Okay, great. I know I've got to do that. or you put a post-it note on your fridge. That's great. But the very best trigger, as evidenced by the research, and a lot of this comes from Professor BJ Fogg at Stanford.

13:19Instagram was literally invented in his class as an assignment, essentially. He has shown that if you stick on your new behavior onto an existing habit, it's much more likely to happen. Like the coffee? Like the coffee. I don't need my PA to phone me at five in the morning, say, hey, Rangan, listen, you must remember to make your coffee. I don't need my Google Calendar notification to pop and say, hey, Rangan, don't forget to make your coffee. I'm going to do that.

13:50It's locked in as a habit. I don't have to give it any conscious thought. It's going to happen. So therefore, if I stick my workout on there, I vastly increase the likelihood that it's going to happen. Add on to the fact that I keep kettlebells and dumbbells in my kitchen. My wife used to say, can we not just put these away in the cupboard? And I said, listen, babe, here's the thing. And I've seen this with patients. If you put this stuff out of the way so that the kitchen looks nice, right?

14:16I'm never going to lift up that weight. Out of sight, out of mind. We need to constantly trigger. So the kitchen's not a mess. It's just in the corner. There's a kettlebell. So as I'm making the coffee, I can see it. It's looking at me. Even if all I do is pick it up to move it, I've picked it up. And what it does, Stephen, is that on a very base, primal level, it shows me each morning that I have value, that I'm worth treating with respect. You know, chapter three of the book is all about treat yourself with respect.

14:45Many of us, as I've done for much of my life, don't. We struggle with compassion for ourselves. We struggle to be kind to ourselves, right? But the research is really clear. people who are more compassionate to themselves, they're healthier, they're happier, they're more successful at work. We think we've got to beat ourselves up inside to do stuff, right? It's a myth. It's a short-term win. It's a long-term fail. And there are simple things that we can do.