I try to start my day with one of the following:
- Running
- Tony Robbins priming
- Wim Hoff breathing exercises and a cold shower
Then, I try to journal. The purpose is to dump any lingering thoughts on paper, so they are not cluttering my mind anymore.
Persistent or frustrating thoughts have a way of coming back and something as easy as writing it down purges them from consciousness.
I fail to do this more often than not though. So, I manage to write everything down every 3rd or 4th day.
The ideal next thing is to jump straight into the hardest thing to do on my list. I am most productive in the mornings, but with the European Union and United States time difference, there is always something that happened during the night that needs a reaction.
The hardest part is judging what is hard or more important. Sometimes it is an intricate implementation detail, but with each year I am discovering that dealing with people is more important, effective and difficult. Though, separating signal from the noise is tougher in communication than in code.
I would love to reserve the "unfocused" tasks for the post-lunch energy slump, but it is hard to judge and quickly recognize what these tasks are.
When I am home, communication happens in the late afternoon or evening. I am about six timezones ahead of my coworkers, so they tend to come online later in my day.
Some of the days I can follow the above schedule. In others— life intervenes. My grandpa is getting older and needs our care, we recently ran a full-on apartment renovation, and we are currently in the process of organizing a wedding. So, we have a lot of "life" thrown at us (I'm sure having kids feels this way, and I am not looking forward to that particular aspect).
When I have errands to run, I sacrifice my beautiful morning routine to get stuff done. This happens so often that I count this as a typical thing. I jump out of my bed, scramble like crazy to deal with whatever I have to and dive straight to work whenever I can.
If you have to deal with your family, you will not be able to do the morning thing every day. Start once a week and experiment with different approaches to determine what works for YOU. I found that meditation is not for me, but spending time outside helps me a lot.