Morning routine (story)

Some days I'm super lazy and don't even want to do my morning routine. That was especially the case during the pandemic, when all the days started blending together, and you could just roll out of bed and log onto a zoom meeting.

If I procrastinate my morning routine, then I'm basically procrastinating the rest of my responsibilities for the day, because I use the fact that my morning routine isn't done yet as a blocker to avoiding work. Like the "I'm still sleeping, meh lying in bed on my phone" kind of barrier. But also, once I've finished my morning routine I feel much more willing to get stuff done, or do stuff.

So maybe 9 months ago I started using a digital checklist on Google Keep that's literally my morning routine. It's quite silly, it has stuff like "brush teeth," "wash face," and "put on contact lenses," but I get the satisfaction from checking them off. Then I feel willing to check off my actual TODOs.

I don't have to use the checklist every day, just on days when I'm not motivated. Or I'm traveling and in a new place; I feel like I've gotten a bit discombobulated because the environment has changed, so then having the checklist helps me maintain a certain constance.

Almost every morning since then, I play "Wake Up, Get Down" and then start checking off my morning routine checklist (https://open.spotify.com/track/1gEB5InUzgNLHPv8H34v54?si=7d4833e8d0fa4d67). I think the funniest part (or most mildly amusing part) is opening the Google Keep app on my phone, and "unchecking" all of the checked boxes from the previous morning I had to use the checklist, to reuse the checklist, because I think from a design perspective I don't think any software designer would have anticipated someone unchecking and rechecking an entire list constantly.