Benjamin Spall And The Magic Of A Morning Routine [Podcast Ep. #12]

Transcribed from the episode audio by AI, so it may contain mistakes.

Ravi0:17Welcome to the Motivated Life podcast. I'm Ravi Raman. On today's episode, I'll be speaking with Benjamin Spall. Benjamin Spall and I are going to talk about morning routines. Now, it seems like some of the most popular articles online in the personal development space have to do with morning routines. Now, I don't know why people seem to be fascinated with this topic. I know I have in the past. But people really really, can't get enough about articles and insights into how to hack their way to a better morning routine.

In fact, on my own website, I've written several articles, including 27 ways to improve your morning routine. I've written about my newly committed routine of waking up early at 5 a.m. every day. And so I've been a fan of writing these posts myself, just sharing what I do and how it impacts my life. And Benjamin Stahl and his business partner started a website called my morningroutine.com. And I ran across this website a few years ago. In fact, they even reached out to me and asked me if I would contribute my morning routine to their website, and I did.

So you can visit their website, type in my name, and see my routine. But really what they've done is start building up. up a directory and index of morning routines of people who have achieved something, some level of success in their field. And they interview them to help unpack what they do, why they do it, and the benefits they get from how they start their day. And what's interesting is Benjamin started this as a side hobby, side project. And now it's turned out that it's become so popular that they were approached by a major publishing house to write a book.

And so what they've done, Benjamin and his business partner, is they've taken the major themes and insights that they've gained through interviewing hundreds of people, as well as dozens of new interviews with industry leaders, from folks like Marie Kondo, who wrote that book, The Life-Changing Magic of tidying up, to General Stanley McChrystal, the retired four-star general, to Ed Catmull, the president and lead visionary at Pixar. Interviewing folks like that and many others to understand how they start their day and what we can learn from that.

And so the book is part journal or diary of the notes taken and talking with all these people to understand their morning routines And part self-help manual divided into chapters to help you understand what are some of the common themes of people who are successful in terms of how they start their morning routine from diet, exercise, when they go to bed, when they wake up, do they meditate or not And it tries to parse through all these routines and understand. Are there some common themes that we could use and apply to apply in our life?

So this is a short episode, but it does have some nuggets that I think will, at minimum, I hope, leave you thinking hard about how you start your day and thinking not how you can copy someone else's routine, but thinking about what might be the best routine for you. In my own life, I've discovered when I wake up early, I tend to get more done. I tend to feel better about the day. When I have a healthy smoothie for breakfast, I tend to feel better during the day than if I skip breakfast or eat something else.

When I meditate early in the morning, it tends to help me quiet down and focus throughout my whole day. And so I've learned some things about myself through experimentation that have really, really been helpful. And I hope this short episode leaves you curious about how you can improve your morning routine. to make your day even better going forward. So with that, let's get on with the podcast. Let's welcome Benjamin Spall. Benjamin, thanks for joining me. Thank you very much for having me. So let me guess you got up at 4 a.m.

did some meditation, had a green smoothie, did a workout, huh?

Benjamin4:54That couldn't be further from the truth right now, I have to say. Usually my morning routine is a little better. But what with this book, ironically, there's been a lot of early morning. But yeah, no, I usually get up about 7.30 most days, which I think puts me firmly in the kind of in between, you know, early rises and late rises stage. But yeah, I'm pretty much, I've never been particularly early or particularly late in that regard.

Ravi5:20And so I'm curious, like, from a morning routine perspective, I mean, what was it that got you so interested in morning routines that you? wanted to create a website and sort of become the de facto hub for morning routines online.

Benjamin5:39Yeah, well, I have to say, it's kind of strange how it's really exploded in the last few years, And we started the website about five years ago And, though it was being mentioned every now and then, it was not a subject that's as prevalent as it is today, So we kind of rode that wave, quite nicely, I have to say. But, yeah, so the idea came out in late 2012. Michael, my co-founder and now co-author he came up with the idea originally because we've both been thinking about we've been thinking a lot about habits.

I think we both recently read the power of habit book by charles doohic and we're both really interested in the importance of habits in our day-to-day lives. Um, so, yeah, we just kind of got came up with this idea for a website based on you know, the habits in the mornings that's basically morning routines and, uh, we got in contact with a couple friends of us and just asked if they'd be the first two or three people and, yeah, we just put it up online and ever since then, of the last just over five years now, we've been interviewing one person every single week, putting them up on the website.

And it became quite a collection.

Ravi6:37So you have hundreds of profiles. Yeah.

Benjamin6:40If you include all the new people we profile for the book, we've close to 325, almost 350 at this point.

Ravi6:51So this started out as sort of a hobby project, right? And now you've got a book coming out soon next week yes and how did how did that happen from hobby project to work

Benjamin7:05Yeah, it's kind of interesting in that it was always a side project and I think that kind of helped and that neither of us never of us really focused on it in the in the sense that, you know, neither of us made it our full-time job, and that that definitely helps with our SEO ranking. It's like kind of we weren't, we weren't tweaking it all the time, you know, we just kind of every week, you know, added some content and it kind of grew from there.

Um, but yeah, we, we actually the book deal came about just under two years ago. We were contacted by penguin by email and a funny story actually. I received the email and I actually found it in my spam folder and it was about two days from being deleted by, uh, google. You know how, like every 30 days, they just delete your spam and um, yeah, so that was pretty lucky. Also also a little bit like well, I wonder why they didn't follow up. But, um, I did, I did one at that point, but um, yeah, no, that was very lucky.

It's got a nice email from somebody at Penguin saying they've been on our website was very interested in the potential of making it into a book. So we talked and then they didn't hand it to us on a plate or anything. We had to go through the whole proposal stage and, you know, put that together with an agent. And yeah, basically that that was accepted about 15, 16 months ago now. And ever since then, it was just a case of building the book and contacting many, many hundreds of people to ask them to be in the book.

And yeah, it was a massive project. to be honest and I'm so happy that's all come together right now

Ravi8:28so the book isn't just your website edited you actually tell tell I guess tell us a little bit about the structure of the book and yeah and what's actually yeah

Benjamin8:38So the book includes 64 morning routine interviews and well over half of them are brand new and they won't be on our website or anything. There were these new people and the the ones that we have included from the website have been dramatically shortened because, you know, without taking without taking it the context from the original interviews, we kind of wanted to make it more punchy and kind of get to the point more and get through these interviews. But the book is broken down into 10 chapters and each chapter focuses on a different part of your morning.

So for example, we have a working out chapter. We have a meditation chapter. We have chapters for people who often away from home like traveling. We have a chapter for parents. We kind of have all these different chapters. And then within those chapters, we have interviews that kind of focus more on those areas, if not exclusively. And then we also have points that we ourselves have picked up and written. So we have, like for example, for the meditation chapter, we'll have a brief history of like different types of meditation.

And then we'll break down the points that we hear most frequently, not just from the interviews in the book, but from everyone we've ever interviewed about different ways to get into a meditation practice, different ways to, you know, keep on with that over time and such like that.

Ravi9:48Of all the people you've interviewed, I guess, who have been the most? most impressive in terms of just the most impressive morning routines.

Benjamin9:58I think the most impressive would be General Stanley McChrystal, and he's someone who we interviewed just for the book. And first of all, that was an intense interview. That's kind of scary to be put through to that phone line. But he was a very, very nice guy, and his routine is kind of intense. He gets up at 4 a.m. And immediately he goes for an hour and a half run and workout. And finally enough, that's kind of what people, when people, when people, hear about this book for the first time and about our website, they kind of think that that's what everyone's doing, so they kind of feel like it's not for them.

But actually, he is the anomaly, you know, like not many people are getting up that earlier. Not many people are working out that early. So his routine is very impressive and I love to read it and it's, you know, got some great tips that you might want to implement slightly later in the morning. But yeah, for the most part, the majority of the routines are much easier to kind of take a par and remix and kind of make your

Ravi10:49own. So 4 a.m. 90 minutes of running or working out. Yes.

Benjamin10:58Then he goes straight. Yeah, then he goes straight to work and has a full work day. Yeah.

Ravi11:02Okay. Who else have you interviewed that was impressive?

Benjamin11:05We interviewed Dave Asprey, who is the creator of Bulletproof Coffee And his. His routine is kind of crazy, like for the good for sure. But yeah, he definitely has very good, very good ideas and very good morals. Like he, he doesn't check his phone and such in front of his kids and he has this nice story in there about when he drives him to school. He kind of he's constantly making up this story in which of them in characters, so it's very sweet. But yeah, he's also very intense with working out and very intense with nutrition.

So it's kind of an interview of two halves his one, but that's that's a very interesting one.

Ravi11:41uh-huh yeah i'm sure he has plenty of bulletproof coffee in the morning too

Benjamin11:45he does indeed i may have had to cut some of the mentions for the so good, making it not look like an ad.

Ravi11:52So let's talk about a few of the top themes that have come up in your interviews. You've mentioned meditation a few times. I guess, from your perspective, what are some of the top themes and let's dive in? Maybe we could start with meditation and then go from there. Yeah,

Benjamin12:09So, yeah, meditation came up time and again, And I personally meditate for just 10 minutes a day but, yeah, whether it's a long session or a short session, many, many people mention meditation. Many of the people aren't even in the meditation chapter. They just, you know, say they do it. Another thing that came up time and again is exercise and working out, although it's important to point out that this doesn't necessarily have to be in the morning. So, while we we feature people that do it in the morning in that particular chapter, many people get benefit for, for example, doing this in the afternoon, just before or after lunch, or even in the evening, kind of after work, as a way to, like you know, burn off steam and stuff like that.

Um, so, yeah, I would definitely say that working out is uh, it in itself is more important of the time of day that you do it, although I would say that, um, if you do it in the morning, it's less likely to kind of fall by the wayside. Uh, which is a point many people mentioned are

Ravi13:01there any specific kinds of workouts that um either were common threads or just were outliers obviously 90 minutes of working out every morning at at 4 a m that that's an outliner liar but yeah

Benjamin13:14The yeah, the outliers were the more intense ones. So, um, yeah, like kind of said, like a misconception of the book is like everyone is so intense in it, but that's, that's really not the case. Like the outliers and the intense ones, uh, the common of threads are really people who do something very simple. So, for example, I just mentioned, you know, I meditate 10 minutes. I also every morning, if I nearly every morning, I do, you know, 20 push-ups and like 10 jumping jacks and that is, that is not intense at all.

Um, but I do it, it and it's easy. And like I really don't do it because it's such an easy thing to do and I think that that's something that came up time and again with people with their workouts is that they actually do something very simple in the morning, because, for the most part, if it's simple enough, you just you're not going to skip it.

Ravi13:57yeah how about food

Benjamin14:00yeah food wasn't a huge factor we looked at to be honest most I'd say you know just coming off the top of the head I say most people eat breakfast of some type Some people don't. General of Crystal, he's someone who doesn't. Yeah, food wasn't a big thing, but something that was mentioned many times is sleep. And though people did report their hours and everyone that we've ever interviewed on the website plus the book put together, they approximate to about seven and a half hours sleep, which is, you know, a pretty nice number.

But yeah, in general, the majority of the people we spoke to actually placed a premium on their sleep. Some of them actually placed a greater premium on that than actually their routine. So you know if, if they went to bed a little bit too late, they'll actually think it's more important for me to get some sleep than to, you know, get every single part of my routine in and, although you know we're not 100%, might question that a little bit. You know, um, sleep is incredibly important and, um, from what we noticed it was, it was always the more successful people with the like, more high profile and high powered jobs.

They're the ones who were talking about sleep even more.

Ravi15:08interesting that's that's really interesting to hear that. And you even have some stats on your website around sleep time and duration, I believe. Yeah.

Benjamin15:17And we do say, like I say, it was about seven and a half hours was the average of everyone we interviewed. And we do say in the book, you know, scientists and whatnot, they recommend seven to nine hours. And you could be, and I feel like I'm probably in that direction, you could be in the higher end of that. So you could be closer to nine hours and seven. So if you see seven to nine hours and you think you're doing well because you're consistently getting seven but you're also tired throughout the day there's a good chance that you need eight or maybe even closer to nine hours a night

Ravi15:44is there anyone that you discovered that is is breaking the mold but maybe in a sort of a slacker kind of way maybe someone just sleeps a sleeps in way late and just doesn't meditate right right right yeah it's successful no

Benjamin16:01it's interesting we certainly feature a few night hours in the book, for example, you know, people who's sleeping late and they get the majority of their work done later in the evening. And I think that that's also kind of a process of the point you are in your life, because I know like prior to being married, I definitely stayed up later and worked later, but it's a lot different when you're married. But also, what I will say is it, it's an interesting question, because to be honest, the things that become most apparent as you read through the interviews is how normal and kind of how rounded so many of the routines are.

So there wasn't anything especially crazy. And we do have interesting names in the book that you might think, I guess Dave Asprey was in that direction, but you might think, oh, they've got a wacky routine. But for the most part, they don't. And they're kind of just very simple. And the reason that these routines and these people were successful is because of how ordinary for them their routines are.

Ravi16:51Yeah, you, I saw in the blurb for the book that you interviewed Marie Konda. Yeah. And that one of her, I guess she has a sort of a, sort of a. morning ritual.

Benjamin17:02Right. Yeah, yeah, a Japanese ritual she does. Yeah,

Ravi17:07yeah. Yeah, so it's interesting to see that people sort of piece together something that works for them. I am wondering, though, I mean, is there, if you were to offer some advice to people in terms of things to try or experiment in order to have a better morning routine, which I guess the whole point of a morning routine is that it has a ripple effect through the day. Are there any, um, are there any, I guess lessons learned that you would recommend people start implementing into their own morning routine?

Benjamin17:37Yeah, so I think the main lessons learned, I say, is in the beginning. So we all have a routine already. You know, we all get up, we go to the bathroom, whatever. So even if we don't feel like we're doing anything productive, we all, like, kind of have a kind of routine that we follow. So what I would say is when you want to bring something new into your morning routine, whether that's meditation or working out or kind of doing some productive or creative work, first thing, is to start slow and kind of only bring one or two things at a time, but do them for a short amount of time.

So like I mentioned with my meditation, I just do that for 10 minutes because it's easy for me. In 10 minutes, even a very busy day and a very busy morning, I can fit in 10 minutes. And the same, you know, with working out, you could do like a, they have the seven minute workouts and that's very popular with our participants. Or, you know, like saying, you know, you'll sit and do some creative work for half an hour or something like that. When you you do that, you're much, you're much less likely to flake on yourself and you're much actually more likely to continue it for a longer period of time, which will make it likely to continue even further on.

Ravi18:41Seven-minute workout, I'm not familiar with that. Is that like, is that like the jumping jacks and it

Benjamin18:46kind of, yeah, no, it kind of is. I can't remember if it was created by the New York Times or not, but they have, they've really kind of commodied it. Like, if you go on their website, that's, uh, or if you just Google seven-minute workouts, you'll be taken to the New York times. But yeah, no, it's kind of it's jumping jacks, it squats, which are obviously the worst ones, you know, push-ups and planks and all that such. But yeah, to be honest, several minutes, it feels longer at the end of it.

But yeah, it's a little, yeah, it's a little harder than it sounds, but yeah, that came up a lot.

Ravi19:16And for your personal morning routine, are there any changes you're looking to make or hoping to make?

Benjamin19:22I mean, I've made a lot of changes since, you know, since running this website and doing the book, some main ones I've made is like I no longer have my phone in the bedroom. And I live in a small studio apartment. So to be honest, I can't get it that far away from my bedroom. But yeah, so I put out an airplane mode overnight. I keep it in the kitchen. And last year, my wife bought me like just a nice analog alarm clock. Horrible alarm, so, but you know, nice clock.

So I keep it in there. And then I don't actually have to, I don't have to use my phone as an alarm. And it also means that, you know, I can get up slowly. I can then come into the kitchen and I don't need to look at my phone until I decide I need to. That's, you know, on certain mornings, you know, if you have meetings first thing, you kind of have to check it and it sucks, but you do so that you're not late or something changes.

But that's one thing I've done for a long time. Another thing I do is I just try to keep my morning as calm as possible. So, you know, when I get up, I'll do my push-ups, I'll do my jumping jacks, and then I'll sit and meditate. But this whole time, my wife will be slowly, you know, waking herself up in the other side of the room. yeah, so then I'll just, you know, slowly go about making breakfast. And like I said, I won't pick up my phone and definitely won't check email unless I really, really have to.

And I find this is nice because, you know, it's a way of bringing the calm of the night kind of into your morning. And for most of us, you know, once we, once our, you know, breakfast is over, we then have to get on with the rest of the day. And that really isn't that calm, especially with emails coming in, you know, work and everything. So it's a great way to really, you know, make that calm last for longer.

Ravi20:56So are there any other stories worth mentioning in

Benjamin20:59the book? Yeah. So, I mean, one thing that we speak about a lot is the importance of putting an evening routine in place. And many of our, many of the people we interviewed talk about this, and we actually have a whole chapter on this in the book. But basically, if you're, you know, if you have a bad evening and you have a bad night's sleep, you're really not going to have a great morning and your morning routine is going to suffer as a result. So we talk about putting an evening routine in place where it's both a calm, you know, it's a calm space for you and your spouse or whoever.

But then also you get kind of a few things done that you wouldn't want to do in the morning. So you do some washing up. You kind of put your clothes out. You know the classic trick of if you want to work out in the morning, place your workout clothes somewhere as the first thing you see, And basically it's just. It's a great way to really bring about. You know, use your time well in the evening so that when you wake up you don't have to do these things, because there's nothing worse and kind of waking up and going into your kitchen and wanting to make breakfast, but then you just have a pile of washing up to deal with first thing.

That's a real bad way to start your day, especially like on a Monday morning or something. So we really like to emphasize the importance of morning routines, evening routine, sorry, which is why we have a whole chapter on them and also on sleep in the book.

Ravi22:09Yeah. Yeah, napping is my secret. I don't know if people commented on that in your interviews.

Benjamin22:16You know what? Yeah, we actually, it doesn't come up that often in interviews, but we mention it, and I've written about this before. And yeah, I personally take naps, only short, kind of 20 minute naps in the middle of the day. I could probably do it with one soon. I shall be better. But yeah, no, it's, napping is great. If you, if you didn't get enough sleep the night before, I wouldn't recommend it, you know, I wouldn't recommend sleeping less to nap. But if you, if you didn't get enough sleep the night before anyway, then I think it's a great way to kind of recharge and give yourself a little bit of boost in the afternoon.

Ravi22:46Awesome. Well, Ben, you've motivated me to take a fresh look at my morning routine. I'm an early riser. That's a change I made a few years ago, and it's been a good change. And I do my morning smoothie, and I meditate as well. But I'm sure there's some areas to improve as well. Looking forward to checking out your book. We

Benjamin23:07have that a great quote from you, don't we, in the book? Yeah. Meditation is, what was it, like a superpower or?

Ravi23:14Meditation is my superpower, something like that. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I appreciate that. And so if people want to learn more about what you do, where should be?

Benjamin23:25Yeah, so you can go to our website, which is my morning routine.com, and then you can find all the interviews we already have on there, as well as links to the book. And you can find me personally at benjaminspaul.com.

Ravi23:37Awesome. Well, Benjamin, have a great day. Thank you very much. You can get more details about everything we talked about today on my website. Just go to Ravi Raman.com. forward slash podcast for show notes with links and additional background information. You'll also find a full archive of all previous episodes. By the way, if you're enjoying the podcast, it would mean a lot to me if you would leave a review and rating. It really helps others to discover what I'm up to here. And of course, you can always share it with your friends.

Well, that's it for today. I'll see you in the next episode.