What does your morning routine look like at the moment?
Morning routine is wake up.
If I... Around about what time?
I'm waking up these days around 6 a.m., 6.30 a.m.
I'm trying to go to sleep by about 10.30 p.m.
Sometimes it's 11, sometimes it's 10.
I wake up and I have to be careful here, because whenever I've described my routine in a little bit of detail, people always say I can't believe you, don't go to the bathroom.
And it's like, well, of course.
I put my pants on.
Exactly.
Right foot, left foot.
So I want to be clear.
I take care of my basic functions.
But when I wake up, I make a beeline for sunlight.
So I'm going to get sunlight in my eyes for the.
You know I'll probably go into the grave saying this, so forgive me if people have heard me say this before, but the single best thing you can do for your sleep, your energy, your mood, your wakefulness, your metabolism is to get natural light in your eyes early in the day.
Don't wear sunglasses to do it, takes about 10 minutes or so.
If you live in a cloudy area, if you're in the UK in the winter, Yes.
Or the summer.
Or the summer.
Maybe you resort to some artificial light as a replacement.
But as much as one can get bright natural and, if not natural, artificial light in your eyes early in the day without sunglasses, contacts and eyeglasses are fine.
Don't try and do it through a window or windshield.
It's going to take far too long.
This sets in motion a huge number of different neurobiological and hormonal cascades that are good for you reduces stress late at night, offsets cortisol a million different things really, that are good for you.
So i get that.
And yes, is that walk, doing a little walk?
Ideally that would be a walk, but sometimes we'll just go into the yard and have some coffee and, and you know, soak in whatever sunlight, through through the clouds.
If it's a cloudy, overcast day, it might be 20, 30 minutes.
If it's a Um, it's a very bright day.
It might just be a few minutes, but really the the quality studies on humans that have looked at this say try and get as much natural light as you can in the morning hours, whenever it is that that is for you, especially the first three hours after waking.
If you can work outside grade, if you can get in your window, because as opposed to just in a dark conference room, that's better, but If you can get outside, that would be fantastic.
So I get sunlight.
I hydrate.
I drink water.
And then yerba mate is my favorite form of coffee.
Excuse me, caffeine.
Are you waiting?
How long are you waiting?
90 to 120 minutes.
Are you doing any salts during that time?
Are you taking any electrolytes in?
I am a fan of water with element.
Before I had element packets, I would just take a little bit of sea salt or pink salt.
What's your favorite element flavor?
I like them all.
There's one I don't like.
I'm not a fan of the chocolate one, but I like it.
Yeah.
Some people love it.
My podcast producer, his wife loves that.
So I give it to her, the chocolate mint one.
But I like the raspberry, the citrus one.
I love that stuff.
Mango chili is.
If you open the mango chili and breathed in shortly afterwards, it's like being pepper sprayed.
It's absolutely insane.
It's like it's like being blasted in the face.
But yeah, I mean that's, that's just the best way.
That cold glass of water and that first thing in the morning.
And I mean it was you who uh, reassured me of the what I thought was bro science about your adenosine system not being active for the first 90 minutes, and if you're going to pump caffeine onto that, you're not really actually acting on that.
Your adrenal system is the one that you need to be looking at optimal.
You hydration, all that sort of stuff.
It's just such a good way to start the day.
So okay, we've got 90 minutes deep.
What have you been doing in that?
You've had your light in the eyes.
What have you been doing between that and the yerba mate?
90 minutes.
I do everything I can to not do email, not do social media and to take care of a few critical tasks.
These days I have this obsession with trying to do one cognitively hard thing a day one and one physically hard thing a day.
Now it does not extreme physical, not David Goggins level workouts or anything but in that 90 minutes I'll typically try and read a research article, start to finish, or I'll work on a document that I might be doing a grant or research paper, or planning a podcast or researching a podcast.
I try and get my brain into kind of a linear mode.
I try and narrow that aperture.
Because, if I don't, the distraction that's created by social media and interactions with others can kind of wick out into the rest of the day.
So I'm not necessarily trying to finish something in that time, but I try and do something challenging.
I experience great pleasure from through something mentally challenging.
But that's something that I built up since my university years, when I was about 19 or so, got serious about school and really started to experience the deep pleasure of like ah, I figured that out.
Or like, that was really tough.
I don't always succeed, but that's what I'm doing in that hour to 90 minutes.
But I confess sometimes we'll take a walk during that time and maybe talk through some things that are challenging, or sometimes I get lazy and I'll miss a day of that cognitive challenge.
Then I do caffeine about 90 to 120 minutes after waking.
And even though I prefer to work out earlier, I generally will then do some sort of physical workout.
I have a very consistent routine.
I've done it for 30 years where I wait train for 45 or minutes to an hour every other day.
And occasionally I take an extra day off and occasionally, due to travel or other commitments, I'll occasionally double up two days and then take two days off.
So it's really boring, you know, talk about workout schedules, but it's really simple.
It's like you know, I'll do a uh kind of pushing day rest, pulling day upper body, push up rest, upper body, pull rest and then legs, take two days off, something like that.
Are you doing on the off days?
Are you doing some sort of zone three?
Always jogging or skipping rope.
Those are my favorite forms of cardio, sometimes swimming, but typically I'll go running for 30 to 45 minutes.
Or if I'm feeling a little bit lazier, because I always find the high intensity stuff to be easier than the long drawn out stuff, I'll sometimes throw on a weight vest, a 30 or 50 pound weight vest, and I'll go out for a shorter run.
Or I'm a big fan of knees over toes.
Ben Patrick, I know you had him on.
We were down in Costa Rica with him and his wife who had the best time and learned so much.
I'll occasionally do a backwards hill walk or throw on the weight vest for that.
We sometimes will get bands and we'll tap.
So there's a great way to combine this.
We will sometimes get two people in one of these thick bands do hill walks in the morning while getting our sunlight.
But that I don't really consider a workout.
I consider that just kind of rehabilitative movement.
So on the off days, I'm doing cardio.
And sometimes that's in the morning, sometimes that's in the evening.
I do not like to weight train on the second half of the day because I like to be really caffeinated when I weight train.
I like to listen to loud, fast music.
Most of the time, not always.
I keep my phone out or off for most workouts.
Podcasts maybe if I'm running, but I really try hard when I'm working out to just focus on the workout.
And those workouts.
The weight training workouts are always 10 minutes or so of warmup and then no more than 40 to 50 minutes of really hard work.
If I do train hard any longer, I don't recover enough to be able to come in a few days later.
And when I train that way, I generally make pretty consistent progress.
You're taking yourself up until what's that?
Probably maybe 10 30, 11 am, something like that.
Yeah, and then i'll eat my first real meal.
Now, occasionally i'll wake up really hungry if i didn't eat that well the night before, but typically the after i train.
I yeah, i'll eat.
I like oatmeal after i train oatmeal fruit, some fish oil, protein drink and then maybe 90 to 120 minutes after that i'll have a real lunch.
My lunch is pretty much the biggest meal of the day, if i have my way.
It'll be A steak, a salad, maybe a little more starch, although I sort of got it earlier.
Brazil nuts.
That meal sometimes can extend longer and longer.
I love to eat.
I love to eat.
Yeah.
So I'll eat.
And then I confess, I usually will work a little bit more, for about 30 minutes or an hour typically email.
And then I'll take a 10 to 30 minute yoga nidra nap or a nap and then come back refreshed.
Um, i really struggle with the naps, man.
I come back after that and my emotions are all over the place.
I'm disoriented.
Maybe it's because i struggle to fall asleep super quickly and therefore i'm extending that period out for a little bit longer than i need.
I probably need to try the yoga nidra thing, but for me it's it.
I'm absolutely all over.
If i do that, i wake up and i don't know what day it is and my emotions always feel a little bit out of whack as well.
I wake up grumpy from naps.
Sometimes I'm told
There are a few times when I've woken up just really angry.
I have no idea what that's about.
I don't know any of the neurochemistry associated with that.
Sometimes I wake up from naps, it's really pleasant.
I'll occasionally, if the nap is early enough in the day afterwards I'll have a nice double espresso and get back into work.
That's the hardest part of the day, actually.
If I was well-structured in the early part of the day, it's that 2 or 3 pm.
The key is then to try and get something really useful done cognitively again.
So some people might look at this and say wait, you're working for an hour in the morning and 30 minutes here in an hour in the afternoon.
When are you actually working?
But it's really about the depth of the trench when you're working.
And so if I'm going to drop into something again for a few hours in the afternoon, I'm really going to drop into it.
And that's typically phone off and out of the room.
And my goal is to get to the evening time so that I can do the things that I want.
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Peace.
