Our morning routine for studying

“If this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day?” - Tim Ferris, the author of the bestseller The 4-hour work week

This is how we start studying every day:

1. Wake up
2. Make the bed
3. Open the windows
4. Bathroom
5. Glass of Water
6. Close the windows
7. Get dressed
8. Sit down and start timer on Toggl
9. Successfully revise one Anki flash card*
10. Coffee break after the first batch of doing flash cards
11. Make (at least) one new Anki flash card*
12. Breakfast
13. Etc.

*we usually stay longer but one flash card is the basic habit to which we give ourselves a check-mark on the habit tracker, thus we give ourselves one check-mark for revising one flash card and one check-mark for making one

Here we used habit stacking (putting a new habit onto an existing one, thus creating a cascade of habits and eliminating decisions), a "micro" habit (making just/at least ONE flashcard) and we used a habit tracker. These are all concepts mentioned in the book Atomic habits by bestselling author James Clear. If you have not yet read this book, we highly recommend it, it may change your life completely like it changed our lives.

Studying and other daunting tasks have a way of sucking up your entire day if you’re not careful. Because they are hard to do, we often procrastinate starting them. That fills your day with guilt and feeling like you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing. It's also very energy draining to constantly keep thinking: "When will I start this?"

Lately we have changed our morning routine to be as minimal as possible before starting our main project of the day. By eliminating all the non essential tasks we are able to start working on studying before our brains have the chance of getting distracted. Often we would also start rationalizing and negotiating with ourselves that we have to do other things first, thus putting off studying until later and later in the day. By doing that we often made our days much more stressful and unfulfilling.

By changing our routine to the essentials we find ourselves doing our Two Minute Habit while on auto pilot, which makes starting our work much less emotionally taxing. The negative emotions are gone, now we just find ourselves feeling good for getting going and actually achieving the things that matter to us.

What is your morning routine? When and how do you do your most important habit of the day?