The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 72 - Why You Need to Care About Your Morning Routine: Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Episode Date: August 26, 2022In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. This moment is all about how to start your day the right way. Getti...ng off on the right start is so important for how the rest of our day goes and the attitude we take into our tasks. A good morning can make a day, a bad morning can make it hard to recover from there. With Rangan’s simple three step guide to making sure you have a balanced, healthy morning, a great day is never further away than taking just five minutes to properly root yourself in the moment. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/DmC3uNmKMsb Dr Rangan: https://www.instagram.com/drchatterjee/?hl=en https://drchatterjee.com Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos
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Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly.
First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show.
Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen
and that it would expand all over the world as it has done.
And we've now opened our first studio in America,
thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things.
So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.
And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United
States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard
in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And
thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue.
You described these, the three M's of a really good morning routine. What are those three M's
of a good morning routine? What can I do today? How long is it going to take me? And what do you
believe a good morning routine contains? Yeah. So big picture view here.
I have a bias towards morning routines because I have found in my own life,
they've really, really helped me.
So let me just talk about stress for a moment, because this really plays into why I think
morning routines are so important. I've got this concept of micro stress doses and stress
thresholds. So every one of us have got our own unique personal stress threshold, right? That
depends on your life, how you deal with things and what's going on. And when we get to that threshold, that's when things start to go
wrong. That's when we snap at someone, we have a fight with our partner, our neck goes or our
back goes into spasm, right? That's when you're at your threshold, right? So I'm saying to people, and I've really found this to be true for pretty much everyone.
Let's say you wake up and you are far away from your threshold. You've had a good night's sleep,
right? So you're feeling good. What's the average morning for a lot of people these days? Okay,
let's say the alarm goes off at 6.30, right? So they're in a deep sleep.
Alarm goes off, jolts them out of that sleep. They have to get out. Okay, that's micro stress
dose or MSD number one. Okay, pick up the phone. Oh man, I'm just going to put it on snooze. You
know, I need a bit more snooze. Put it back. Six minutes later, it goes on again. MSD number two.
You pick up your phone, you go, I'm just quickly going to check email. Oh man, there were these three emails. I didn't get back to yesterday. Oh man, I need to do that.
MSD number three. Have a quick look on Instagram. Someone's left you a snarky comment. MSD number
four. Then you realize, oh man, I've been in bed for 10 minutes. I have to get up, get ready. I've
got a guest coming to shoot a podcast with. I'm not talking about your life. I'm just saying
anyone's life. You are talking about mine. Right? And so here's the point. At me, Roman. Each one of those things, right, is a micro stress
dose. And each one of those is getting you closer and closer to that stress threshold. The mistake
we make is that when something happens at three o'clock in the afternoon, right, when that email
from your colleague frustrates you, you think it was that email,
but it wasn't the email. It was the fact that you've already acquired 20 micro stress doses.
You're right at your threshold. You've got no capacity to deal with it. So that email now
bothers you. So what I suggest to people is many people leave the house in the morning having
already accumulated about 15 micro stress doses.
So they're already a lot closer to their threshold than they would have otherwise been,
which means they've got less resilience. They won't take much for them to get triggered,
right? So why I think morning routines can be so valuable is they can reduce how many micro stress doses you're exposed to first thing in the morning so you are going into
your day with much more headroom and much more resilience but i think they're also useful
if you're feeling quite stressed when you wake up and anxious i think they help almost undo the
damage of micro stresses and bring you back to baseline was that clear perfectly clear so that's my kind
of overarching view on why they're so important so for me i know if i do that morning routine
yes it gives me perspective on my life it allows me to reflect but it also
feeds the control leg of the core happiness stool but it also means that i'm not exposing myself to micro stressors. In fact, I'm getting
back to baseline or I'm going into negative. I'm actually giving myself a lot more resilience and
capability to face the day. So I was trying to simplify things for people. So I think a complete
morning routine for me has got these three M's, mindfulness, movement, mindset. And that's how I orientate my own
morning routine. So I started with mindfulness. Now I've been doing this for a few years, right?
And currently my morning routine is about 30 minutes, but that's because I've created a life
where I can do that and it works for me. And I get up silly early. That's also because my kids have always been early risers. And I know if I don't get that time to myself, I'm just not as good a
dad and I'm not as good as a husband. So my bedtime has got earlier and earlier so I can get up
earlier and earlier before my kids do. Right, so I start off with mindfulness, which at the moment
is a practice of breath work and then meditation. Then what I do,
I go to my kitchen and I put coffee on. Now, very particularly with how I do my coffee,
I weigh out 15 grams in the French press, I pour 250 grams of water in and I put a timer on for
five minutes. Why is that important? It's not. It's the way I like my coffee. But the point is,
I know for five minutes, my coffee's going to brew. So in those five minutes,
I don't go on Instagram. I don't check my email. I do a workout in my kitchen, in my pajamas.
Right? I'm in my pajamas. I'm not to put on any fancy gear. I might do a body weight workout.
I might have a kettlebell kicking around. Whatever I feel like, I will do. And then I get the gorgeous
rewards of a hot, fresh cup of organic
coffee that I like. And I sit there and I'll read something positive. Like I've got a few books
kicking around in my living room. I'll just pick one that I'm drawn to. I'll probably read for
about 10 minutes while sipping coffee. Something that's not negative, that's uplifting, right?
So that's what it looks like for me. Now, sometimes my
daughter who's currently nine, she's got a sixth sense that daddy's up and she creeps in with me.
If she gets in with me, well, two things I want to say about that. The old wrong good from a few
years ago would have got frustrated. Man, I kind of need, I want my own space. You know, why? Yeah,
you know, I should have got up earlier. I don't do that anymore. I'm a lot more compassionate to myself. I use that. I go, okay, great. Okay, great. She's here. Okay. Okay, darling, just sit
here. Daddy's just finishing off my meditation. And she sits there and I think, okay, this is cool.
Like, I don't need to look at it as a problem. This is life, right? If we think life is going
to be great when everything goes our way, we're going to be waiting a long time. So I embrace it now.
Oh, fantastic. And then I also think as a dad, well, she's also now seeing daddy prioritizes
his health. He thinks it's important to look after his mental wellbeing every day. I'm hoping that
she also absorbs some of these ideas as she grows up. But the mindset piece, I don't sit there and
read if my daughter's there. We instead do
affirmations together. So there's really good research on affirmations in terms of what they
do for us. Just short, positive, powerful statements. So the one we do together is we just say,
I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free, right? So the two of us sit there, we hold hands,
and we say that for a minute. At the end of it, I feel brilliant. She feels amazing. No, I get it. Some people hear that. Okay. That is cheesy as anything.
And maybe it is, but you know what? There's good research on it. Undergraduate students who did
affirmations before their exam perform better, right? You know, how you program your mind
matters. So that's what mine looks like, right?
It used to be about five, 10 minutes.
Now, yeah, I can do half an hour, right?
But I've also become aligned.
I've now, I go to bed earlier, right?
And let's not forget, Stephen,
you're at a different stage in life to me, right?
I'm in my early 40s.
I'm happily married.
I've got two young kids, right?
You're in your late 20s, right? Was I doing morning routines when I was got two young kids, right? You're in your late twenties, right?
Was I doing morning routines when I was 29? No, I wasn't.
Slight clue that I texted you at 2am last night, isn't it?
Yeah. I woke up, I was like, oh man, like I'm getting up to do my routine and Stephen's just
gone to bed. But, but let me tell you about a patient who I saw many years ago. I can't remember how old she was,
she's probably around 42. Really bad skin. And I strongly felt that stress was exacerbating and
really aggravating her skin. And she said, Dr. Chachi, I don't have time for any of this stuff,
right? I'm busy. I've got two kids, I've got to get out to work. And we tried various things, but
I managed to persuade her and inspire her to try a five-minute routine. And this is what she did.
She did the three M's in five minutes. It's just one minute of what I call three, four, five
breathing, right? So you breathe in for three, you hold for four, and you breathe out for five.
Anytime your out-breath is longer than your in breath,
you help to lower your body's stress response and activate its relaxation response. Okay, there's many ways you can do that, but I like this breath that I call the three, four, five breath.
So she did one minute of three, four, five breathing. She did two minutes of yoga, right?
She has some of her favorite sequence, two minutes of yoga, and then she did two minutes of
affirmations. That's it. And she got on with her day. She came to see me a few weeks later
and she said, Dr. Chachi, I just feel so much better. And her skin complaints had gone down
by over 50%. And over the course of the next few months, she was hardly getting any flare-ups at
all because it was a ripple effect. It wasn't just that But by doing that and giving her that little bubble of resilience first thing in the morning
She would then go out for a walk at lunchtime instead of just sitting in the canteen on her phone
She'd go i'm gonna go for a 10 minute walk around the block, you know
So for me, it's just you showing yourself right at the start of the day
You know what i'm worth it. I'm worth
spending a bit of time on today. And for me, I've got to bias it because if I don't do stuff like
that in the morning, I don't do it. Once the day starts, forget it. And something that might have
value for your audience, Stephen. And I guess I'm coming in thinking, Stephen Bartlett, successful
businessman, loads of entrepreneurs listening, thinking about business and stuff. And I'm coming in thinking, Stephen Bartlett, successful businessman, loads of entrepreneurs listening, thinking about, you know, business and stuff. And I, you know, I kind of want to
help people. And let's zoom into the middle M, movement. Why is it that I'm able to do a five
minute workout every day? Like I've rarely missed a day for three years. That's not because I've got
more motivation than anyone else. It's because I understand the science of behavior change,
right? I think it's going to, I hope it's going to have value for people.
There's two big rules that I've learned about human behavior. Number one is if you make something
easy, you will do it. So what's that got to do with my morning routine? Well,
I made it so easy for me to do, right? I don't need to buy any equipment. Everything's there.
I don't need to get changed. I don't need to look up a workout. I don't need to do it. It
literally happens because I don't have to think. I've made it really easy. And to zoom this out to business for a
moment, it's reported that when Amazon went to one-click ordering, it's reported their profits
went up by $300 million a year, right? So let's rewind 10 years when they didn't have it. What
did you have to do? Put in your order, go to the next screen, you know, type in your card deals,
go to the next screen, confirm order, right? Every single step is a reason to procrastinate, pull out and not make the purchase. So what do
they do? One click ordering, boom, before you blinked, something's coming that evening, right?
So they're doing what I think they should do for their business. Why did Netflix roll one video or
one show into the next one? It's not out of the goodness of their own hearts to go, oh, you know, let's help people. No, they're using the science of human behavior. Before you realize it's 12.30
at night, I need to go to bed. I've got to get up for work. You are straight into another episode.
You don't stop. That's why YouTube roll into the next video, right? So these guys understand human
behavior. When we, as humans humans try and apply it to our own
health we throw it out the window we think it's got to be hard it's got to be really tough
i've got to go running one hour four times a week and we we again first two weeks in january we
managed to do it then we fall off the wagon because we think motivation is going to last
forever and it doesn't in the science it's called the motivation wave. Motivation comes up, motivation goes down. Plan your behaviors for when your motivation is
down, not when it's up. Then you will still do it. So number one is you make it easy. I've made it
easy. Number two, which is just as important, is where are you going to put this behavior?
You can't just think about it. Oh, I'm going to meditate. I'm going to move. No, you need to be very intentional. Now, every single behavior we do needs a trigger, right?
So a trigger could be, oh, I remember to do it. Sure, that works. It's just the most unreliable
trigger that exists. The next best trigger is like a notification. Like, you know, oh,
you've got to be here to record a podcast with Stephen. Okay,
great. I know I've got to do that. Or you put a post-it note on your fridge.
That's great. But the very best trigger as evidenced by the research, and a lot of this
comes from Professor BJ Fogg at Stanford. Instagram was literally invented in his class as an assignment, essentially. He has shown that
if you stick on your new behavior onto an existing habit, it's much more likely to happen.
Like the coffee.
Like the coffee. I don't need my PA to phone me at five in the morning, say,
hey, Rangan, listen, you must remember to make your coffee. I don't need my Google calendar
notification to pop and say, hey, Rangan, don't forget to make your coffee. I'm going to do that.
It's locked in as a habit. I don't have to give it any conscious thought. It's going to happen.
So therefore, if I stick my workout on there, I vastly increase the likelihood that it's going
to happen. Add on to the fact that I keep kettlebells and dumbbells in my kitchen. My
wife used to say, can we not just put these away in the cupboard? And I said, listen, babe,
here's the thing. And I've seen this with patients. If you put this stuff out of the way so that the
kitchen looks nice, right? I'm never going to lift up that weight. Out of sight, out of mind.
We need to constantly trigger. So the kitchen's not a mess. It's just in the corner,
there's a kettlebell. So as I'm making the coffee, I can see it. It's looking at me.
Even if all I do is pick it up to move it, I've picked it up. And what it does, Stephen, is that
on a very base primal level, it shows me each morning that I have value, that I'm worth treating
with respect. You know, chapter three of the book is all about treat yourself with respect. Many of us, as I've done for much of my life, don't. We struggle with
compassion for ourselves. We struggle to be kind to ourselves, right? But the research is really
clear. People who are more compassionate to themselves, they're healthier, they're happier,
they're more successful at work. we think we've got to beat
ourselves up inside to do stuff, right? It's a myth. It's a short-term win. It's a long-term fail.
And there are simple things that we can do.