How to start your morning if you want a different decade

Where you will be in ten years is being decided right now.

Not in the big moves. The big moves are downstream. The big moves come out of who you become, and who you become is built one morning at a time.

This is the version of the morning I have been running for years. Not because it is the only way. Because it works.

Before phone

The first hour belongs to you. Not to your inbox. Not to the algorithm. Not to whoever sent you a Slack at 11:47 p.m.

Phone stays in another room until you have done three things.

Movement

Twenty minutes of something. Walk, run, lift, anything. The point is not the workout. The point is putting your body in motion before your mind starts negotiating.

Read

Fifteen minutes of something good. Faith. Strategy. Biography. Whatever you are trying to become, find someone who already became it and read what they wrote.

Plan

Five minutes. Pen and paper. The One Thing for today. The three meetings that matter. The one conversation you are avoiding. The block you will protect.

That is it.

It takes 60 minutes. Most people will tell you they do not have 60 minutes. They have 60 minutes. They are giving them to other people.

The compounding part

Do this for a week and nothing changes.

Do it for a month and you start to notice you are sharper by 9 a.m. than you used to be by noon.

Do it for a year and you become someone different. Not because of the morning. Because of the thousand decisions the morning made easier.

A different decade does not start with a different decade. It starts with tomorrow morning.