4:20. No, not the code for blazing up or vaping. I haven’t smoked anything mind-altering for twenty five years. And my weed m.o. was always the same: smoke, get paranoid, take part in a conversation you all had abandoned thirty minutes ago, wish I was home asleep.
No, I’m talking 4:20 on the clock. I want to tell you about my daily creativity routine and how I became more productive. 4:20’s the start time of that routine. And I’m not talking 4:20pm…
4:20am. Crazy, right? It is moderately crazy. Living a life with creative aspirations often means sacrifices. It’s like holding down two full-time jobs. One pays, and the other pays… less. Or sometimes nothing. And make the time for both… somewhere.
Question: how often do you hear someone say, “Man, I have so many interests, all these career goals, my family time, and tons of socializing. Thank God the day has so many hours or I don’t know where I’d fit it all in.”
Never, right? We all complain about the lack of hours. We have to carve time out for the things that matter. There’s never enough time and stuff gets abandoned along the way.
A few years back, I was stressed and stymied on how to add even one more thing. We don’t even have pets or kids, and yet I couldn’t figure out where I could get even an extra minute of free time. However, I’d been going through a particularly slothful few months (hell, it may have even been a whole year) where I wasn’t writing and I’d given up playing music, acting, pretty much everything creative. Every day without an artistic outlet crushes my soul a bit. Plus, I’d stopped my meditation practice. Doing so was ignoring an important key to my sanity, but I couldn’t make the time. I woke up, went to work, came home, watched TV during a meal, and went to bed. I packed weekends with service commitments. I felt like I was living life to fulfill all my obligations to everyone else. That’s a dangerous place for me. Too many days, weeks, and months like that and I resent and rebel. I start to wonder what tossing a grenade in the middle of my life would look like.
Luckily, before I blew up all my relationships, job, and self-care, we took a trip out to Palm Springs for a wedding and a mini-vacation. I spent the whole drive grousing to my poor wife about my lack of energy and time. When we arrived in the desert, though, I felt a bit relaxed. I don’t know if it was the quiet, the heat, or the break from the city, but from that calm, serene space I found a clear pathway towards a more productive day.
Here’s how I did it (and don’t worry, I’ll offer a suggestion for you morning-hating nocturnes):
1. Write it all down. I sat with a notebook and brainstormed an ideal day. If time wasn’t a factor, what would I want to/have to accomplish before I put my head on the pillow? I put it all down. I didn’t concern myself with fitting it into a schedule yet. This was just the inventory of things to do. I took a lot of time with this phase, ensuring I left nothing out.
2. Block out the day’s time obligations. Next, I mapped out my obligations throughout the day— the things I couldn’t make optional. This includes the mundane, self-care stuff. I jotted it all into my notebook. For me, that looked something like this:
Outreach phone calls to and from fellow 12 step guys and gals.
Scheduled weekly meetings
Making and eating three meals
Showering
Working
Commuting
Etc., etc.
(Without kids, elder care, owning a small business, or performing my own oil changes, I admit this isn’t as busy as many other folks. For you, this list may be a lot longer.)
3. Look at all the “goals”. Number them according to priority. These were my ideals I’d written in Step 1— my perfect day’s tasks. I stared at the list I’d just made. Wayyyy too much stuff. I couldn’t possibly do it all. Okay, so if I can’t do it all, what are the most important ones? As much as I’d love to become Eric Clapton’s equal on the guitar, master water coloring, and take surf lessons, I can’t fit it all in. So I have to prioritize. (Note, I’m not yet thinking when this is all going to happen. I’m just putting an order to it all.)
Remember how I said I wasn’t writing at all and it was crushing my soul? Sounds like I’d better put that at number 1, right? Here’s some of what I scribbled:
Write
Meditate
Journal
Read
Exercise
Learn Spanish
Play guitar
4. When the f*** can I do these things? Okay, finally I could tackle the overwhelming task of squeezing extra stuff into the day. My “have-to’s” (work, responsibilities, etc.) eliminated putting anything in between 6:50am to 6:00pm. That left either early morning or evening. Here’s where it’s different for everyone. Some of you throw up at the thought of getting up before the sun. I’d suggest you don’t do the 4:20am rise, then. Plus, if you’re like me when I worked in restaurants, you've flipped your whole biological clock. You probably go to bed at 4:20am. You’ll probably dig evening tasks more.
You already know intuitively when you get the most energy. For you little vampires, maybe knocking out some of these creative goals at night is just the ticket. Not me— I don’t want to do anything when I get home. I want to eat, read, hang out, and sleep. That left me with the morning.
Why 4:20am? I wanted to free up as much extra time as possible, but I also thought about how much sleep I needed. Now, there are books and self-help guides out there that say, “You’re only as tired as your mind decides you are!” Right. Twenty-two-year olds with twenty-two-year-old bodies write these books. Sure, at twenty-two, I rock and rolled on three hours of sleep all the time. Today, I have a psychotic break if I get anything less than five. Seven hours is ideal for me. If I went to bed at 9:15pm that would get me a solid seven hours. A 4:20am wake-up would give me a luxurious two-and-a-half hours in the morning before my “real day” started.
Two and a half hours a day towards your passions will change the trajectory of your life. Hell, ten minutes a day towards them will change your life.
5. Make the Routine routine by scheduling it and tricking myself. I’d tried morning routines before and had failed many, many times. Here’s how they went: set the alarm an hour early, roll myself out of the bed, stagger to the living room, and decide with my foggy mind what I’d like to do with the extra time. Nope. This never worked for me. Ultimately, what I’d do with the extra time is go back to bed. For years, I chalked it up to “I’m just not a morning person.” More accurately, I’m not a think-first-thing-out-of-the-rack person.
This time around, what I was after was intentional practice. The routine goes the same every day. This has made all the difference. I’m not deciding what to do in the morning. I decided in Palm Springs a long time ago.
Scheduling the morning, I learned from my past attempts by leaving the most important stuff last in the routine. Why? Because if there are days where I can’t get myself to respond to the alarm, I still have time to write. That’s crucial for me. It looks like this:
4:30am - free-journal 3 pages longhand a la The Artist’s Way
5:00am - meditate
5:40am - write on the current project. (most recently, the crime novel.)
6:50am - roll calls and head into the day’s obligations.
With the above schedule, if I wake up at 4:50am, maybe I do one page longhand journal. If I wake at 5:20am, I skip journaling, I meditate for 20 minutes, and I move into the writing. Etc., etc.
For you midnight oil burners, I’d suggest putting your most important stuff first in the evening if you burn out as the evening turns late. If you get your case of the f’its, you’ll have already knocked out your crucial items.
Here’s what I mean when I say I need to “trick myself”: I need to set the intention the night before. I don’t hope I get up at 4:20am. I tell myself I'm getting up. I have to rise at 4:20am to improve my life. I tell myself I don’t have a choice. I also remind myself— Real Me wants to wake up on time to achieve long-term goals, one morning at a time. Future Me is an asshole and wants me to sleep in. Future me whispers sweet nothings like a lawyer, and seduces me with “You deserve the rest.”, “This is crazy. What’s the point? It’s not changing anything” and “You’re too tired. Sleep is self-care.”
When I get up, I follow a couple steps to wake myself fully:
Water, water, everywhere. I brush my teeth, I drink two full glasses, splash cold water on my face, and jump in the shower. I once heard we think we’re tired in the morning, but we’re groggy only because we’re dehydrated. I don’t know if it’s true, but I act as if it is. Water seems to help.
I stand up right away and carry the alarm (my phone) with me. I don’t lie there and contemplate how I feel. I move. I put my body in motion. No taking my emotional temperature allowed. No listening to Future Me the Asshole.
That’s the routine. It was a tough change in the beginning, but got easier once I strung a bunch of days together.
I know—
One of you says, “Okay. Okay. This all works beautifully for the free-wheeling, one-bedroom apartment-dwelling Bohemian with no attachments. But it’s bullshit for me. I’m an important person with a real career, real responsibilities, and real bunch of kids taking up all my time.”
Another says, “I have a dozen things I want to do and only have two hours to do it all.”
To both of you, I say, let’s talk minimums. Ten minutes a day will change your life. Don’t take my word for it. Try this. Pick one thing and do it for ten minutes a day for a month.
Look online and you’ll see a hundred productivity tools touting 10, 15, 20 minutes of concentrated effort. I always thought this was a crock. I thought ten minutes was worthless and the real intention was to get you excited and invested so you’d actually do an hour or two. Eventually, though, I tried ten minutes a day with two things: the first was the guitar. I’d let it slip away for many years. Someone suggested I pick it up and practice for ten minutes a day. It seemed dumb, but I took the direction. I’ve played every day for five years. I’m still not Eric Clapton, but I’m much, much better than I was five years ago.
My second ten minute experiment— let me ask you, what do you think of this website? Not the content, but BrendanInk.com itself. How does it look? You may think it looks like garbage, but it’s functional, right?
Ten minutes a day. No exaggeration. I swear I never once— not even when researching which hosting company to use— spent over ten minutes a day on it. I built it a brick at a time, a day at a time, ten minutes at a time. Having a website was something I convinced myself I needed three to four hours a day to launch. Nope. Ten minutes a day.
Be your own researcher— either jump in and add a whole routine, or try the ten minute experiment for a month. See what happens. Maybe great things will come. If not, you’ll at least get to tell Future You to cram it.