Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: Crafting the Ultimate Morning Routine
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From the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be escaping the drift. This is the weekly drop with john gafford, no matter what platform you're watching or listening to us on. Make sure you like subscribe and comment. And now the drop. Happy Thursday, everybody. Welcome to the weekly drop.

Like I said in the opening, man, this is my little solo pod bringing you some stuff to help you kind of get you from where you are to where you want to go. And one of the things I got to tell you we're going to talk about this week is in this week's podcast, we're going to talk about the five things you can do every single day to get you off to a good start.

So many people ask me every single day, they're like, man, how do you get so much stuff done? Like you literally just get so much done in the course of a day. And last week I was forced to spend the week in LA and I'll say forced because I'm not a huge fan of LA. I'm just not. It's a hard place to go anywhere. Hard place to park. Lots of cool stuff. Good weather. But you know, if I'm doing California, I'll choose orange County all day. If you're an LA person, sorry if I insulted you, but yeah,

When I was in L.A. last week, I got off my schedule, dude. I got off my little daily grind, my little daily juju, if you will, that gets me started every day. And it screwed me up, dude. It really did. To the point when we got back from L.A., you know, my wife had, you know, we're playing catch-up.

On, what was it, Monday morning, we got back and we were playing catch up as to what we were doing. And my wife was like, can you just take a minute and help me do what I need? I'm like, listen, I just got to get back on my schedule. Just let me do my thing and get on that schedule. And then I will be right with you. And she was like, okay, cool. I get it. Because she understands, man, I am so much better when I'm on my schedule. And I'm not telling you, you got to do everything that I'm going to give you these five things. I'm not telling you got to do it all. I'm just saying, if you take one of these things and incorporate it into what you do,

it's gonna help you dramatically. So the first thing I wanna talk about is there's this thing, and you see it everywhere online with entrepreneurs, and it's like, I get up at four o'clock and start grinding, and the grind starts, you know, the jungle waits for no lion and whatever else it is. If you're an early person, if you're an early, early person, God bless you if you wanna get up at four o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning, God bless. But here's the thing I understand. Like there's a book called The 5 a.m. Club by Robin Sharma, and it talks about the advantages of being up

early. And the big advantage is those quiet hours before anything else is going on, before the phone is ringing, before your email's blowing up, that time you can really focus on deep work and get a lot of stuff done. And it helps you structure your stuff. But here's my challenge, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, here's the thing. You don't have to answer your phone. You don't have to reply to email. Your early morning can be whatever time you make it.

I don't book anything. Like Jeff Bezos, they interviewed him and talked about his mornings. Jeff Bezos doesn't book anything important at all before 10 o'clock. He books his most important meetings at 10. And then after that, it's kind of a downhill slope after lunch. But nothing before 10 because he wants that first part of the day to belong to him.

So I don't know if he gets up at four o'clock in the morning. I don't know what time he gets up. But for me personally, we get up at my house like 6.30. That's what time I get up. And if you're one of those people, I'm already done with the gym. God bless you. Good for you. I also get great work done late at night. I'm really effective creatively in the late hours. So for me, getting up at 6.30 just works. But I time book. I don't book anything at all before 10 a.m. If I book anything before 10 a.m., it screws me up.

Because I want to have that time in the morning that's just for me. I do not respond to my emails. I don't answer my phone. I don't return calls. I don't do any of that. So that time from I'm up, give or take six to like 10, that three hours is mine. That's my time to do what I want to do in that time. And the first thing that I do in that time is I meditate.

I get up in the morning and I'm going to tell you exactly what I do and each little thing and where I got it and why it works. So when I met a guy named Ari Rastegar, who's a friend of mine and Ari, they did an article. You can go back and listen to his full podcast. It is a fascinating stuff. They call him the Oracle of Omaha for his business prowess. But more than that, GQ magazine did an article on him for his biohacking stuff. And he talked about transcendental meditation changed his life. So here I am. I'm like, okay, cool.

If he says it works, this dude's, you know, got $8 billion in assets. Okay, great. I'm going to give it a whirl. So I went to the Transcendental Meditation place, me and my wife did. And granted, it's super hippy dippy, like really hippy-ish stuff that is kind of out there for me, but did it with good faith. Anyway, my wife thought this was going to be the change her forever. My wife can't do it. She doesn't like it. But the first 20 minutes of my day, I spend meditating.

And I just basically sit there and, you know, if I'm not going to give you a full class on transcendental meditation, but I essentially just say my mantra over and over. I just kind of drift around in my head for 20 minutes. And that's what I do right when I wake up. But before that, I drink something called good morning, which is like a gut thing.

Cause I'm all about good supplements in day. So I'll drink my good morning and then I'll go meditate. Now, when the weather's good, I combine two things. Cause I try to get 20 minutes of sun every day. So if the weather's good, I'll sit outside while I meditate on my front deck. Now that it's getting cold, I can't really do that. So now if it gets cold, I'll meditate under red light. Cause sometimes with all this protocol that you do, you have to stack some of it. It's like we have red light panels. So I'll meditate with the red light panels going for me when the weather's bad, when the weather's good, I'm out front on the deck. Okay.

in the sun, but I'll just meditate. That's the first way. The first thing I do every single day when I get going is I meditate. Then after I meditate, so now I've been up for about 20 minutes, 25 minutes. I subscribe very, very much to the Tim Ferriss 30, 30, 30. So within 30 minutes of waking up, I get 30 grams of protein in me. So now I go immediately to the kitchen and I'll drink a protein shake, which is 30 grams of protein. The reason I do that is if you go heavy on the protein, a lot of the carbs,

Now your body is in gear and you're not craving sugar and carbs. You can kind of do what you need to do. I'll do that. Then I drink some pre-workout. Then I get on the treadmill for 30 minutes. So now I'm 30 minutes on the treadmill, but I'm also stacking some other stuff around this because I'm,

Exercise, I think getting that blood moving in the morning is so clutch. And when I read this in the four-hour body by Tim Ferriss, talking about 30-30-30, get that within 30 minutes of waking up, 30 grams of protein and 30 minutes of cardio. First thing I do. So I've got my protein in me. I'll do my 30 minutes. Now, my 30 minutes, I also practice a form of mindfulness, right?

which is I am very much a vision board person. I hated it back in the day when I was like, let's have a vision board party and let's cut a bunch of stuff out of magazines. And I hated that, right? That was ridiculous. And I thought it was awful. But chat GBT is the greatest vision board companion in the history of this. Cause you can literally type in anything you want.

And it will spit out a photo realistic image of exactly what you're saying. So as I'm on the treadmill in my gym at my house, I've got now there's four pictures pasted up there that are exactly what I want over some things going on in my life. And as I'm on the treadmill, I am looking at those pictures and I'm experiencing them in my mind as though they have already happened.

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I'm thinking about this as, yes, this is like, oh my God, this is going to feel so good when I walk through the airport and I look over, like I've got a picture of my book that's going to come out sitting in a Hudson News on the rack in the airport and it says bestseller on it. Like I've got the picture of that and I look at that every day and I just think about that every day. And I'm going to law of attract that, right? But it gets me in a mood when you're talking about

projecting yourself into positivity, it's kind of hard not to have a great start. So now I've got my exercise going. That's going good. I got my 30 minutes exercise. So now when I come off of that, I've now visualized myself while I'm doing exercise. Now I'm an out, now I'm 50 minutes in 50, 55 minutes into my morning. So now I'm off of the, I'm off of the treadmill.

And then I go to the kitchen and I make now green drink and I take all of my supplements right now, which is, I'm not giving you a list of everything to take, but just if you're not working with a nutritionist that is giving supplements for you, do it, make sure you're getting the right stuff in your body, which is great. Then four days a week, which is Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, I go back in the gym and

And I will now work out for about 45 minutes. So now I'm at about an hour and 45 minutes. On Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, I will normally go back in and do the treadmill more, or I will kind of go right into my thoughts for the day, which is journaling, which I think is very, very important. You know, there's a great app. I didn't bring my phone in here today, but there's a great app that I use called My Daily Journal. And really what it is, is it's just a way to do two things. I do it in the morning and I do it at night.

In the morning, and it really just essentially asks you, what are you grateful for? Like it's an app on your phone. You're like, what are you grateful for? You can upload pictures to it. You can type out whatever you want. And it's not a lot. It just asks for a couple of things. What are you grateful for? And if you've never been a journaler, there's a book called My Morning Routine by Benjamin Spall. In that book, he talks about how the simple act of using a journal to set goals and clarify your intentions and doing that aligns your thoughts for the entire day.

It's the most important thing. This, you know, it's the most important thing that he does. But for me in that morning, it's about what am I grateful for? Because it puts me in a mind state of all of the things and all the problems that I have going on out there, all of these issues, all these, all the, all the junk, man, I can at least get my mind focused on the things that are positive within my life. And it also asks a simple question.

which is what are you going to do today, which is goal setting. And if you've read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, great book if you haven't read it. If you're into this sort of stuff, you damn sure need to read that book.

but it talks about setting those goals right after you wake up or getting that can significantly improve your productivity and your focus by automating that goal setting feature. And I have several apps that I use for, to keep myself straight as far as what I'm doing. But in the morning, it'll ask you like, what are you going to get done today? And my, in my journal app, it'll say like, what two things that, you know, give me three things you're going to get done. And then I can refer over to, I use an app called any do, which I really, really like. Um,

And I use another one called motion motion, probably not as much. I have a problem with motion. Motion's a great app. If you like people telling you what to do, like, cause motion will take your entire task list and then use your calendar and then slot things into like, if it's, it's going to take you 30 minutes to do this task. It's just going to slot it in your calendar. So it's already there.

It was very, very productive, but I don't know, man, something about me about being told what to do all the time. I was like, man, I don't know if it's good for me. I don't like it. So motion's going to be like that. But for me, I just use any do where I can categorize all of my to-do list stuff by the different companies and different projects that I have going on. I can categorize everything there. And then I really look at what I need to do for the day. But on the flip side of that, I didn't want to skip over the last part of journaling. At the end of the day, man, being able to spit out

What didn't go well today? Because dude, there's going to be shit. You're going to have interactions with other humans. You're going to have things that do not go right or did not go the way that you want them to go. And this is the kind of stuff that for me anyway, when I'm at night, when I'm sitting there, it kind of keeps my head spinning, has a circus going on, right? Dude, man, screwed that up. Didn't shouldn't have said that. Like I was a man. I just shouldn't have said that at all. It was terrible. And that's how it goes, right? So having a place that you can purge that stuff out,

and say, here's a bad situation today in a journal. What could I have done better? What should I have done in that situation? Now you kind of let it go. You feel like you put it down, but also you can purge all that other stuff out. This is also when I purge out anything that I need to do into my to-do list. Because as long as my brain knows that all that stuff is somewhere else, I can kind of let it go for a little bit and get that good night's sleep. So all of that is part of that journaling and goal setting, which is really important. So again,

The five, you know, the things, the five things that I do. Number one, I don't care if you wake up at five o'clock in the morning. It doesn't matter to me if you get up at 5 a.m. Shouldn't matter to you either, but you need to have some time blocked off in a way that is for yourself. And I get it. Some of you guys have kids. You got to take them to school. You got to do this. It's hard for you to have that, but you got to find time for it because you just got to find some sort of a timeframe that works for you.

Next thing is meditation and mindfulness. Even if you're not going to go the full TM meditation, you need to have some time to just kind of sit with yourself. In this day and age of all of these clicking and beeping and phones and TikTok and all this other stuff, dude, just letting your mind settle for a minute will boost your creativity tremendously. Exercise. You got to get the body moving. I don't care what you say. I don't care who you are. You got to get moving in the morning at some point. You got to get the blood going somehow. Journaling.

making sure that you understand what's out there and then setting daily goals for what you're going to do. If you can do those things, or if you can do some combination of those things, the impact of having that consistent routine. There's a book again by Laura Vanderkam called what the most successful people do before breakfast. And she talks about the people that are the most successful in this world. If you ask them, they have a morning routine.

Because the time that you have to yourself, you can absolutely control. And if you can control that time in a positive way, then when everybody else, the external forces start beating down your door in a way that ain't so positive, you'll be able to deal with it much, much better.

Well, man, I hope that helped out a lot. If you're watching us on YouTube, please give us that subscribe button. Like I said, again, these little mini drops, the weekly drops come out every single Thursday and the full episodes of our podcast come out every single Tuesday. We'll see you next time.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.

Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold. Butter? Yep. Chocolate ice cream? Sure thing. Barbecue sauce? Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide Pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be Tide.