What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast by Laura Vanderkam

These are the notes I have taken while reading What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast by Laura Vanderkam. . This isn’t meant to be a Cliff Notes version or a substitute for reading the book.

Additional notes I’ve taken while reading other books can be found here.

The Madness of Mornings

The madness of morning is a key reason most of us believe we have no time. We have time, but it’s consumed by sound and fury that culminates in few accomplishments beyond getting out the door.

For example, James Citrin (co-leader of the North American Board and CEO practice at Spencer Stuart) is exercising at 6 am, using the early morning quiet to reflect on his most important priorities of the day. He then interviewed executives he admired - 18 of 20 who responded were awake by 6 am at the latest.

Successful people have priorities they want to tackle and early mornings are the time when they have most control of their schedules.

Seizing your mornings is like the financial advice to pay yourself first before paying the bills. If you wait until the end of the month to save what you have left, there will be nothing left over. Likewise if you wait until the end of the day to do meaningful but not urgent things, it probably won’t happen.

A Matter of Willpower

New research shows that tasks that require self-discipline are simply easier to do while the day is young.

Quotes from Roy Baumeister (professor of psychology at Florida State):

“Willpower, like a muscle, becomes fatigued from overuse”

“You have one energy resource that is used for all kinds of acts of self control.”

Note: That includes not just resisting food temptations, but also controlling your thought processes, controlling your emotions, all forms of impulse control, and trying to perform well at your job or other tasks. Even more surprisingly, it is used for decision making, so when you make choices you are (temporarily) using up some of what you need for self-control. Hard thinking, like logical reasoning, also uses it.

There seems to be a general pattern that major self-control failures and other bad decisions occur late in the day.

Getting things down to routines and habits takes willpower at first but in the long run conserves willpower.”

In the early morning hours, we have enough willpower and energy to tackle things like require internal motivation.

Important, but not urgent things

The best morning rituals are activities that don’t have to happen and certainly don’t have to happen at a specific hour. These are activities that require internal motivation.

The most successful people use their mornings for three things:

• Nurturing their careers: Strategizing and focusing on work
• Nurturing their relationships: Giving their families and friends their best
• Nurturing themselves: Exercise and spiritual creative practices

How to make over your mornings?

• Track Your Time: Part of spending your time better is knowing exactly how you’re spending it now.

• Picture the Perfect Morning
• Think through the logistics: What would have to happen to make this schedule work?
• Build the Habit: This is the most important step. Turning a desire into a ritual requires a lot of initial willpower (and not just for the first few days). Choose one new habit at a time to introduce. Chart your progress.
• Tune Up as Necessary

As much as you cringe about getting up at 5 am, are you really doing anything of consequence after 10 pm? Whenever you’re tempted to say I don’t have time for something, remind yourself that if you wanted to get up early, you could. These hours are available to all of us if we choose to use them.