 Hi, this is George Kow and today's video is about joyful productivity. Specifically, I want to talk with you about designing your morning routine. I'm going to share my morning routine and the first point I actually want to say is that my morning routine, the success of it, depends on the success of my routine the evening before, because if I don't get to sleep at a good time, my morning routine is thrown off. And you might be wondering, well, George, you are a lifestyle entrepreneur. I mean, I'm happy to say that I work for myself, I work from home, I have a full-time income, I make more money than I did when I had a job, and I work, I have a very good work-life balance. I have a lot of breaks during the day, and I just work Monday through Friday. And you might be saying, well, George, for someone like you, well, don't you just wake up anytime you want? Isn't that the dream? And I will tell you, I did that for several years. I woke up whenever I wanted. But then I realized it wasn't ideal because I could never really know how much to plan for in the day because I didn't know when I was going to wake up. And now that I've been able to habituate a morning routine, and I'm glad to say that I'm waking up consistently in the same time every day with energy, and things are going really well for my routines right now, I like my life so much better because I'm able to plan how many hours that day I'm going to work. You know, whatever project that comes to me at that moment, that is really the best. But I recommend a consistent routine, at least to try it, design it until it's really well-matched for your energy, and then stick to it, and see how your life becomes even more ideal than maybe it is right now. So again, the evening routine is really important. I'll talk about the evening routine in another video, but I actually set an alarm on my phone to start my evening routine. So that I get out of the fog of the evening, tiredness sometimes, and go, okay, start my evening routine. I go to bed at a good time, and then I basically lights out around 10 30 p.m. at night. I wake up nowadays at 6 a.m. And one more thing I want to say is that it takes time to adjust, because I used to go to sleep at midnight. Okay, that was pretty common for me, and it took time to gradually adjust, you know. I was really conscious about it. I actually adjusted one minute a day until I got to this point. But just adjusting, what, five minutes a week, a little bit earlier every night, until you get to a good evening routine. And then in the morning, same thing. I used to wake up around 8 30 a.m. Now I wake up at 6, it took time to gradually adjust, really important. So don't just try to do it suddenly, to adjust so your body and systems can adjust. I used to be a night owl, now I'm an early bird. So I believe it can be adjusted if you consciously do it and you do it gradually. Okay, so my morning routine, I'll get up at 6 a.m. And here's another point is that when my alarm goes off, I get right when I hear it go, I turn off the alarm. I rise my body from the bed and I'm standing, okay. That's really important because I used to hit the snooze button and just be really lax about my morning alarm. And I just started trying, let me try following my impulse to get up when my alarm goes off. Stand up from the bed. And now that I've been doing it now for consistently several months, it's been amazing. It's been great. I wake up because my body knows, okay, when I hear the alarm, it's time to have energy. So I wake up and then I go get a drink of water in the bathroom. I then sit on the loo for about 15 minutes. I do my number two in the mornings. And on the loo, I read, I do my spiritual reading for the day to give myself perspective. I'm out and I do my hygiene things after that. By 6 30, I'm out of the bedroom. I start doing things like feeding the cats, making my breakfast. And as I'm doing that, I'm either listening to spiritual songs or listening to inspirational podcasts. By 7 15, I'm at my desk. That's when I review my priorities for the day and I review my habits I want to create. Because that's what success means to me. I call it redefining success. It's not what the world says, the external metrics. But rather, am I doing the habits today that will lead me to the kind of character I want to live in the life I want to model. So I hope that helps you. And I consciously redesigned my morning routine at least once a year, sometimes twice a year. So I encourage you to consciously look at your morning routine again. I hope this is helpful. And until the next video, be well.