I Respawn in the Same Place Every Morning

# [[I Respawn in the Same Place Every Morning]] ##### Every day starts in the rubble of broken routines. In my diary, I find a lot of notes like this one: > *November 15th, 2015: Woke up in the morning, energized. Got stuck on the couch, sore back. Try again tomorrow.* The struggle with my mornings is as old as my note taking. I changed and failed my routine, changed and failed it again. The current structure of my mornings is not a cathedral built from stone, it is a wooden fort, sitting on the rubble of routines broken a long time ago. Sometimes I envy those night owls confidently trading their mornings for a few additional hours of sleep. I always wake up early with an itch. To understand the nature of my itch, I have read every advice on building routines. Venkatesh Rao has helped me to differentiate between **habits** and **rituals**.[^1] Habits may be understood as repeated investments in expectation of future growth, at the expense of a messier present. Rituals may be understood as maintenance efforts to keep up a specific quality in the present, by sacrificing future growth potential. Habits are the mode of frontier societies and striving individuals. Rituals are celebrated by established societies and accomplished individuals. Confusing habits and rituals by mixing up instrumental pragmatism with self serving beauty may be considered a classic middle class behavior,[^2] where both aspiration and contentment are present but fragile. When reading this for the first time I felt seen. The current version of myself is not a ritual person. Life is short and every second counts. Right now I am calculating for compound gains, envisioning some kind of exponential curve pointing upwards. I might change the nature of my internal calculus and open myself up for a more ritualistic morning routine. I had this idea of treating every morning like a micro version of a lived life: Start dizzy (and/or grumpy), develop drive and ambition, do your thing, get lost in it, get distracted, get back to your thing. At some point realize time is running out. Look back at what you achieved and what’s left open. Establishing some kind of regret ritual every morning could help me reconciling with the things I did not manage to do. Inspired by the tibetan *Chöd* ritual[^3] I might visualize my decaying corpse every morning to make peace with the fact that in the end we all will become excellent fertilizer. But would it help? From the most common life regrets people have (not living a life true to themselves, overworking, held back feelings, lost touch with friends, not allowing happiness[^4]) I learned two things: 1) All these regrets are largely independent from external circumstances. Life can hand you lemons, but compare these regrets to the wishes people hunt for in their lifetime (corner offices, yachts, Strava leaderboards). The unfulfilled things people regret at the end of their lives are things we could have fulfilled on our own to a large degree. Maybe that’s also why they lead the list of regrets. 2) All these regrets need to be adressed by action, not contemplation. "Allow yourself to be happy" may be debatable, but I see a necessity of creating room for happiness to unfold, by doing some things and not doing others. It requires persistent activity to address the most common deathbed regrets. Benjamin Franklin, a serious maintainer of strict morning routines (he frequently failed to live up to) wrote in his diary: > *on the whole, tho' I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it[^5]* This is why tweaking my mornings is as old as my note taking practice: they are the same struggle. Restarting at the same point every day, among the broken bits and pieces of yesterdays failures is not a curse but a gift. I can just get up, drink some water and start fixing the makeshift structures of my routines that will break again soon. Every day I fail a little, but every day I learn a bit.[^6] Tomorrow morning, I will start writing little messages to my friends. [^1]: see https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/08/26/the-creation-and-destruction-of-habits/ [^2]: *"Tradition is beautiful, frontiers are ugly. To mistake one for the other is the defining characteristic of the clueless middle class."* https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/08/26/the-creation-and-destruction-of-habits/ [^3]: See [Chöd on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%B6d). Buddha supposedly said: *"If a monk sees a stack of bones now gone rotten & turning into dust, he then applies this experience to his own body: Verily, exactly so is also my own body! It is of the very same nature."* https://gaianway.org/corpse-meditation/ [^4]: [The Top Five Regrets of the Dying - A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing (Bronnie Ware)](https://bronnieware.com/regrets-of-the-dying/) [^5]: [The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Benjamin Franklin)](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm) [^6]: What I learned about morning habits: 1) Make your desired behavior the most convenient option available. 2) Always maintain a stable order of activities, but change the duration as needed. 3) A good morning starts at the evening before with preparation and clutter removal. 4) Take accountability for your morning by getting up when you planned to get up, no snoozing. 5) Routines with children around are possible, but harder to realize. All of the above becomes even more important [[Systems Build in Calm Are Tested in Storms|when the theory of a well structured morning meets a fuzzy baby]].