The Best Way To Start The Day?

I was an early adopter of the internet and got online via a CD that offered me access via AOL.  It came sellotaped to the front of a computer magazine, that being the way that software was propogated in those days.  I'd been tempted by the prospect of easy access to information, which in turn would be an advantage to my career.  I got the information, but found that it was no longer as advantageous as I anticipated.  Everyone else managed to get hold of it as well.  But nonetheless I was still happy that I wasn't falling behind. 


I also discovered the fun of social media, as it was later to be called, via AOL chat rooms.  These were a lot of fun.  They soon became the first thing I would look at in the morning instead of the newspaper.  I've since transferred platforms a few times but ever since I joined it in 2008 I've pretty much used my first few minutes of consciousness in the morning to catch up on current events on Twitter.

Twitter is good fun because you know the tweets will be short.  You know there are a lot of them.  And it is such a popular platform that the trends let you know what the big story of the day is.  Above all it is easy on the brain which pre-coffee is greatly appreciated.  All in all a good way to start the day.

But I had a break from Twitter earlier this year during the election campaign when I resolved not to be influenced by the media and imposed a news blackout on myself.   This required staying off of Twitter.  I replaced my morning Twitter session with Duolingo.  I don't know if Duolingo is a good way to learn a language from scratch, but I find it a good way of keeping the ones I sort of speak already at least declining from lack of use.  This actually felt like a much better start. My interest in foreign languages isn't key to anything much for me.  English speakers already have the most useful language available.  But I found that being the first thing I started thinking about in the morning I was still doing a bit of mental rehearsal for the rest of the morning rather than thinking over the implications of the latest news.

So this is what I have concluded.  The first thing you do at the start of the day should be intended not so much to be particularly entertaining or educational.   The idea is to get your mental state into the one you need to get what needs to be done that day.  When I started following the news again I was rapidly back in my old habits.  I was once again diverting way more of my problem-solving resources to those problems that affect the nation rather than me personally.

It's not that I don't want to help sort out the nations problems.  It's just that realistically most of them are rather above my pay grade. And frankly I'm more use to society as a whole if I'm productive and economically successful.

So for the first month the 2020, a month with very little away of daylight/warmth or things to look forward to anyway, I'll be experimenting with different ways of starting the day.

I think firstly I will try will simply free-form writing on paper using a pencil.   I'll also explore planning, again with a pencil and also  try it with Trello.  I don't know if I'll be able to give this one a fair trial as I don't really have the skills for it,  but I will give meditation a try too.  And this morning I am starting the day with a short personal blog post.