For a long while, my first action in the morning was to turn off my alarm, pick up my phone, and begin reading email.
I didn’t like the email behavior. It didn’t improve my mental state and degraded it on many days. So I attempted to figure out good replacement.
Over the past 2 years, I’ve made it a point to remind myself of a set of principles most mornings – stored in my phone’s Notes. In theory, ideal behavior would be to start by reading that set of principles, getting up, and then getting to email.
After many such attempts, I declared bankruptcy, stopped attempting to reinvent the wheel, and followed the many wise souls who replaced their phone alarm with an alarm clock.
It’s been a month. The alarm clock is fine but the new routine it enables – with the phone out of the bedroom – is great.
Sometimes, it’s best to burn the bridges and move onto trying something different.
