A Delightfully De-optimized Morning Routine
Tired of ridiculous morning routines, I decided to make mine as slow and simple as possible…
On a bright Wednesday morning, in the middle of an otherwise mundane week, I leave my front door in a hurry in order to get to my car so I can start another bland day of bland work. But this morning is different. While walking towards my car, the sun, peeking through the trees across the street, flashes into my eyes. For some reason, on this particular day, it stops me in my tracks. I take my hand off the door handle and look up at the trees. They are splashed in a golden light. Birds are traveling from treetop to treetop. A chipmunk sprints across my driveway, hoping I will not notice where he was going. Tiny flowers are beginning to bloom from the green stems bursting from the ground. I turn my gaze back across the street and look towards the sunrise.
Immediately, I know what needs to be done.
—
In our fast-paced world and optimized hustle culture, there is one casualty that seems especially peculiar:
Our mornings.
When we imagine an ideal morning a few common themes emerge. Usually we picture a beautiful sunrise and a calm, quiet start to the day. Perhaps we leisurely roll out of bed after resting under the covers for a bit, strolling into the kitchen to start a fresh pot of aromatic coffee that pairs perfectly with a delicious breakfast. Maybe we read for a bit or take time to carefully plan our day. From there we get ready and begin whatever task we need to with plenty of time to spare. Heck, I’m feeling relaxed and cozy just thinking about this.
But that, of course, is almost always not the case in modern life. Instead, the average morning typically consists of being jolted awake by an atrocious phone alarm and then immediately scrolling on said phone for far too long in order to “catch up” on whatever happened (which is usually nothing) overnight. Once we realize how much time we’ve wasted, we frantically get ourselves (and in many cases our family) ready to get out the door on time for whatever seemingly urgent obligation we need to meet. Scarf down a hefty bowl of straight sugar - I mean - breakfast cereal, chug some coffee, throw on an outfit after frantically deciding what to wear, and we’re on our way.
Our mornings can absolutely be a time of peace, solitude, and meaningful productivity that set us up for a great day if we develop certain routines and systems. They can also be a haphazard disaster that increases our stress levels, wastes our time, and makes us question whether we should go out for a pack of gum and never come back.
This is why, in my opinion, morning routines have become such a popular topic in our productivity-obsessed society.
The idea behind a regimented morning routine is that starting the morning off well sets us up for success throughout the rest of the day, which makes sense. I’m sure we’d all like to feel more energized and vibrant early on and have that feeling persist throughout the afternoon. It’d be great if we could use our initial daily moments to our advantage in whatever way we felt necessary. The issue is that the idea of the “ideal morning routine” has been completely hijacked by the hustle-culture crowd in a way that turns our earliest waking hours into another commodity that can be optimized and used for productivity.
In a world where we must produce as much as possible, mornings are an excellent opportunity to squeeze more out of our time. A quick search of “morning routines” on YouTube will lead to thousands of videos of well-meaning folks explaining how you can hack, optimize, and win your mornings in order to create the ideal version of yourself. These videos have varying degrees of intensiveness and difficulty. Almost all of them share the common theme of waking up earlier than you do now so that you can do more than you currently are. The most absurd routine that I have found requires waking at 4:00am every day, meditating, writing in a gratitude journal, doing a full workout, going for a walk outside, reading at least ten pages of a nonfiction book, working on your side hustle for about an hour, drinking a $100-per-container supplement, taking a cold shower, performing a full skincare routine, and then heading out to work knowing that you’ve fully accomplished the goal of being an asshole before everyone else wakes up. In addition to these YouTube videos, there are now literal courses that allegedly teach us how to “win the morning” so that we can achieve our dreams and become the greatest version of ourselves. A big promise to fulfill by 8am.
According to these gurus, no longer should we slowly wake up and get ourselves together while savoring the early morning solitude. Nor should we emerge from bed without a detailed plan and schedule. Instead, we should rise and grind, stick to our routine, and produce as much as we possibly can before the sun skirts above the horizon. If you’re not in the early morning club, then you’re missing out. And if you are? Well, my friend, you are getting ahead.
Ahead of what? Or of whom? I’m not sure. But you’ll be ahead, alright. Because life, and mornings, are a competition now.
Time to win.
—
When did gradually shaking ourselves out of unconsciousness become such a “thing”? Like many areas of our culture, the fast-paced, tech-centered, rise-and-grind nature of society often creates more problems than it solves here. Imagine the anxiety that comes with having this long list of “to-dos” before the sun even rises, the benefits of which you’re not quite sure of. Or consider missing out on some of these checkboxes one day and feeling like you lost the morning. If you don’t achieve perfection, then you’ve lost, and that’s a pretty awful way to start a day. Plus, these standards are outrageously unrealistic. Maybe if you’re a single dude with few obligations and a need to get some discipline in your life, these ideas can certainly help. But if I were to try these tasks each day, the sheer noise I would create would annoy Gab to the point that she’d stumble out and drag me back to bed. For the average person working a regular job and managing a family, the most intense of these routines are simply unachievable. Are they now losers because they are not kicking ass each dawn?
Of course not. But it sure can feel that way when you see thousands of people online doing what you aren’t, or maybe aren’t even capable of, and bragging about it. Never mind that the vast majority of these people are flat-out lying about their routine. They have created the illusion that these routines are necessary, achievable, and repeatable. Even if they claim to be up at 4:30am when it’s bright outside in their video, or their clock clearly says 11:30 as they allegedly make breakfast at 6am.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t be mindful about how we start our days. Certainly living intentionally in all phases of the day is something we can strive for, as it provides a more meaningful, fulfilling life. This includes how we spend our time in the moments after we wake up, scratch ourselves, and stumble out of the bedroom. If we are intentional and mindful about our actions then we can feel more relaxed, more purposeful, and more focused heading into the day ahead. Naturally, there’s a balance that can be struck between having a productive morning and giving ourselves time and space to relax and ease into the day. But balance is often hard to find.
—
It was 4:50 am on a freezing Tuesday morning in upstate New York. Outside snow was falling gently on the street, illuminated by soft golden streetlights. It was so frigid that each snowflake immediately turned to ice on contact with the tundra. Beyond my bedroom window it was silent because normal people don’t wake up at 4:50 am when there are less degrees in the temperature than there are fingers on my right hand. Groaning, I rolled over and shut off my awful alarm, which was blaring “Hells Bells” by AC/DC into the darkness of my bedroom.
Groggily I stumbled out of bed and into the living room. Keeping the lights off, so as not to wake up the rest of my family, I opened the front door and felt the blast of cold air rush into the house. On the doorstep was a gift that no twelve year old would have wanted:
A stack of newspapers, just waiting to be delivered.
As I leaned over the hoist up the pile, I cursed Wayne with all my might. This was his fault, anyway. Without him I could still be sleeping like a normal middle schooler. Instead, I had become the victim of a con-man.
A few months prior I came home from school to find that some guy with leathered skin and a white goatee had appeared in my kitchen. I had never seen this man before in my life, but he was schmoozing my dad into allowing pre-Industrial child labor to make its way back into the local economy.
It was Wayne.
In front of our 80s-style oven he and my dad discussed a job opportunity for me. I still have no idea how this arrangement came about, or how my dad met this guy, but by the end of that conversation I had been volunteered by the council of elders to serve as tribute for a neighborhood paper route. And thus my fate was sealed.
As possibly the last traditional paperboy in America, while every other kid was getting a developmentally appropriate amount of sleep, I was forced to wake up at 4:50am every day in order to saunter through the darkness and drop newspapers in doorways and on porches (that is not entirely accurate. On weekends I got to sleep in until 5:50am). For three long years, every school day, every holiday, every blizzard, every rainy day, began with me hazily packing papers and heading out the door where the often brutal weather would sober me up throughout the course of the walk. While my fellow classmates were sleeping in until 9 or 10 in the morning, I watched every sunrise for three years in exchange for $2.50 an hour. I began that paper route as a boy and left as a man, mainly due to the impacts of sleep deprivation.
As evidenced by my dad’s enthusiasm about my early morning shift, I did not grow up in a household of balanced morning routines. When it came to early mornings my parents exemplified the two extreme ends of the spectrum.
Growing up, my father was the epitome of a productive morning person. Motivated by an Army commercial he saw as a kid, his favorite motto was, “We do more before 7am than most people do in a day.” This often resulted in his footsteps loudly pounding the floor well before sunrise (which prevented me and my sister from sleeping in even if we wanted to), slamming kitchen drawers, running power equipment, and, most famously, shocking my sister awake with the sound of a power washer blasting her window at five-thirty in the morning. That, of course, was my personal favorite. He was, and still is, the epitome of an early-morning productivity guru before that was even considered to be a part of our culture.
Delicate and slow, he was not.
Enduring all of this with the spirit of a hardened soldier was my mother. I have vivid memories of my mom struggling through the mornings amidst the overwhelming energy of my dad swirling through the house in the early hours. Each day I’d come out of my room to see her curled up on the big brown couch, her face occasionally peeking out of her thickest and most comfortable blanket only for a delightful sip of her precious coffee. Stunned and barely functional, she’d slowly come back to consciousness over the course of an hour or two, in just enough time to make the dreary drive over the hill to work each day. Productivity was the last thing on her mind in the morning. Instead, she was purely focused on survival (especially on Mondays or right after a vacation). The idea of a productive morning routine to her would be sacrilege.
Thanks in large part to that paper route, which hacked my brain at such a vulnerable age, I take more after my dad. The paper route routine made me a morning person by nature, and that schedule has stuck ever since. Couple that with my long-standing perfectionism and interest in self-improvement, and I was fertile soil for the ideas of the win-the-morning crowd. Nowadays I don’t need to begrudgingly deliver the local news to the neighbors, but that vacuum of responsibility has led to me trying every routine under the sun with the goal of experiencing the promise of the “perfect morning” and all the serenity, strength, and focus that would presumably come with it. I have woken up at 4:00am and hit the gym, drank a variety of disgusting green drinks, journaled about everything I’m grateful for, meditated, done breathwork, and worked on various side hustles, all by 7am.
None of those routines, though, ever lasted more than a week or two. Because they were unrealistic. Borderline impossible to maintain. Internet puffery. Appeals for attention. And, at their core, fake.
There’s a phenomenon I notice with my high school students: when an assignment is too difficult, or they feel they have fallen too far behind in class, their default response is to give up. Rather than continue trying to reach a goal, they see the opportunity as too far out of their reach. So why bother?
This is true of most people. It’s why most diets fail. Why most of us can’t stick to a fitness routine long-term. And it’s certainly why we all forget about our New Year's Resolutions by February. When we bite off more than we can chew, and the dream seems impossible, the easy thing to do is to simply stop trying. Why waste the energy on something we are not going to attain anyway?
The same rings true of these morning routines. The suggestions online are so cumbersome and overstuffed that most people cannot possibly stick to them. Which, often, results in a wild pendulum swing to the other end of the spectrum. Instead of being ultra-productive, many of us spend our mornings sleeping in, hitting the snooze button, scrolling on our phones, and not doing anything worthwhile. While focusing too much on productivity can be unhelpful, absolving ourselves of any productivity and responsibility can be equally damaging.
A typical morning that involves waking up late and scrolling through social media is a one-way ticket towards a stressful day. When we check our phones at the moment we open our eyes, our still-tired brains are suddenly flooded with the ideas, perspectives, and experiences of hundreds of people. Imagine if a hundred strangers marched into your room the second you woke up to shout at you about what they just did. Naturally, your response would be to call the police and get these weirdos out of your house! Or, at the very least, guard your privacy a bit better so that your bedroom becomes more of a sanctuary. And yet this is exactly what we do when we open our phones and check email, social media, or the news first thing in the morning; our brains struggle to tell the difference.
While being ultra-productive isn’t the answer to a great start to the day, neither is throwing it all to the wind and becoming a slug. Like with any routine or lifestyle change, we need to strike a balance. The extreme wake-up times and endless morning checklists are ridiculous and unsustainable. But the solution is not to do nothing but lay around and scroll before haphazardly throwing together an outfit and scarfing down a breakfast before rushing out the door. There is always a middle way. Even if I never had an example of one in my home.
I considered all of this after a particularly stressful week. Work had been insanely busy and pushed me to my limits of screen time and interacting with other humans. Our week was also filled with a variety of uncomfortably pricey but necessary house projects that were anything but relaxing to complete. By three o’clock each day I felt physically exhausted, mentally drained, and emotionally unavailable. It was one of those periods in life where it felt like I had done a million things throughout each day, but that nothing of value was actually accomplished.
My theory was that, if I could start my days more intentionally, then the good vibes and energy would flow through the rest of my waking hours, stressful as they may be. At the time I was just coming off another productivity-bout and wanted nothing to do with a detailed morning routine. But my current habit of checking YouTube comments, scrolling through multiple inboxes, and browsing the latest NFL news on Reddit was wasting time and making me feel anxious by the time I left for work. How could I strike a healthy balance between my tendency to optimize and my habit of slugging around online?
That’s when that sudden glare of sun in my eyes on this Wednesday morning sparks an epiphany:
When was the last time I watched a sunrise?
Sure, I notice that the sun rises each day. We all do. I’ll put Captain Obvious to rest now.
But when was the last time I actually dedicated time to sit and do nothing but watch it happen? I think back to a few hikes I have done over the past year where the sun rose while I was on the trail. But never on a normal workday did I make a point of mindfully observing the daily spectacle. Did such beauty need to be contained solely to moments on a trail? Was my suburban neighborhood not inspiring enough to enjoy the start of the day?
Maybe, if I started my day by simply watching the sunrise, then life would slow down a bit. Feel less hectic. Massage my brain and leave me more nimble to complete my long to-do list. Perhaps starting the day with beauty instead of productivity or laziness could make me a better person. A natural start as a small act of rebellion against a tech-obsessed world.
As I step into my car and turn the key, I feel inspired to find out.
—
So many days pass by without noticing the constant changes in nature. The clouds floating overhead, the leaves dancing in the breeze, the light shifting as the day progresses. Instead of appreciating this cosmic show, I often am buried in a glowing screen compulsively checking email inside a dimly lit shelter. It’s one of the main reasons I challenged myself to celebrate the Wheel of the Year, and it was a big motivation behind resolving to watch the sunrise every day.
In the sci-fi film Downsizing, a group of people choose to “down-size”, or shrink themselves to about six inches tall, in order to save the planet and lessen their overall impact on Earth. At one point a small (literally) tribe decides to spend the rest of their days in a well-stocked bunker in case their efforts to save the planet end up being futile. Together, on the evening before their descent into the unknown, the tribe gathers to watch their final sunset. In the scene, all are silent. Some have eyes open, others closed, as they bask in the golden glow of our sun for one final time. It’s a beautifully shot, meditative scene, with piercing silence that highlights the beauty that we so often overlook. As soon as the sun sets behind the mountains there is a sigh, and everyone slowly moves towards the bunker.
Because they knew it was their last sunset, they soaked it in. They appreciated it. They made it a dedicated part of their day. And because of that knowing it became beautiful.
But me?
Technically I never know when my last sunset, or sunrise, will be. It could be today for all I know. A lot of that will depend on how focused the drivers are between me and my office. And yet most days this beautiful scene plays out right in my front yard and I don’t even bother to notice because I’m too busy on “more important matters” (which usually means scrolling Instagram or listening to the latest guru on YouTube). If today was my last day on Earth, and I knew that was the case, the most important thing to me would be to watch that beautiful scene one more time. Not to check social media, or email, or to cross another thing off my to-do list. No. It’d be to sit, be, and enjoy the solace as my final sunrise emerged dramatically in the distance.
Watching the sunrise is the perfect time to do nothing but be alive in a fleeting moment. The best reminder that life is short, unexpected, and that we’re guaranteed nothing. That “more important matters” can wait. Because if the sun doesn’t rise or set, then none of those things will matter anyway. So I might as well watch and appreciate the event that makes it all happen to begin with. Right?
Which is why I am committing to a “de-optimization” plan. Instead of doing as much as possible each morning, I will “do nothing” but one simple act: watch the sunrise. For these 20 or so minutes, each day, my only routine will be to wake up, grab my glasses, make a cup of coffee, and walk onto my deck. From there I plan to stand underneath the trees and watch the sun go through its daily, thankless performance of illuminating the neighborhood and signaling the coming of another precious day. No email, no social media, no journaling, no exercising. Just standing, staring, and enjoying the moment. The goal being to feel relaxed, focused, and ready to fully experience a beautiful day. As I go to bed the night before my experiment begins I feel weirdly excited. What wonders will I see that typically go unnoticed? How relaxed and calm will I feel going into work? Maybe this is the anecdote to my stressful mornings.
—
This morning sucks already.
Instead of emerging from my house into a sparkling, colorful world of birdsong and bunny rabbits, I instead step out onto a soaking wet deck while getting rained on. Getting drenched in my pajamas wasn’t exactly how I envisioned this beginning. It takes every ounce of mental discipline to remind myself that every day can still be beautiful even if it doesn’t create a spectacular painting in the sky. It’s just a lot harder when you are damp and sticky first thing in the morning.
I bring my coffee mug to my lips and step back under the awning over the deck door to escape the rain. My backyard is still new to me. We have only lived in this house for a couple of months and I still don’t feel fully connected to the land. Back home I spent most of my days rambling around my back woods, getting to know each nook and crevice while becoming a dedicated protector of that land against future development. That is my home, thanks to almost thirty years of daily play in that space. What I am looking at now, technically, is my home too. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like an arranged marriage and this is my first day meeting my future spouse. Sure it’s nice, and pretty, but there’s no connection (and certainly no love) yet. Maybe after this challenge there will be a spark, I think. I miss the forest of my youth, and hope that, maybe someday, I can feel the same affection for this little plot of land.
For his book Local, adventurer Alastair Humphreys spent an entire year exploring a single map of his home area. He too felt a bit out of place where he lived and wanted to learn to love the area in which he had settled. Through a year of exploration he found an entire universe existing in the drab, over-industrialized London suburb which he called home. There were plants he had never seen, animals he never witnessed, and the realization that thousands of complex human lives were taking place all around him, each with an experience as intricate and magnificent as his own. A single map, he concluded, could be enough for an entire lifetime of exploration. In the end (spoiler alert) he grew a much greater appreciation and, dare I say, love for an area that he initially wanted nothing to do with.
While I certainly don’t hate where we had settled (we did choose to buy the house, you know) I still don’t feel any deep connection or emotion towards it. We moved to this house in a season of death. Our closing was in mid-December, meaning our entire experience on this little plot of land up to this point has been surrounded by snow, sticks, and gloom. Now we are finally entering the season of rebirth, and little signs of Earth’s fertility were popping up around the yard. Maybe when I see this land in its full glory it will imprint itself on me.
Looking out there is a small patch of microforest; a collection of oaks, eastern white pines, and a thick underbelly of leaves. The ground is covered with sandy soil and moss, which is natural for our geographic area. While most other homes have cut down their trees, soaked their lawns in chemicals to make grass grow where it shouldn’t, and manicured their space into fallow chunks of lifeless turf, the previous owners of our home had apparently let nature take its course. Maybe they saw the value in allowing natural life to flourish, even if it was just a small plot of land. Maybe they were too busy to care about yard work. Or, as was probably the case, they were too old to do anything about it. Either way, I am extremely grateful for their (lack of) service.
Each of the trees are dramatically competing for limited sunlight. Some are leaning so far over the house it makes me wonder how they haven’t fallen in all these years. At the apex of the leaning trees are branches turned directly skyward, desperately looking to outwit their brothers in competition for the same sun. A strong south wind begins to blow, the culprit of the warm and tropical air, which makes each of these giants sway aggressively in the breeze, creaking and crackling with each dramatic movement. Spurts of rain seem to shoot out of the air right in front of me and dampen my morning hoodie. While not quite comfortable, I definitely feel alive.
And that is certainly a foreign experience for an early Monday morning.
—
Without a dedicated morning routine, I tend to fall into the trap checking the news and social media to see what everyone in the world is up to. Knowing this is an issue, I decide one day to dramatically limit the scope of my “checking in”. On this day, I shrink my field of attention by deliberately paying attention to, and checking-in on, the locals only.
I emerge this morning feeling more curious than annoyed. My neighbors are being outrageously loud and wake me up well before my alarm. The noise is incessant and was blaring right through our bedroom windows, making it impossible to sleep in on a delightful Saturday morning. At first, of course, I feel like a victim of their careless selfishness. How could they be so loud so early? Don’t they care that everyone else is asleep? But then I figure I should see what all the commotion was about. Who knows? Maybe it is something worth waking up for.
The Earth is still damp from the southern storm that rolled through earlier in the week. Cumulus clouds, still reminding us of the lingering humidity, slowly pass over the house. The scent of warm mud brings back a flash of memories and a sense of comfort. Spring is here. That is the cause of the commotion.
My neighbors are a motley crew: robins, cardinals, tufted titmice, chickadees, and bluebirds. And boy are they all incredibly stoked to finally get some warm air and a bit of sun. After a long, hard winter (or migration) they are loudly celebrating the beautiful morning, bountiful worms, and perfect weather for mating. No wonder they are so loud. I wouldn’t be able to contain my excitement for those things either (as long as we replace worms with fresh-baked bread).
The robins are certainly the loudest, singing in a massive united chorus that echoes across the neighborhood all the way to the pond on the other side of the block. They are still in the trees, probably getting ready for the day's hunt, as I notice plenty of worms have been washed up from all the rain. It is a free buffet and the robins are getting themselves pumped up to truly have “all you could eat”.
I close my eyes and begin to breathe slowly. The chorus of birdsong sweeps around my body and creates a bridge between myself and my sky-dwelling neighbors. On a normal morning I probably would have ignored their cackling. But I am glad to be taking part as an audience member in the microforest. If we are going to be living together, we might as well be comfortable with each others’ presence.
Then, suddenly, drama.
Two bluebirds swoop down from the canopy on an aggressive attack of another lone bluebird hanging out below. They squeal and squabble as the rustle of feathers pounds the airwaves of the forest floor. In the commotion the three of them, almost as if one being, continue fighting while flying back up into the trees. Maybe it is because the caffeine hasn’t latched onto my brain yet, but the tussle surprises and exhilarates me. The spectacle is far more entertaining than any comment thread I would have read otherwise. I wonder which bluebird is at fault. Maybe the two are bullies. Or maybe the one is a jerk and deserved it.
The floor of the microforest begins to morph from a fuzzy, lightless gray to a deep shade of amber and burnt-orange. As the sun emerges, life on the floor will soon awaken and catch-up to the commotion in the canopy. Like our time zones, light stirs energy in those it hits first. Looking around, I am the only human out catching the light; the sun’s energy is kept all to myself. I soak it in, awakening with a sense of power and peace.
The bluebirds stop their battle. The robins quiet down and make their way to the buffet beneath me. I take one last breath, say goodbye to my neighbors, and wish them well as I retreat back into my home.
—
More days of rain have come and gone, preventing the soaked Earth from ever fully drying out. Today, finally, is forecast to be sunny.
I am almost two weeks into the experiment and this is the first morning without a single cloud in the sky. A few stars, and Venus, still linger in the predawn canvas above as I step out into air that is a bit chillier now that the fronts have passed through. Today I am wrapped in a thick hoodie and my hiking pants, although I keep my bare feet out in the crisp air.
The trees are desperately waiting for a few days of sun so they can fully pop into their most colorful outfits. The ends of each oak branch are adorned with tiny crimson buds that look like thousands of lollipops pressed against the sky. With just a few nice days, they will soon burst into leaves and begin feeding on desperately needed sunlight.
Then, finally, their first break comes.
Rays of sunlight begins gracing the tippy-tops of the trees, basking them in a golden hue. Slowly the light works its way down, gradually bathing each of the trees inch-by-inch in its life-giving glow. Wanting some for myself, I back up to the edge of the deck and prop myself up on the railing. I am still too short. The trees and their genetic height advantage will get to feel the sun’s glory long before I can.
Daylight is something absolutely critical to our well-being, and something we do not get nearly enough of.
Our bodies run on a circadian rhythm, which regulates our levels of wakefulness based on the amount of light that we are experiencing. In a more natural setting we would typically rise with the sun and fall asleep soon after darkness settled, with the amount of sleep adjusting with the amount of daylight throughout the year. Generally, we would sleep more in the winter (due to the extended darkness) and be more active in the long days of summertime.
Technology, though, has changed that. And much to our detriment.
Thanks to the miracle of electric lighting, we no longer have to shuffle to bed once the sun goes down. We can illuminate dozens of mini-suns in our homes to keep the party going long into the evening. When camping I am usually fast asleep within an hour or two after sunset, in part because it’s pitch black and there is nothing else to do. At home, though, I can easily be kept awake by our living room lamp and the bright glow of the TV playing reruns of South Park until well past midnight. Outside the home, street lights blaring blue LEDs into our windows at all hours of the evening, regardless of activity level, can make the night feel obsolete. This shortsighted strategy prevents darkness from ever truly falling in some areas. The excess of light at night, both indoors and outdoors, has disastrous effects on our sleep, circadian rhythm, and, therefore, our health.
The same goes for the morning, but in the opposite direction. Whereas our bodies crave natural sunlight once we wake up, it is all too easy to remain in artificial darkness in spite of the morning sun. Our homes are far darker than the world outside in the morning, as I can attest to by my eyes needing to readjust each time I go back inside after the sunrise. A typical morning of staying inside a room with the shades drawn while looking at a screen starves our brain of the light it needs to get moving and let the body know it’s time to begin the day.
Our light is too bright for us to sleep at night, but too dim to wake us up in the morning. The worst of both worlds in an in-human strategy.
As soon as the sun splashes on my backyard the world erupts into energy. The animals are privy to this power of light.
When our eyes come into bright, natural sunlight in the morning, hormones are released that effectively regulate our circadian rhythm and energy levels. We get more energy during the day and fall asleep easier at night if we are exposed to the natural rhythms of light that the Earth has to offer. Sunlight reaching our eyes, especially in the morning, helps us feel more energized, focused, and happy throughout the course of the day. Sunlight reaching our skin not only increases levels of Vitamin D but also, interestingly enough, increases libido in both men and women. If that’s not enough to get you into a morning routine of watching the sunrise, I don’t know what is.
While I am not measuring the amount of hormones being released into my body, I certainly feel a difference on these early mornings. By the end of my time outside each day I feel significantly more energized, focused, and calmer than if I had stayed inside and remained in a stunned state of drowsiness on the couch. It is the difference between feeling frazzled and sluggish versus feeling fresh, clean, and alive. As time goes on, I even begin to ditch my coffee and tea because the caffeine is no longer necessary to keep me going.
Like the trees, all I need is the sun.
Eventually the sun is high enough to angle its light onto me, having already fed the trees their initial rations. I close my eyes as the warmth hits my skin. Feelings of peace wash over me while energy begins bubbling from below. It is a perfect combination of motivation and relaxation. I am ready to go tackle my to-do list, but I am not stressing about it or feeling rushed. Instead, it is a strong sense of energized confidence.
And the only cost was standing outside and closing my eyes…
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