What do you do Before Breakfast?
5 minute read
If you spend any time on social media, listen to business podcasts or read interviews with CEOs you’ll have come across the secret to ‘Successful Mornings’. It seems like you can’t expect to make a million before breakfast, influence the world or be the next man in space (yes, I said man, this absolutely ridiculous race to space seems to need a penis where a brain should be) without following some key steps to pre-dawn success.
By 5am you need to not only be awake, but have read something inspirational, meditated, exercised, and replied to emails. If you’re a woman you also need to have journaled and paired your cycle with the moon.
Up until a few years ago, the idea of a productive morning was making sure you had breakfast before you ran out the door, but mornings have been co-opted by the busyness brigade and it’s no longer enough to sit down for long enough to have your porridge. You must have it after your Wim Hof method, or while face-timing your guru or after you fall off your Peleton clutching your heart.
It had been a predominantly male message but it's creeping more and more into the female space now. I hate it and find it both incredibly privileged and incredibly sexist.
Firstly, imagine telling people struggling to get through the day that they aren’t making the amount of money they dream of because they’re not getting up early enough? You too could be raking it in if you got up at 4 am and meditated. The millionaire’s cash has nothing to do with all the luck associated with their birth or expensive education, a family business or leg up by inter-generational connections. There’s a great Tech Bro meme of the five keys to success:
How I became a VP at top tech company before 30
4am wake up
Cold Showers
Meditate
Gratitude Journal
Dad owns tech company
Then there’s the sexism. If the man exercising in a cryo-chamber (or echo chamber) at 5 am has a family, it’s clear that there is someone on hand to help. Either they have outside assistance or a partner shouldering all of the morning burdens.
There is no room in the ‘Successful Morning’ routine for breakfasts, tiny triangular sandwiches, school runs and all of the craziness that morning brings.
The increasing number of women who are getting in on the early morning club are either wealthy enough to have help or are on the verge of dropping with the exhaustion of trying to do it all. I follow a very well-known New York fitness influencer (I don’t know why, I must stop) who has to do a full workout, juice a head of celery, journal and meditate before she can possibly start her day.
You must too; she purrs at her almost 1 million followers. She has two children who occasionally try to join in her workouts, but she is not legging it around trying to cram some ham between two slices of bread for a lunch box or screaming about missing shoes. There is clearly a team in place in her stunning, enormous, Manhattan apartment to help her achieve her ‘Successful Morning’ but you never hear about them and how they might cram a little meditation into their day.
I follow another influencer, this time in London who gets up early for me-time, meditates, journals and drinks coffee in silence but then also does a full family routine complete with PE kits and chaos. She runs a successful business, but I’ve noticed that her stories are often quiet in the mornings. I think, now, that she comes home from the school run and has a nap. I mean, she’s already been up for four hours, telling us how important mornings are.
What happened to getting enough rest and starting slowly and feeling calm?
I wondered if I was just jealous of silent coffee time and 5am flows so I asked Sinead O’Moore, a mum of two and entrepreneur about her mornings. She launched The Brand Story (@thebrandstory.ie), an agency that helps businesses find their authentic voice last year and is an early riser but not by choice.
“I get up at 6am with one clear goal. One clear non-negotiable. A routine so important it completely controls the future success or failure of my working day. Simply to get my children out the door. I understand how and why exercise, clarity, calm and invigoration would kick start a day, but it's not my reality. With a 4-year-old and a baby, my mornings consist of chaos, warm corn flakes and cold coffee.
Boobs emptied, bellies filled, outfits rejected, shoes wrestled, hair clips lost and found, negotiations lost and won. The closest thing to a morning meditation chant that occurs in my world is, ‘put your coat on’. I'm a mother trying to raise tiny children while trying raise a self-employed income during a pandemic. So, you see any success I have achieved is because of resilience not ritual.”
Good routines are essential to getting all we need to get done, done. But ones that encourage men to ignore their families or tell women to cram more into their already packed days are poisonous.
My current routine is to open my eyes, figure out the day’s Wordle, play chicken with my husband until one of us puts on the coffee and launch myself into 100 minutes of chaos until childcare and school step into the breach.
Successful mornings are ones where everyone gets where they need to be, fed, watered and happy. By all means, journal, meditate, exercise and freeze your bits off but either acknowledge the help you have that allows it to happen or do it at 11 am. No one really needs to see 4 am unless you’re on the way home!
Jennifer Stevens, January 2022
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