Greg
00:00 - 00:30
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative Work Hour podcast. Today is Saturday November the 22nd 2025 and it's fast approaching Thanksgiving and it'll soon be Christmas can you believe that. Today we're going to be talking about morning routines and specifically when it comes to morning routines what works and what doesn't and have you changed your morning routines to make them easier and more enjoyable. Alessandra, interesting topic.

Alessandra
00:30 - 01:01
Oh, I think it is an interesting topic and, you know, you can't talk about morning routines that you don't have the relevance of how did you sleep, right? So the thing that I'm working on in my morning routine is how do I better engineer the night before? Like I got the iPhone out of the bedroom and I set up a charging, kind of a charging station in the, in the foyer. But I outsmarted myself with that, because waking up in the middle of the night, you go through the foyer to get to the bathroom.

Alessandra
01:01 - 01:18
And so inevitably, I stop and I look at what time it is. And inevitably, I'll see a notification. And inevitably, I'll be like, ooh, what's happening with my Hive account? And then, you know, then it's like 40 minutes before I go back to sleep.

Alessandra
01:19 - 01:54
So the thing that I need to tinker with is the get the phone out of the foyer, move the charging station into the kitchen. So I literally went to an IRL department store today during Christmas shopping, which was a little crazy. And I looked at little alarm clocks so I can have something analog that is, you know, on that four-year table that will not interfere with the melatonin and give me the blue light searing through the eyes, keeping me awake. So that's me.

Alessandra
01:54 - 02:05
That's what I'm working on. And that's not necessarily the morning routine engineering, but it's to give myself a shot, a better shot at having a better morning. How about you, Greg?

Greg
02:05 - 02:36
Morning routines, oh my goodness, well my morning routine is wake up, take medicine, take coffee, take more coffee and adjust as the morning goes on. I've tried a few different things for morning routines and creative work hour, cup of joe, creative work hour, practice not perfect, that's my kind of morning routine, that's my grounding time, my grounding exercises when I decide what I'm going to work on. and it sets the tone for the rest of the day. I find that consistency with that, attending every day, you know, it's at the same time.

Greg
02:37 - 03:01
It's just productive for the rest of the day to come. If I don't join in, you know, I can tell, it kind of shows in ways when I miss a session. But not to steal the thunder from anyone else on the group, but I did try something, an exercise earlier in the week, and that's the morning pages. which another member, and I don't want to steal their thunder, but they do, and I'll let them talk about that, because that's going to be their share.

Greg
03:01 - 03:16
But I found it to be very, very helpful as well. Whether I can get into the habit of doing that every day, I don't know. But I would like to think there is something to work towards, because it is beneficial. But speaking of that, and speaking of morning pages, and I'm not sure if that's going to be their share, but I'm going to go to Gretchen.

Greg
03:16 - 03:24
And so when it comes to morning routines, what works and what doesn't for you? And have you changed your morning routine to make them more enjoyable and productive?

Gretchen
03:25 - 03:51
Oh my goodness. I've had kind of a forced morning routine for so long. When I was an elementary school teacher, it was, I had to be there by a certain time and what had to happen and how, and I've never really been a real morning person. So early on in my marriage, my husband used to like run the coffee under my nose and then set it across the room so I could get out of bed.

Gretchen
03:51 - 04:29
literally, was just one of the routines that he and I had. He's modified it to some degree now, but he still kind of, even though I'm retired, he still gets that going for me and the bacon so I can feed Aldo the dog. So having had some kind of set routine for so many years when I was working, after I retired, I went through several phases of what I tried. I do, creative work hour has come into play as something that I love getting up there and it gets me going because it gets me into doing something creative or productive.

Gretchen
04:29 - 04:42
that I have in the morning. At one point, and I still do, Mel Robbins, Give Yourself a High Five. It's just a fabulous way. But I did in March start morning pages.

Gretchen
04:42 - 05:03
And that is a really, it sounds like it should be, oh, I'll just sit down and write three pages. But it becomes much more. And it doesn't always happen every morning. But the mornings that it doesn't, I recognize since the rest of my day that it would have been better if I had.

Gretchen
05:03 - 05:10
I might have been more productive. I might have gotten stuff off my head. I don't always get the three pages done. Sometimes I get two lines.

Gretchen
05:10 - 05:31
Sometimes I don't get any. But it's still something that I have come to look forward to. And I think that's one of the things for me that's changed from when I was getting up to go to work. And yes, even though I loved teaching so much, being there with the kids, it was still that kind of grind.

Gretchen
05:31 - 05:48
This is a thing that I look forward to. And I think for me, the essential part of my morning routine has to be something included that I'm not dreading but that I really look forward to. That brings me some joy.

Greg
05:48 - 05:52
Thank you, Gretchen. Shadows, how about you? Morning routines? What works?

Greg
05:52 - 05:58
What doesn't? And have you changed your morning routine to make them easier and more enjoyable?

Shadows Pub
05:58 - 06:08
There's only one way on earth that I can tinker with my morning routine. It would be getting rid of Hobo or getting her permission, whichever comes first. She's the driver. I'm usually

Devin
06:08 - 06:08
awake

Shadows Pub
06:08 - 06:27
around two thirty or three. And if I'm not, she will be awaking me. So We've had a little bit of a compromise in that I can spend the first hour, maybe even hour and a half, reading. If I don't mind the periodic interruptions of her standing on the iPad with it laying on my chest.

Shadows Pub
06:27 - 06:39
Then I get up. But I do make her wait until I've prepared my morning drink. Then I make their food. Then I have to supervise the eating of said food, or Hobo will eat her food.

Shadows Pub
06:40 - 06:47
And traps. And then about two hours later I make coffee. That decides the morning. Bobo is firmly in charge.

Greg
06:48 - 06:51
You've not trained her to put the coffee pot on ready for you yet?

Shadows Pub
06:51 - 06:53
Have you ever tried to train a cat?

Greg
06:54 - 07:01
No, no, no. Maybe there's a chat GPT script that could help with that. I don't know. Maybe, maybe

Shadows Pub
07:01 - 07:06
not. The coffee doesn't actually come until two hours after I get up. See,

Greg
07:06 - 07:09
I have to have it almost immediately. Almost immediately.

Shadows Pub
07:09 - 07:17
Well, I have another drink that is actually anti-inflammatory. Coffee actually drives your cortisol up first thing in the morning.

Greg
07:17 - 07:21
Really? I did not know that. So what do you drink that's anti-inflammatory?

Shadows Pub
07:21 - 07:25
Oh, it's a mixture. The base of it is cacaya and beetroot.

Alessandra
07:25 - 07:30
I'm curious about this concoction. What color is it? It's

Shadows Pub
07:30 - 07:30
got

Alessandra
07:30 - 07:32
to be red. What color do you think it

Shadows Pub
07:32 - 07:33
would be with cacaya in it?

Alessandra
07:34 - 07:37
Of course, I don't know what that is. Is that a spice? I don't know what that is.

Shadows Pub
07:38 - 07:44
Oh, papaya is the actual cocoa beans. It's in its raw form.

Alessandra
07:44 - 07:49
Did not know that. It's a dark substance then.

Shadows Pub
07:49 - 07:59
Yeah, it is. It's not been processed to the point of being cocoa. It's just lightly refined. Got all the nutrients that it actually is supposed to have.

Greg
07:59 - 08:03
That sounds like you, Shannon. It's not processed. Lightly refined. Exactly.

Shadows Pub
08:03 - 08:05
Or refined. I don't go for refined.

Greg
08:06 - 08:09
And dark. You can't miss that off.

Shadows Pub
08:09 - 08:09
How

Greg
08:09 - 08:18
about you, Devon? When it comes to morning routines, what works for you and what doesn't? And how have you changed your mornings to make them more enjoyable?

Devin
08:18 - 08:33
Thanks, Greg. Well, I've been a Tim Ferriss fanboy for a long time. And if you know anything about Tim Ferriss, he's obsessed with morning routines. Wrote a huge thick book about the morning routines of successful people and all the different variations.

Devin
08:34 - 09:00
So I've tweaked my morning routine many, many times over the years. But as a foundation, I'll say I am a bona fide morning person. So, it's just how I'm wired and most of my adult life, I'd say I've gotten up at 5am, that's the time I get up now. There are times, I'm such a morning person, I have been a competitive morning person with work, back when we used to go into offices and the like.

Devin
09:00 - 09:23
And there are times when if someone else was a morning person, I made it my goal to beat them into the office and they would respond in kind. So there's times where I've gotten up at 3.30 in the morning just so I would have time to get ready and get to the office first. So yeah, it gets a little crazy sometimes. But my current routine, subject to change without notice, is up at five.

Devin
09:24 - 09:43
And the first thing I do is I grab a one liter bottle of smart water. and I drink that, and then I refill it, and I drink that. So my goal is to get two liters of water in me before I have any coffee or tea, and that helps. And I do a lot of news reading.

Devin
09:43 - 10:02
Like, my first thing I do is I check the BBC news app to see if, you know, any earthquakes have happened, for instance. You know, is there anything I should know about? And then I check my work email, and then I check my work Slack posts. If I survive all of that, then I go to reading newspapers.

Devin
10:03 - 10:18
I read at least the headlines of at least three newspapers every morning. I'm a news junkie, so I want to find out exactly what's going on, what to expect. After that, I sit and really just sort of stare off into space for an hour to an hour and a half. And a lot of work gets done.

Devin
10:18 - 10:42
It looks like I'm doing absolutely nothing, but I can tell you a lot of creative ideas, a lot of solutions to problems, and other useful thoughts come in when I'm just trying to meditate. That's when I pray. A lot happens during that time. And then at 730, I do a combination, an exercise routine that's a combination of yoga and kettlebells.

Devin
10:43 - 10:59
Again, shout out to Tim Ferriss. And after that, I have, maybe I'll have a cup of tea. Maybe I'll do some more reading, chase some squirrels I may have seen earlier. And then of course, by 9.45, it's time for Cup O' Joe and creative work hour.

Devin
10:59 - 11:27
So I'm at my computer, hopefully already settled, focused, got my plan for the day. And during creative work hour, that's when I'm going to catch my journal up for the coming day. and that's when I'm going to maybe, and then I have a separate journal that's just for more creative, what I would call morning pages, more of that type of just experiential thing. So that is my rough outline of my basic morning routine as it stands today, and it's working for me.

Devin
11:28 - 11:29
Thank you, Devon.

Greg
11:29 - 11:37
How about you, Bailey? Morning routines, what works, what doesn't, and have you changed your mornings to make them easier and more

Bailey
11:37 - 11:47
enjoyable? Um, I'm the opposite of Devin, like completely. I hate mornings. And if you talk to me in the mornings, just like expect me to walk away.

Bailey
11:47 - 12:04
I am like super bad in the mornings, but I also find them to be the most productive time. Sometimes it really depends on when I wake up. I've been trying to wake up around like six, which is like super early for me. Cause that's when I write the best.

Bailey
12:04 - 12:19
But recently, since daylight savings, I just can't do it. I don't know what happened. So I don't know. I would say my morning routine is inconsistent, but includes three things always, which is music, coffee and contemplation.

Bailey
12:20 - 12:29
It's just, that's what I do every morning. I walk outside and look at the sky. I love clouds and drink coffee and then get on here. So yep, that's about it.

Bailey
12:31 - 12:31
Never the same.

Alessandra
12:31 - 12:48
In our room, who would, who would admit to being a morning person? We know we've got Devin. We know we've got Hobo and Tramp in team shadows. Anybody else a morning person that's in our group of co-hosts today?

Greg
12:49 - 13:01
I'm not a morning person, but I'm more of a morning person now than I used to be, only because I'm too tired by the end of the day now. So it's like role reversal. I would say I'm probably more of a morning person

Alessandra
13:01 - 13:21
now. Yeah. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not the, I'm not the good example on, on morning routines yet. There's still a lot of resistance about that, but I am really curious about our doing another episode that's related to this for the morning pages.

Alessandra
13:21 - 13:37
So I think that that would be a really fun topic to get into. Yeah, that would be a good one. So I'm wondering in this conversation if anybody thought of anything they want to add based on what someone else said. And maybe you were like, oh my god, I was going to say that.

Alessandra
13:37 - 13:39
I just didn't think of it at the time.

Greg
13:39 - 13:56
I have an observation and that is there's one common thread that's run throughout this whole thing. And that is that caffeine is involved in people's mornings in one way or another. And I'm thinking maybe we need to get our heads together. Could there be a creative workout brand coffee on the horizon?

Greg
13:56 - 13:57
I don't know. Maybe there could.

Alessandra
13:58 - 14:01
Yes. And I already have the roaster for

Greg
14:01 - 14:03
that.

Gretchen
14:04 - 14:21
I think one of the things is that it changes. Even though it's the word routine, routine can be seasonal and it changes. I mean, I grew up on a farm, so routine was very seasonal. My dad grew apples, it was an orchard.

Gretchen
14:21 - 14:42
So routine was very seasonal and what happened when and how and stuff. And for me, it's still that way. I change the routine based on what's going to happen. So my routine may only be for a four or five day period, but it's the routine set for that time.

Gretchen
14:42 - 15:10
The only really consistent thing is, for me, is the don't speak to me before I've at least got a third of the way down my coffee cup. My husband has learned just, because he married to an opposite is a challenge. It's wonderful, but it's a challenge. He wakes up in full conversation mode with everything, and I'm like, no, Not, not willing to do that.

Gretchen
15:10 - 15:15
So I think it's, it's that respecting all the different kinds of routines, but also cherishing your own.

Devin
15:16 - 15:26
Devin, what are your thoughts? Two things. One, I forgot to mention, and this comes from a lot of like recommended morning routines. First thing I do is make my bed, like before I stand up, turn around and make the bed.

Devin
15:27 - 15:32
So now my bed is very simple. I just use the duvet. It's easy. but that's important to me.

Devin
15:32 - 15:49
And then when I walk past it later in the day, I'm like, well, at least I did that. And the other thing to point out from this recent conversation is just because I'm awake doesn't mean I want to talk to you. And Alessandra knows this is true because in my experience, when Alessandra is awake, she's like fully awake. She's ready to go and start processing things.

Devin
15:50 - 16:02
And so she can get up in the morning and be sitting next to me and look at me and say, you know, I've been working out this proof of the Pythagorean theorem and I'm a little stuck on this part. Would you have to take a look at this? What do you think? And I'll just look at her, and she's like, oh, too early, right?

Devin
16:03 - 16:06
Too soon, okay. And then she'll go back to what she was doing.

Alessandra
16:06 - 16:27
Well, I could jump in with the coffee thing. So what I have started doing, and we're only at the 22nd of November, so we'll see how long this lasts. But starting November the 1st, I am doing a coffee selfie every morning. and a little micro blog.

Alessandra
16:27 - 16:59
So, you know, less than a hundred words of where am I, what's so important about me getting this cup of coffee down me so that I can do the next thing. And so that has become part of my morning routine. And so, you know, I've had that tucked away as a short little post on Hive, but I have pulled those out and I've put them on that thing that people call Facebook. I know I said I would never ever right but there it

Greg
16:59 - 17:00
is Yeah,

Alessandra
17:03 - 17:20
so but I like the idea of having our of having our own roast now what would it be like for the likes of this crew to agree on the roast. We might have to have, you know, a couple, a couple of, a couple of roasts to pick from. What do you think?

Devin
17:20 - 17:28
I've already got a roast in the drawer. I could show you right now. It's called smart ass. So I think that fits us perfectly.

Devin
17:28 - 17:28
Is that an

Greg
17:28 - 17:30
actual coffee brand, Smartass Coffee?

Devin
17:31 - 17:35
It's one of the blends of Kicking Horse Coffee Company. Oh, wow. And is

Alessandra
17:35 - 17:37
that a Canadian company? Do we know?

Devin
17:37 - 17:37
Could be. It

Alessandra
17:38 - 17:38
is.

Shadows Pub
17:39 - 17:48
But you might want to try Saltwinds, and then you might kick Kicking Horse to the curb. What is that one again, Shadows? Saltwinds. It's in Nova Scotia.

Shadows Pub
17:48 - 17:50
I think Kicking Horse is actually out in BC.

Alessandra
17:51 - 17:55
Oh, okay. I like this. We can put this on our 2026 wish list.

Shadows Pub
17:55 - 18:02
By the way, I should mention that I have always been a morning person, which is probably the reason that Hobo's been allowed to live.

Alessandra
18:03 - 18:13
Otherwise, it would be cat-throwing time. Speaking of cat-throwing time, I don't know if it's that time ever, really. But Greg, what time do you think it is?

Greg
18:13 - 18:40
it's that time again you've wasted some perfectly good time listening to the creative work hour podcast when you could have been doing something else but just to assure you no cats were harmed in the making of this episode we've been talking about morning routines what works and what doesn't and if you've changed your mornings to make them easier and more enjoyable how about you let us know visit us at creativeworkhour.com and come back next week for another interesting conversation thanks for joining us have a good week.