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Greet the morning with what you want to make happen–in your mind or your “practice.” Thirty minutes a day for your life. Photo source: unprofound.com.

Hello, I am back!   I have been in the all-consuming depths of teaching and all the work and preparation that this entails.   Additionally, I am in the final months of my Silverspoon Japanese immersion experience.   Every morning, I wake up and get suggested “sprints” for Japanese immersion.    Silverspoon usually includes scheduled “chillax” periods where I can do other non-Japanese related stuff while having Japanese in the background. It is usually in these 5-10 minute breaks that I play around with the blog and write.   Lately, by the time it is time to have a “chillax” period, it is time for me to leave and go to work.

Lately the Silverspoon mornings are “packed.”  Yesterday, I flipped through a Japanese book, did sentence and kanji flashcard repetitions, and made new flashcards from “Scuzzy” sentence packs that I chose fun sentences from.   After a little more flashcard reps,  shuffled through Japanese websites using Khatzumoto’s url shuffler.  Fun stuff, but the time ran out and I had to leave the Writers Room and head to work.  (There’s not a lot of time for writing these days, but in 74 days I will have my own schedule “back.”  Right now I am creating a rich Japanese environment of websites, flashcards, and just plain old fun immersion experiences that will be there for me for a lifetime.)

My copy of Furuichi Yukio’s book on how to incorporate mornings into your life. For coolness factor he adds an English subtitle: “The early bird catches the fortune.”

This all reminds me of a Japanese podcast that asks listeners to “Power Your Morning.”  I used to go my favorite coffee shop that opens up at 7 a.m. and then get to the Writer’s Room and only have 15 or 20 minutes to write, study, and do “me.”  Now I am making my coffee in the Writer’s Room and getting an extra half hour every day to write, study Japanese, and play it forward.

It was a shock at first but I am enjoying the benefits of the morning and I think you can, too:

  • You start the day with a “win” towards your “goal.”  If you can do it in the morning, it might slip into the rest of the day.  If you are too “busy” then you will get your win in for the day.
  • The morning can be the most free from outside distractions.
  • There is an after-burn.   The idea you are trying to work on in the morning might kick around for the rest of the day.
  • Your mind and body might get used to showing up on a daily basis and help you produce more constantly.  Creating, learning become a habit.
  • When you “disappear” in the morning before most people are awake you don’t have to explain or justify yourself.   You just go into your mad scientist lab and create your own Frankenself.

I wasn’t into the book a month ago, but I might give it a whirl again. I left the $2.00 Book off sticker. You don’t have to bust the bank to have a Samurai Mind.

This morning I am shaking it up.  Silverspoon is saying I should be watching anime all day.  I am watching “My Little Monster” but only for five minute stretches, while working in writing and a little exercise (also in five minute) stretches and then I have to go to work.   I am designing the precious time that I have in the morning.

Design your morning.  Power your morning.  As Bob Marley says, “Wake up and live!”