Episode 71: Morning Routines? What Works, What Doesn’t?
Creative Work Hour
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| https://creativeworkhour.com/ | Launched: Nov 22, 2025 |
| Season: 2 Episode: 71 | |
Title: The Creative Work Hour Podcast
Episode 71: Morning Routines? What Works, What Doesn’t?
Episode summary
Today’s conversation circles around a deceptively simple question: what do your mornings actually look like, and how have you tinkered with them to make life easier, more enjoyable, and more creative?
The group compares wildly different styles of starting the day:
- rigid, work-driven mornings vs. post‑retirement freedom
- cat‑dictated wake‑up times
- early‑bird competition to get to the office first
- “I hate mornings but they’re my most productive time”
- and the quiet reality that your morning is only as good as your previous night.
It’s a funny, honest, very human look at how real people (not productivity robots) handle mornings, caffeine, creativity, and the constant adjustments we all make as our lives and seasons change.
Episode details
Topic:
Morning routines
- What works?
- What doesn’t?
- How have you changed (or are you trying to change) your mornings to make them easier, more enjoyable, and more creative?
Hosts / Co‑hosts:
- Greg
- Alessandra
- Gretchen
- Shadows (Shadows Pub)
- Devin
- Bailey
Key themes and takeaways
- Your morning starts the night before
- Sleep quality and evening habits are inseparable from how your morning feels.
- Moving your phone, changing your bedroom environment, or planning ahead can be a bigger lever than adding yet another morning “hack.”
- Routine doesn’t have to be rigid (or permanent)
- Several people emphasized that “routine” can be seasonal, adaptive, and flexible, not something you have to get perfect or stick to forever.
- Anchor habits matter more than long checklists
- A small set of non‑negotiables (coffee, journaling, water, quiet thinking time, feeding pets, etc.) can carry your whole day, even if everything else shifts.
- Mornings are emotional, not just logistical
- For some, mornings are full of dread; for others, they’re sacred, quiet time. Designing mornings you actually look forward to makes a huge difference.
- Caffeine is the unofficial seventh co‑host
- Coffee (or at least some kind of morning drink) shows up in nearly everyone’s routine, often doubled as a ritual that signals “day has begun.”
Quotes and insights by co‑host
Greg
Host and facilitator, asking questions, noticing patterns, and injecting humor.
Notable points:
- His current routine is pretty simple and very honest: wake up, take medicine, drink coffee (and then more coffee).
- “Creative Work Hour” itself is part of his morning structure, serving as grounding time and a daily reset.
Key quote:
- “My morning routine is wake up, take medicine, take coffee, take more coffee and adjust as the morning goes on.”
- On Creative Work Hour: “That’s my grounding time… it sets the tone for the rest of the day. I find that consistency with that… it’s just productive for the rest of the day to come.”
Interesting observation:
Greg notices a common thread across everyone’s shares:
- “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.”
He also floats a playful but intriguing idea: a “Creative Work Hour” branded coffee. That hint of product/brand thinking shows up naturally in the conversation.
Alessandra
Co‑host, framing the topic and bringing in the “night before” angle plus a small personal experiment with coffee selfies.
Notable points:
- She’s actively trying to improve her mornings by engineering the previous night.
- She moved her iPhone out of the bedroom into the foyer, only to realize she now stops there in the middle of the night, checks the phone, and loses 40 minutes of sleep.
- Her next tweak: move the phone even farther away (into the kitchen) and buy an analog alarm clock.
- She’s started a “coffee selfie plus micro‑blog” ritual as a daily morning practice.
Key quotes:
- “You can’t talk about morning routines without the relevance of how did you sleep, right?”
- On outsmarting herself: “I got the iPhone out of the bedroom… But I outsmarted myself… I stop and I look at what time it is… I’ll see a notification… and then it’s like 40 minutes before I go back to sleep.”
- On her new experiment: “Starting November the 1st, I am doing a coffee selfie every morning and a little micro blog… where am I, what’s so important about me getting this cup of coffee down me so that I can do the next thing.”
Interesting observations:
- Alessandra is very clear that her current morning routine is “not the good example yet,” but she’s curious and willing to experiment, especially with an episode dedicated to “morning pages.”
- She’s also open about crossing personal boundaries for the sake of creative practice: she says she once vowed never to use “that thing that people call Facebook,” and yet that’s where she’s now sharing her micro‑blog coffee posts.
Gretchen
Brings a long view of routine from the perspective of a retired teacher and someone who grew up with seasonal farm routines.
Notable points:
- She had a “forced” morning routine for years as an elementary school teacher: be at school at a specific time, no flexibility.
- She has never considered herself a true morning person; early in her marriage, her husband would literally run coffee under her nose to get her out of bed.
- Even now, her husband helps her start the day by making the coffee and bacon so she can feed Aldo the dog.
- Since retiring, she has experimented with multiple approaches; Creative Work Hour is now a meaningful morning anchor.
- She has adopted “morning pages” (since March) and finds that even imperfect, irregular practice makes a noticeable difference to the rest of her day.
Key quotes:
- On past routines: “I’ve had kind of a forced morning routine for so long… I had to be there by a certain time.”
- On morning pages: “It sounds like it should be, ‘Oh, I’ll just sit down and write three pages.’ But it becomes much more.”
- On how skipped morning pages affect her: “The mornings that it doesn’t [happen], I recognize since the rest of my day that it would have been better if I had.”
- On what matters most: “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.”
Interesting observation:
Gretchen introduces an important idea: routines can be seasonal and situational.
- “Even though it’s the word routine, routine can be seasonal and it changes… My dad grew apples… routine was very seasonal… For me, it’s still that way.”
She also delivers a relatable boundary-setting rule:
- “The only really consistent thing is… don’t speak to me before I’ve at least got a third of the way down my coffee cup.”
Shadows (Shadows Pub)
Comic relief, cat representative, and unexpected nutrition note.
Notable points:
- Her mornings are not entirely her own; Hobo the cat is “the driver” of her schedule.
- She usually wakes up at 2:30–3:00 a.m. (or is woken by Hobo).
- They’ve struck a compromise: she can spend the first hour to hour and a half reading, as long as she tolerates a cat standing on her iPad.
- The order of operations is non‑negotiable: prepare her own morning drink, make the cats’ food, supervise eating (to prevent Hobo from stealing others’ food), and only after about two hours does she make coffee.
- She drinks an anti‑inflammatory concoction first: mainly cacao (she calls it “cacaya,” describing it as raw cocoa beans, lightly refined) and beetroot.
Key quotes:
- On who’s in charge: “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.”
- On her drink vs. coffee: “I have another drink that is actually anti-inflammatory. Coffee actually drives your cortisol up first thing in the morning.”
- On training cats: when Greg jokes about teaching the cat to make coffee: “Have you ever tried to train a cat?”
- On being a morning person: “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.”
Interesting observations:
- Her routine is a reminder that other beings (pets, kids, partners) can dominate our mornings, no matter what productivity books say.
- She drops a genuinely interesting health note: delaying coffee and starting with an anti‑inflammatory drink to avoid spiking cortisol.
Devin
Self‑described Tim Ferriss fan, data‑driven morning person, and structured routine explainer.
Notable points:
- Devin is an unapologetic, “bona fide” morning person.
- He used to be “competitively” early, trying to beat colleagues into the office, sometimes waking at 3:30 a.m. to ensure he’d be first.
- His current wake time is 5:00 a.m., with a fairly structured routine:
- Immediately drink a liter of water, refill, and drink another liter (2 liters before coffee or tea).
- Check BBC news (for big global events), then work email, then work Slack.
- Read headlines of at least three newspapers each morning (self‑described news junkie).
- Spend an hour to 90 minutes apparently “doing nothing”: staring into space, thinking, praying, letting creative ideas and solutions surface.
- Around 7:30, do a combined yoga and kettlebell workout.
- Some tea, some reading, following curiosity.
- By 9:45, he is at his computer for Cup O’ Joe and Creative Work Hour. He uses that time to plan his day and do journaling/morning pages‑style writing.
Key quotes:
- “I am a bona fide morning person. It’s just how I’m wired.”
- On competitive mornings: “There are times when if someone else was a morning person, I made it my goal to beat them into the office… 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.”
- On his water habit: “My goal is to get two liters of water in me before I have any coffee or tea.”
- On his “doing nothing” time: “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. It looks like I’m doing absolutely nothing, but… a lot of creative ideas, a lot of solutions to problems… come in when I’m just trying to meditate. That’s when I pray.”
Interesting observations:
- Devin underlines that “being awake” doesn’t automatically equal “ready to talk,” even for a morning person:
- “Just because I’m awake doesn’t mean I want to talk to you.”
- He also adds a small but powerful micro‑habit:
- “First thing I do is make my bed… When I walk past it later in the day, I’m like, well, at least I did that.”
Bailey
Resident anti‑morning person who is also ironically most productive in the mornings.
Notable points:
- She identifies as the exact opposite of Devin.
- She says she hates mornings and warns people not to talk to her; if you do, “expect me to walk away.”
- Despite that, she finds mornings are often when she writes best.
- She has been trying to wake up at 6:00 a.m. (which is “super early” for her) because that’s when her writing is strongest.
- Since daylight savings time, her ability to keep that 6:00 a.m. wake‑up has collapsed, and her routine has become “inconsistent.”
- Still, three things are always present in her mornings:
- Music
- Coffee
- Contemplation (including stepping outside, looking at the sky, especially clouds)
Key quotes:
- “I’m the opposite of Devin… I hate mornings. And if you talk to me in the mornings, just expect me to walk away.”
- “I would say my morning routine is inconsistent, but always includes three things, which is music, coffee and contemplation.”
- “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. Never the same.”
Interesting observation:
Bailey’s routine highlights that even for people who dislike mornings, there can be a quiet, meaningful ritual: stepping outside, noticing the sky, pairing coffee with some mental space. It’s not rigid or repeatable in a checklist sense, but it’s emotionally consistent.
Big-picture observations from the group
- Morning routines are deeply personal
- Everyone’s mornings are shaped by their wiring (morning person vs. not), their life stage (still working vs. retired), their environment (farm childhood, office jobs, pets), and their responsibilities (caregiving, work demands).
- There’s no single “right” routine; the episode showcases multiple working versions.
- Nighttime design is part of the equation
- Alessandra’s experiment with moving her phone, and then moving it again, shows how easily good intentions can backfire—and how much the night before controls the morning.
- Sleep quality, screens, and room layout all matter.
- The role of creative anchors
- Gretchen’s morning pages, Devin’s journaling during Creative Work Hour, and Bailey’s contemplative sky‑watching all work as anchors—small practices that signal creativity and reflection.
- Greg’s attendance at Creative Work Hour is his main grounding practice: when he misses it, he feels the difference in his day.
- Caffeine and “the morning drink”
- Coffee is a near‑universal ritual here, but some people space it out differently:
- Devin: no coffee until after two liters of water.
- Shadows: an anti‑inflammatory cacao/beetroot drink first, coffee two hours later.
- Greg and Bailey: coffee is right at the heart of the morning.
- The idea of a “Creative Work Hour” coffee roast comes up, with Greg and Alessandra joking about actually doing it, and Devin mentioning he already has a “Smart Ass” blend from Kicking Horse Coffee that seems to fit the group’s personality.
- Seasons, change, and flexibility
- Gretchen points out that her farm childhood taught her that routines can (and maybe should) be seasonal. She still treats her routines as configurable in 4–5 day blocks if needed.
- Daylight savings visibly disrupts Bailey’s wake time.
- Devin openly calls his current routine “subject to change without notice.”
Main takeaways for listeners
- Don’t chase someone else’s perfect morning. Start with:
- One or two things you actually look forward to;
- One small tweak to your night that might help your morning.
- Consider:
- Moving your phone farther away (and maybe getting a simple analog alarm clock).
- Adding a quiet ritual like morning pages, journaling, or simply staring into space and thinking.
- Drinking water (or a non‑coffee drink) before your first caffeine.
- Including something joyful: a walk outside, watching clouds, a special mug, or a playful ritual like a daily “coffee selfie.”
- Accept that:
- Your morning might be dictated by pets, kids, or work for now—and that’s okay.
- “Routine” doesn’t have to mean “forever;” seasonal routines are allowed.
- You don’t have to hit your full routine every day for it to be useful. Even partial practice (one page instead of three, or 10 minutes instead of an hour) can still help.
Quick bullet recap of the episode
- Topic: Morning routines—what works, what doesn’t, and how we’ve tinkered with them.
- Greg:
- Simple, coffee‑centered routine.
- Creative Work Hour as a daily grounding practice.
- Noted caffeine as a shared thread; floated a Creative Work Hour coffee brand.
- Alessandra:
- Focused on engineering the night before: moving the iPhone out of the bedroom, then out of the foyer, and adding an analog alarm clock.
- Started a daily coffee selfie + micro‑blog ritual.
- Interested in a future episode deeper on morning pages.
- Gretchen:
- Lived with a “forced” morning schedule as a teacher.
- Husband helps kickstart her day with coffee and bacon.
- Morning pages since March; feels the difference on days she skips.
- Emphasizes seasonal and joy‑based routines.
- Shadows:
- Mornings are driven by Hobo the cat’s schedule.
- Compromise: early reading with a cat on the iPad.
- Anti‑inflammatory cacao/beetroot drink before coffee; mentions coffee’s effect on cortisol.
- Lifelong morning person.
- Devin:
- Strong morning person; previously “competitive” about being first in the office.
- Current routine:
- 5 a.m. wake
- 2 liters of water
- News and work check‑in
- 1–1.5 hours of quiet thinking/prayer
- Yoga + kettlebells
- Journaling during Creative Work Hour
- First action: make the bed.
- Bailey:
- Hates mornings but finds them most productive for writing.
- Aims for a 6 a.m. wake, disrupted by daylight savings.
- Inconsistent routine, but always:
- Music
- Coffee
- Contemplation outside while looking at the sky.
Closing
Greg wraps up by joking that listeners have “wasted some perfectly good time” listening when they could have been doing something else—but reassures everyone that no cats were harmed in the making of the episode.
The invitation:
- Reflect on your own mornings.
- What works? What doesn’t?
- How have you tweaked your mornings to make them easier and more enjoyable?
Find more and share your thoughts at:
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Episode Chapters
Title: The Creative Work Hour Podcast
Episode 71: Morning Routines? What Works, What Doesn’t?
Episode summary
Today’s conversation circles around a deceptively simple question: what do your mornings actually look like, and how have you tinkered with them to make life easier, more enjoyable, and more creative?
The group compares wildly different styles of starting the day:
- rigid, work-driven mornings vs. post‑retirement freedom
- cat‑dictated wake‑up times
- early‑bird competition to get to the office first
- “I hate mornings but they’re my most productive time”
- and the quiet reality that your morning is only as good as your previous night.
It’s a funny, honest, very human look at how real people (not productivity robots) handle mornings, caffeine, creativity, and the constant adjustments we all make as our lives and seasons change.
Episode details
Topic:
Morning routines
- What works?
- What doesn’t?
- How have you changed (or are you trying to change) your mornings to make them easier, more enjoyable, and more creative?
Hosts / Co‑hosts:
- Greg
- Alessandra
- Gretchen
- Shadows (Shadows Pub)
- Devin
- Bailey
Key themes and takeaways
- Your morning starts the night before
- Sleep quality and evening habits are inseparable from how your morning feels.
- Moving your phone, changing your bedroom environment, or planning ahead can be a bigger lever than adding yet another morning “hack.”
- Routine doesn’t have to be rigid (or permanent)
- Several people emphasized that “routine” can be seasonal, adaptive, and flexible, not something you have to get perfect or stick to forever.
- Anchor habits matter more than long checklists
- A small set of non‑negotiables (coffee, journaling, water, quiet thinking time, feeding pets, etc.) can carry your whole day, even if everything else shifts.
- Mornings are emotional, not just logistical
- For some, mornings are full of dread; for others, they’re sacred, quiet time. Designing mornings you actually look forward to makes a huge difference.
- Caffeine is the unofficial seventh co‑host
- Coffee (or at least some kind of morning drink) shows up in nearly everyone’s routine, often doubled as a ritual that signals “day has begun.”
Quotes and insights by co‑host
Greg
Host and facilitator, asking questions, noticing patterns, and injecting humor.
Notable points:
- His current routine is pretty simple and very honest: wake up, take medicine, drink coffee (and then more coffee).
- “Creative Work Hour” itself is part of his morning structure, serving as grounding time and a daily reset.
Key quote:
- “My morning routine is wake up, take medicine, take coffee, take more coffee and adjust as the morning goes on.”
- On Creative Work Hour: “That’s my grounding time… it sets the tone for the rest of the day. I find that consistency with that… it’s just productive for the rest of the day to come.”
Interesting observation:
Greg notices a common thread across everyone’s shares:
- “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.”
He also floats a playful but intriguing idea: a “Creative Work Hour” branded coffee. That hint of product/brand thinking shows up naturally in the conversation.
Alessandra
Co‑host, framing the topic and bringing in the “night before” angle plus a small personal experiment with coffee selfies.
Notable points:
- She’s actively trying to improve her mornings by engineering the previous night.
- She moved her iPhone out of the bedroom into the foyer, only to realize she now stops there in the middle of the night, checks the phone, and loses 40 minutes of sleep.
- Her next tweak: move the phone even farther away (into the kitchen) and buy an analog alarm clock.
- She’s started a “coffee selfie plus micro‑blog” ritual as a daily morning practice.
Key quotes:
- “You can’t talk about morning routines without the relevance of how did you sleep, right?”
- On outsmarting herself: “I got the iPhone out of the bedroom… But I outsmarted myself… I stop and I look at what time it is… I’ll see a notification… and then it’s like 40 minutes before I go back to sleep.”
- On her new experiment: “Starting November the 1st, I am doing a coffee selfie every morning and a little micro blog… where am I, what’s so important about me getting this cup of coffee down me so that I can do the next thing.”
Interesting observations:
- Alessandra is very clear that her current morning routine is “not the good example yet,” but she’s curious and willing to experiment, especially with an episode dedicated to “morning pages.”
- She’s also open about crossing personal boundaries for the sake of creative practice: she says she once vowed never to use “that thing that people call Facebook,” and yet that’s where she’s now sharing her micro‑blog coffee posts.
Gretchen
Brings a long view of routine from the perspective of a retired teacher and someone who grew up with seasonal farm routines.
Notable points:
- She had a “forced” morning routine for years as an elementary school teacher: be at school at a specific time, no flexibility.
- She has never considered herself a true morning person; early in her marriage, her husband would literally run coffee under her nose to get her out of bed.
- Even now, her husband helps her start the day by making the coffee and bacon so she can feed Aldo the dog.
- Since retiring, she has experimented with multiple approaches; Creative Work Hour is now a meaningful morning anchor.
- She has adopted “morning pages” (since March) and finds that even imperfect, irregular practice makes a noticeable difference to the rest of her day.
Key quotes:
- On past routines: “I’ve had kind of a forced morning routine for so long… I had to be there by a certain time.”
- On morning pages: “It sounds like it should be, ‘Oh, I’ll just sit down and write three pages.’ But it becomes much more.”
- On how skipped morning pages affect her: “The mornings that it doesn’t [happen], I recognize since the rest of my day that it would have been better if I had.”
- On what matters most: “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.”
Interesting observation:
Gretchen introduces an important idea: routines can be seasonal and situational.
- “Even though it’s the word routine, routine can be seasonal and it changes… My dad grew apples… routine was very seasonal… For me, it’s still that way.”
She also delivers a relatable boundary-setting rule:
- “The only really consistent thing is… don’t speak to me before I’ve at least got a third of the way down my coffee cup.”
Shadows (Shadows Pub)
Comic relief, cat representative, and unexpected nutrition note.
Notable points:
- Her mornings are not entirely her own; Hobo the cat is “the driver” of her schedule.
- She usually wakes up at 2:30–3:00 a.m. (or is woken by Hobo).
- They’ve struck a compromise: she can spend the first hour to hour and a half reading, as long as she tolerates a cat standing on her iPad.
- The order of operations is non‑negotiable: prepare her own morning drink, make the cats’ food, supervise eating (to prevent Hobo from stealing others’ food), and only after about two hours does she make coffee.
- She drinks an anti‑inflammatory concoction first: mainly cacao (she calls it “cacaya,” describing it as raw cocoa beans, lightly refined) and beetroot.
Key quotes:
- On who’s in charge: “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.”
- On her drink vs. coffee: “I have another drink that is actually anti-inflammatory. Coffee actually drives your cortisol up first thing in the morning.”
- On training cats: when Greg jokes about teaching the cat to make coffee: “Have you ever tried to train a cat?”
- On being a morning person: “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.”
Interesting observations:
- Her routine is a reminder that other beings (pets, kids, partners) can dominate our mornings, no matter what productivity books say.
- She drops a genuinely interesting health note: delaying coffee and starting with an anti‑inflammatory drink to avoid spiking cortisol.
Devin
Self‑described Tim Ferriss fan, data‑driven morning person, and structured routine explainer.
Notable points:
- Devin is an unapologetic, “bona fide” morning person.
- He used to be “competitively” early, trying to beat colleagues into the office, sometimes waking at 3:30 a.m. to ensure he’d be first.
- His current wake time is 5:00 a.m., with a fairly structured routine:
- Immediately drink a liter of water, refill, and drink another liter (2 liters before coffee or tea).
- Check BBC news (for big global events), then work email, then work Slack.
- Read headlines of at least three newspapers each morning (self‑described news junkie).
- Spend an hour to 90 minutes apparently “doing nothing”: staring into space, thinking, praying, letting creative ideas and solutions surface.
- Around 7:30, do a combined yoga and kettlebell workout.
- Some tea, some reading, following curiosity.
- By 9:45, he is at his computer for Cup O’ Joe and Creative Work Hour. He uses that time to plan his day and do journaling/morning pages‑style writing.
Key quotes:
- “I am a bona fide morning person. It’s just how I’m wired.”
- On competitive mornings: “There are times when if someone else was a morning person, I made it my goal to beat them into the office… 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.”
- On his water habit: “My goal is to get two liters of water in me before I have any coffee or tea.”
- On his “doing nothing” time: “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. It looks like I’m doing absolutely nothing, but… a lot of creative ideas, a lot of solutions to problems… come in when I’m just trying to meditate. That’s when I pray.”
Interesting observations:
- Devin underlines that “being awake” doesn’t automatically equal “ready to talk,” even for a morning person:
- “Just because I’m awake doesn’t mean I want to talk to you.”
- He also adds a small but powerful micro‑habit:
- “First thing I do is make my bed… When I walk past it later in the day, I’m like, well, at least I did that.”
Bailey
Resident anti‑morning person who is also ironically most productive in the mornings.
Notable points:
- She identifies as the exact opposite of Devin.
- She says she hates mornings and warns people not to talk to her; if you do, “expect me to walk away.”
- Despite that, she finds mornings are often when she writes best.
- She has been trying to wake up at 6:00 a.m. (which is “super early” for her) because that’s when her writing is strongest.
- Since daylight savings time, her ability to keep that 6:00 a.m. wake‑up has collapsed, and her routine has become “inconsistent.”
- Still, three things are always present in her mornings:
- Music
- Coffee
- Contemplation (including stepping outside, looking at the sky, especially clouds)
Key quotes:
- “I’m the opposite of Devin… I hate mornings. And if you talk to me in the mornings, just expect me to walk away.”
- “I would say my morning routine is inconsistent, but always includes three things, which is music, coffee and contemplation.”
- “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. Never the same.”
Interesting observation:
Bailey’s routine highlights that even for people who dislike mornings, there can be a quiet, meaningful ritual: stepping outside, noticing the sky, pairing coffee with some mental space. It’s not rigid or repeatable in a checklist sense, but it’s emotionally consistent.
Big-picture observations from the group
- Morning routines are deeply personal
- Everyone’s mornings are shaped by their wiring (morning person vs. not), their life stage (still working vs. retired), their environment (farm childhood, office jobs, pets), and their responsibilities (caregiving, work demands).
- There’s no single “right” routine; the episode showcases multiple working versions.
- Nighttime design is part of the equation
- Alessandra’s experiment with moving her phone, and then moving it again, shows how easily good intentions can backfire—and how much the night before controls the morning.
- Sleep quality, screens, and room layout all matter.
- The role of creative anchors
- Gretchen’s morning pages, Devin’s journaling during Creative Work Hour, and Bailey’s contemplative sky‑watching all work as anchors—small practices that signal creativity and reflection.
- Greg’s attendance at Creative Work Hour is his main grounding practice: when he misses it, he feels the difference in his day.
- Caffeine and “the morning drink”
- Coffee is a near‑universal ritual here, but some people space it out differently:
- Devin: no coffee until after two liters of water.
- Shadows: an anti‑inflammatory cacao/beetroot drink first, coffee two hours later.
- Greg and Bailey: coffee is right at the heart of the morning.
- The idea of a “Creative Work Hour” coffee roast comes up, with Greg and Alessandra joking about actually doing it, and Devin mentioning he already has a “Smart Ass” blend from Kicking Horse Coffee that seems to fit the group’s personality.
- Seasons, change, and flexibility
- Gretchen points out that her farm childhood taught her that routines can (and maybe should) be seasonal. She still treats her routines as configurable in 4–5 day blocks if needed.
- Daylight savings visibly disrupts Bailey’s wake time.
- Devin openly calls his current routine “subject to change without notice.”
Main takeaways for listeners
- Don’t chase someone else’s perfect morning. Start with:
- One or two things you actually look forward to;
- One small tweak to your night that might help your morning.
- Consider:
- Moving your phone farther away (and maybe getting a simple analog alarm clock).
- Adding a quiet ritual like morning pages, journaling, or simply staring into space and thinking.
- Drinking water (or a non‑coffee drink) before your first caffeine.
- Including something joyful: a walk outside, watching clouds, a special mug, or a playful ritual like a daily “coffee selfie.”
- Accept that:
- Your morning might be dictated by pets, kids, or work for now—and that’s okay.
- “Routine” doesn’t have to mean “forever;” seasonal routines are allowed.
- You don’t have to hit your full routine every day for it to be useful. Even partial practice (one page instead of three, or 10 minutes instead of an hour) can still help.
Quick bullet recap of the episode
- Topic: Morning routines—what works, what doesn’t, and how we’ve tinkered with them.
- Greg:
- Simple, coffee‑centered routine.
- Creative Work Hour as a daily grounding practice.
- Noted caffeine as a shared thread; floated a Creative Work Hour coffee brand.
- Alessandra:
- Focused on engineering the night before: moving the iPhone out of the bedroom, then out of the foyer, and adding an analog alarm clock.
- Started a daily coffee selfie + micro‑blog ritual.
- Interested in a future episode deeper on morning pages.
- Gretchen:
- Lived with a “forced” morning schedule as a teacher.
- Husband helps kickstart her day with coffee and bacon.
- Morning pages since March; feels the difference on days she skips.
- Emphasizes seasonal and joy‑based routines.
- Shadows:
- Mornings are driven by Hobo the cat’s schedule.
- Compromise: early reading with a cat on the iPad.
- Anti‑inflammatory cacao/beetroot drink before coffee; mentions coffee’s effect on cortisol.
- Lifelong morning person.
- Devin:
- Strong morning person; previously “competitive” about being first in the office.
- Current routine:
- 5 a.m. wake
- 2 liters of water
- News and work check‑in
- 1–1.5 hours of quiet thinking/prayer
- Yoga + kettlebells
- Journaling during Creative Work Hour
- First action: make the bed.
- Bailey:
- Hates mornings but finds them most productive for writing.
- Aims for a 6 a.m. wake, disrupted by daylight savings.
- Inconsistent routine, but always:
- Music
- Coffee
- Contemplation outside while looking at the sky.
Closing
Greg wraps up by joking that listeners have “wasted some perfectly good time” listening when they could have been doing something else—but reassures everyone that no cats were harmed in the making of the episode.
The invitation:
- Reflect on your own mornings.
- What works? What doesn’t?
- How have you tweaked your mornings to make them easier and more enjoyable?
Find more and share your thoughts at:
In Episode 71 of The Creative Work Hour Podcast, the hosts share their very different morning routines—from strict 5 a.m. starts and morning pages to cat-controlled wake-up calls and “I hate mornings” creativity. They talk about how sleep, caffeine, small rituals, and gentle tinkering (like moving phones out of the bedroom or adding a simple journaling habit) can turn mornings from a grind into a more enjoyable, productive part of the day.
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.
