Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Warrior Kings podcast. I'm your host, Michael Riggs, here to assist you on your journey to unlocking masculinity, manliness and the warrior spirit within and overall leveling up your life. So again, welcome. Welcome to the Warrior Kings podcast. If you're new here, my name is Michael Riggs. I'm a full time author, artist and entrepreneur, husband and father of five, and I teach men all over the world how to level up every aspect of their lives. And I say all of the things that most men don't want to hear. So if that's not something you're into, definitely don't subscribe to this podcast and stick around. But hey, if it is, if you want to level up every aspect of your life as a totally awesome dude, hit that subscribe button, stick around. And to my regular listeners, something that you can do to help me out is to leave a review on whatever platform you're getting this podcast on, whether it's Spotify, Apple, something like that. Leave a review on there that helps the algorithm push this podcast to other listeners. So I really, really appreciate those reviews. And we're back. We took a week off from the podcast to get another endeavor off the ground, another pursuit. But we're back. We're back and stronger than ever. Super excited to talk to you today. I hope that you guys are doing well wherever you are. I hope that you're out there getting it. I hope that you're crushing your goals and your dreams. And it's my prayer that you are doing better and better every single day, just a little bit at a time. Getting better every single day. Real quick, I just want to give a huge, huge congratulations to Brad Paul's on the british middleweight boxing title. Brad Paul's is now the british middleweight champion in boxing. And hey, we all knew he was going to win. I still feel like he won the last fight, which, if you don't know, it was called a draw against hitman Haney. But this time he won. He knocked him off his feet. It was a super awesome fight, super awesome thing to watch and witness Brad Paul's dream coming true of being the british middleweight champion. So again, huge congratulations to him on that. Today we're going to be talking about my morning routine, the routine that I follow when I'm really trying to get something done. It's a morning routine concept that I want to share with you today to maximize productivity, especially when we're busy and our days busy in our life. And we really want to go for this thing and pursue this thing. And we can't seem to find the time to get it done, to get all these things done that we want to accomplish in a single day. I'm going to share with you how to do that every morning and how I get stuck done super, super fast. I don't get the stigma around entrepreneur morning routines at all. I think that people who make fun of healthy morning routines and say that they're fake and scoff at them and things like that are kind of idiot losers, to be honest with you. From lack of a better way to say that, like, if you think that a healthy morning routine is something dumb or something silly, you're probably pretty dumb and not on your way to greatness in life. Like, why would a morning routine be a bad thing? I see these videos all the time on social media of people playing an entrepreneur's video, talking about his morning routine and laughing at it, making fun of it, saying, yeah, right, he really gets up that early, that sort of thing. I don't get that. Personally, I think the healthy morning routines are critical for reaching success in our lives. And why is it so unrealistic that some people get up early, they get out of bed early, and they start getting stuff done? Why is that an unrealistic concept? Well, anyway, speaking of. Well, anyway, and I don't talk about politics on here, if you're new here, I never talk about politics at all, really. But I just wanted to say I just found out that Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, praise God and. All right, let's get on with the episode. The morning routine that I'm going to be talking about Today is the same morning routine that I used when I was writing the book Warrior King and my book Knights of Rodentia at the tail end of 2022 and into 2023. This is the morning routine that I followed to get those books done really, really fast. Now, at the time that I started this morning routine, my wife and my kids and I were living in a schoolie. And if you don't know what a schoolie is, it's a school bus conversion. So you take an old school bus, you gut it, and then you turn it into a tiny home inside, and then you can travel around, live in it, whatever you want to do. It's a tiny home on wheels. So we were living in a schoolie, really close quarters. So you can imagine as an entrepreneur and somebody who was doing things like writing books and starting businesses and things like that, it was really challenging to be in a small space like that, especially with my toddler kids running around, jumping off the things, screaming. It was hard to focus. It was hard to get things done. So I knew I needed to come up with some sort of routine, some sort of system where I could actually work and get things done. I had to adapt to that way of living in such a closed in space with my family at the same time as I had to find a way to get things done, actually get work done. You know, some days I would sit down to write and I just couldn't because there was screaming, playing, yelling, booms and bangs. I mean, if you live with little boys or if you ever have before, you know that they can be very loud. Boys are wild, naturally, like I talk about in the book Warrior King, the one that I was writing at the time, it's just the natural state of boys. They're wild, they're loud, they like to scream and wrestle each other to death. So I would sit down, I would try to write, and the words just wouldn't come to me. I was too distracted. I would try to put some headphones in and that didn't work either because you can hear them over the headphones. Like I said, we're in a school bus that's been converted into a tiny home, so there's not really anywhere to go. Even if I would go to my bedroom at the back of the bus, they're feet away from me, right? So like I said, I had to come up with a plan and a system and a time to work where I could actually focus in relative quiet and get stuff done. So what I did was I started getting up at 04:00 a.m. and I know that sounds crazy to a lot of you, 04:00 a.m. and I know that a lot of you leave for work very early as well, like seven, eight am. You're already on your way to work. And we're going to be addressing how this can benefit you as well. Getting things done when you have another full time job that you work every day, and we're going to get into how to maximize your productivity as well if you're one of those people, because some of us work from home and then some of us have to go to a job every single day, and it's even more challenging to pursue a new path or a new vision or a new endeavor because your day is mostly taken up by being at that job and your responsibility of being there. And my morning routine concept goes like this. Imagine getting everything that you want to get done in a day. Everything that you want to accomplish in a day, imagine accomplishing it and getting it done before the sun even comes up, before the day even begins. Because I realized that once I started doing this, there was this immense feeling of freedom for the rest of the day, having already accomplished everything that I wanted to do in that entire day, before the sun even rose over the horizon. So what are the things that you want to accomplish every single day to achieve your goals and your dreams and to achieve the success that you want in every aspect of your life? For me is I wanted to be able to work out every single day, and I wanted to be able to write in silence. I wanted to be able to focus, which at the time was not going to happen. After the sun came up and I had deadlines to get those books finished, they had to get finished. And I also wanted time to read and to learn at a time that was scheduled and set aside so that I knew that it would get done every day. Because that's something that's easy to just say, oh, I'll do it later, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll read when I can. You know, I wanted a scheduled time to sit down and read and learn. So what I did was I set alarms on my phone for 03:30 a.m. starting at 03:30 a.m. and every five minutes that followed until 04:00 a.m. because I know myself, I know that there's going to be a few alarms that I silence. And is it just me or does the silence button on the alarm move around on the iPhone? I don't know. Cause I always find myself, even though I do it every single day, I find myself confused trying to hit that button to shut up that alarm. But anyways, so the next thing that I did was the alarm at 04:00 a.m. the alarm where I had to be up. I set a different tone for that alarm so I would know even in my sleep. It's 04:00 a.m. that's the 04:00 a.m. alarm, right? It's different than the other ones starting at 330, the 04:00 a.m. alarm. I did like a really intense emergency alert type of sound that I knew. It's 04:00 a.m. it's time to get up, no matter how I feel right now. And I committed to when that 04:00 a.m. alarm goes off. Getting up out of bed. I'm jumping up out of bed no matter how I feel, no matter how sleepy I feel, if I don't feel good, if I just don't feel like it, when that 04:00 a.m. alarm goes off, I'm getting up. I committed to that fully. And the first place that I would go is to the coffee maker because the coffee was already set up the night before by my wife. So all I had to do was press go. And I need about a half an hour to allow my brain to wake up, you know what I'm saying? So I took a half an hour from four to 430, and I had my first cup of coffee. And I knew I wanted to maximize on my productivity and on my personal journey and growth, you know what I mean? So I committed to to only consuming motivational content during that half hour. So I would have my first coffee of the day and I would watch motivational videos, motivational speeches or podcasts, things that would inspire me and help me learn along the way to be better in my life. So depending on the mood that I was in that day, whatever I was feeling, it was either a podcast, a motivational video, something to get me amped up, you know, things like that, positive things, not just mindlessly scrolling on social media first thing in the morning and getting distracted. I committed to only consuming motivational and educational content during that first half hour after waking up while I had my first cup of coffee, I did this in the dark because like I said, the boys were asleep in their bunks, like literally five, 6ft away from me because like I said, it's in a school bus. So it was really important to me not to wake them up. But then again, that's a challenge that was unique to me. You know, I don't know your living situation, but just to put the picture in your head of what it was like having this first cup of coffee of the morning and watching these motivational videos, these educational videos, it was in the dark, other than the light from my phone, trying my best not to wake up any babies. Then when 430 came, it was workout time, and we were in the middle of nowhere in rural Florida, an hour away from literally anything. So I wasn't going to a gym. So instead I used a set of resistance bands that I got online. It was like five different resistance levels. You know, the kind with the little hook and the handles on them. And I don't know if you guys know this, I don't think a lot of people know this, but you can do literally any exercise that you can do in a gym. With dumbbells or machines with resistance bands, once you learn to use them and you learn all the moves, you realize that you can do every exercise that's necessary, like full body, anything that you're targeting. You can do those same movements, those same motions, and those same exercises just with a set of these resistance bands. And the only thing that's really missing is just massive amounts of weight that you would be pushing at a gym. But I found from my personal experience that I get just as good of a workout with these resistance bands. Not trying to take business away from people who own and operate gyms, you know, I mean, but I'm saying, if you're in a situation where you can't get to a gym, resistance bands work 100%, dude, and you can even double them and triple them to increase the weight. Like, you can get some real powerful resistance on those things if you like lifting heavy. But I personally prefer lifting, like, a moderate amount of weight for more reps. You know what I'm saying? So at that point, at 04:30 a.m. i switched from coffee to water and I did a high intensity workout, being as quiet as I possibly could, because like I said, boys and wife sleeping just feet away. At some points, I had to remind myself to breathe fully because I would catch myself trying to breathe quieter while I was doing these exercises. So I wrote out a plan where every single day at 430, I was targeting a different muscle group. You know, I made a workout plan, a workout regimen, and every day, a 04:30 a.m. i got it done from 430 to five for half an hour I worked out. And when 05:00 a.m. came, I grabbed my iPad, I sat down, and I started writing. And the cool thing about this is once you get used to this and it becomes your normal routine, like the workout every morning becomes part of your normal routine. You're kind of on a little bit of an autopilot where you're already thinking about the thing that you're going to work on next while you're doing the workout. So I was already kind of planning words, thinking about the things that I wanted to say in either the story or the non fiction book, Warrior King, either Knights of Rodentia or Warrior King. I was already planning what I was going to be writing and thinking about it and getting into it while I was doing these high intensity workouts. So while you're doing these workouts, you're already thinking about that thing that you're going to be working on after the workout. For me, it was writing. In your case, it's whatever you want to be working on and getting accomplished before the day even begins. Say it's like e commerce or starting some sort of business, whatever that thing is that you're going to be working on at 05:00 a.m. you're already planning your next moves, right? You already know your next moves. So straight away at 05:00 a.m. i am still cooling down from my workout. I grabbed my iPad and I started writing. And my goal was to write one chapter every day. And to be honest with you, sometimes that didn't happen. You know, like, I didn't reach my goal of writing a full chapter a day. But once I committed to writing at that time, every single day, no matter what, every single day, I was moving on that book, I was getting it done, I was making progress in that thing and see if my goals for the day, if what I want to accomplish every single day, is to work out and to do some writing, and by 05:00 a.m. i'm already doing that. There is nothing in that day that's going to stop me from accomplishing either one of those things because they're already getting done. The thing about me is I'm a super fast writer. I've written a novel in two weeks before. I'm not making that up. I wrote a novel in two weeks before just to get it done. It's kind of a superhuman ability that I have. I can write super fast. So I would write within the window of five and 06:00 a.m. i would either write a full chapter, I would accomplish writing that full chapter, or sometimes that didn't happen, and I would write until my writing batteries wore out, right? I just couldn't write anymore. But between five and 06:00 a.m. i was grinding out words. I was writing the thing, right? That was my goal, and I wasn't going to miss that. I committed to that. Every day between five and 06:00 a.m. i was writing something. And another thing is, most days, the night before, I would write the outline for whatever I was going to be writing the next day. The next morning, I would write the outline for that chapter so that straight away after that workout at 05:00 a.m. i could just get straight to writing. Some days I failed at doing that, writing the outline the night before or not. I have to write a quick outline before I wrote the chapter, which stopped me from writing the chapter a few times. But the point that I want to make here is that I committed to working on that thing within that 1 hour window every single day. And no matter what, I was making progress on that thing. And then sometime around 06:00 a.m. when my wife and my kids were starting to wake up and get up, I switched to reading. It was part of my goals that something that I wanted to get done every day was to read a chapter of a non fiction book I wanted to learn every day. So while they were getting up, I switched to reading, and I read one chapter every single day of a nonfiction book. And I love nonfiction. Like, anything that is teaching me to be better in my life, giving me some sort of knowledge or wisdom, I love that stuff. So I committed to reading one chapter of that every single day just to myself. Right. So, with my highlighter in hand, I read one chapter every day. I'm a big highlighter. I highlight everything that I love in a book. If you flip through books I've read that are on my bookshelf full of highlights. Dude, how many of you have actually emptied a highlighter, like, you had to throw it away because it was done, there was no more ink in it? I'm that person. I have to buy new highlighters sometimes. It's kind of crazy. And after I read that chapter, get this, I did what most people do when they wake up first thing in the morning. I took a shower and I ate breakfast. And for most people in the morning, that's all they do. And that's all they have time to do. I had already had my morning coffee. I had already consumed some motivational content. I had already done a high intensity workout. I had already written an entire chapter of a book, and I had already read an entire chapter of a book before the sun even came up. And guess what, man, if you leave for work at seven or 08:00 a.m. you could be doing all of this, too, before you even leave for work, before the day even begins, before you even have to be there. And I know some of you say I could never get up at 04:00 a.m. that's way too early. But listen, man, early is relative to how late you go to sleep. And your perception of time is based on numbers on a clock. Determine how much sleep you need to be healthy, mentally and physically. Then get that much sleep and commit to getting everything that you want to get done in a day finished before the sun even comes up, before the day even begins, beginning at 04:00 a.m. imagine that feeling of freedom to say that you accomplished everything you wanted to accomplish that day before the day even began. The sky is the limit at that point, buddy. The day is young. What are we getting done today? Let's go. And when it's early in the evening and you're feeling tired, you're feeling sleepy, guess what? You should be feeling tired and sleep because you've been crushing your goals. You don't need to push yourself to stay up later. Most people push to stay up later at night because they don't feel fulfilled in their day. They don't feel like they got enough. They don't feel like it's been enough. They feel like they didn't do enough. But guess what? I can rest easy, and I'm gonna sleep good because I did everything that I wanted to do today and more. Make a list of three or four things that you want to accomplish every single day that you can't seem to find time for, that you keep putting off and commitment. Schedule it in half hour windows and do them every morning before the day even begins. Stick to them no matter what. Let's say one of the things on that list takes way more time. You need way more time to do that thing. Maybe it's the main endeavor. Like, for me, it was writing, you need more time to do that thing. Well, now you've made progress on that thing no matter what happens today, and you have the freedom to work on that thing later instead of trying to cram everything into one evening when you're already exhausted from work and life, even if you can't get some of that thing done later, you, you could say, well, I made progress on it this morning. I committed to that. No matter what, some of that work has been done, because I know that if you're trying to accomplish something, if you're trying to start a new endeavor, a new pursuit that's outside of your normal routine, it's hard to find time for that. And most days, by the time it's evening and you had planned to work on that thing, you just can't because of life, circumstances, things that go on, you know, maybe something starts happening that you didn't expect and you're trying to find time to do this thing. Some days, you just can't do it. But if you commit to that every morning, at least getting some of it done, no matter what, you're moving on that thing. You understand what I'm saying? You know, sometimes you can't find time to work out every day because of work, life, kids, and you still want to spend some time with your wife in the evening, and you've been at work all day. You know, I think I already said that anyways. But, you know, between all of the things in life, most people can't find time to work out every single day. Well, guess what? If you do this, you can say, I already worked out this morning. I already checked that box. It's already done. I don't have to find time to make it happen. I did it before the day even began. And I'm telling you, this will transform your life and it will transform your productivity. This will completely transform your confidence, and it will completely transform you. Feeling fulfilled in your life, that you're feeling accomplished, that you're actually getting things done. I mean, I can't stress the concept enough of getting all of your goals and your dreams done and progress made on them before the day even begins, bro, it's crazy. And it really is that simple. You really can get up that early, trust me. So that's what I got for you guys today. I know it's a little bit of a shorter episode, but I pretty much covered it all, man. That's the morning routine that can transform your productivity and your life. Try it for a while. Try it for a week. If you're scared to do it, if you're scared to fully commit to it, just try it for a week. Say, I'm getting up at 04:00 a.m. every single day and getting these three or four things accomplished that I want to get accomplished that I can't seem to find time for, I'm going to commit to doing that every single day. If you do that for seven days and you say, this isn't working for me, this sucks, I don't want to do it anymore. Hey, man, don't do it. But if you find after those seven days that you have gotten more accomplished than you ever have before and you're feeling good, you're getting enough sleep, you're getting exercise every day, you're getting things accomplished that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get accomplished because life's too busy, can't find time, right. If you're feeling really good about that, keep doing it, keep going, and adjust your routine accordingly. You know, maybe you find 04:00 a.m. doesn't work for you and it makes more sense to do this at 05:00 a.m. and do those windows, you know, starting at 05:00 a.m. i don't know, I'm not telling you to be lazy. I really suggest that you start getting up at 04:00 a.m. and go to bed earlier before the sun even comes up. Get everything that you would like to get accomplished that day to maximize your super awesome life and to be headed in the direction to be your fully optimized, super awesome self. I highly encourage you to try that. Do that. Commit to it. Get done. Again, thank you guys so much for being here. It was great to talk to you today. I love seeing these numbers grow on this podcast. I love that we're reaching men all over the world with these transformative messages. So thank you guys so much again, if you want to support this podcast, I don't have any sponsors or anything like that right now. I'm doing this for free for you right now. So there's a link in the description of this podcast episode called buy me a coffee where you can donate money towards supporting this podcast and help us keep doing it, help producing it, help getting these messages into your hands. It's presented on there like you're buying me coffees, but I'm not buying coffees with that money. I put it towards this podcast and doing this. So thank you guys so much for donating on there, and thank you so much for reaching out to me on there. You can also leave me a message on there when you donate, telling me how this podcast has affected your life, how this podcast has helped you level up some aspect of your life that helps me keep doing this for you because that's why I'm doing it. Reaching men, inspiring men to be better in their lives. So again, thank you and I'll catch you guys on the next one. Bye.
