In the past, my morning routine involved getting up, having coffee, spending an hour (or two!) browsing through my newsfeeds, and then buckling down and getting to work. But what I found was that often, work was really a chore. I struggled to get the words down on paper, and some days I didn’t do a very good job of it. I’ve tried writing in the middle of the afternoon, but that was even worse.

Then one day, after I poured my morning coffee, I decided to skip browsing the news and instead dive directly into working on my latest novel. Before I barely finished my second cup of coffee, I had already written 2,200 words. I was amazed — stunned, actually — at how smoothly and quickly the words came.

I tried it again the following day, and sure enough, the words poured from me like a faucet. I began to suspect I was on to something here. I’ve always believed that I could never delve into the day’s work before I’ve had my morning coffee, perused the news and answered my emails. After all, it’s what I’ve always done. Yet this was different, and it worked. I tried it again and again on subsequent mornings, each time receiving the same result — increased and more effortless productivity.

Now, I’ve never been a morning person (more on that in another post), so I certainly never figured I’d be one to hop out of bed and begin tapping away on my keyboard… and yet, here we are.

I wanted to test this new theory of mine further, so the following morning, I reverted to my old habit of reading my email and scrolling through my newsfeed. When it came time to write, that familiar struggle was there, in which producing words was like pulling teeth. So I could only assume that….what, I’m a morning person?

Nah. What I do think is going on is that for me, creativity comes much more easily when I don’t have a brain cluttered with daily news, spam, obligations, and email messages that I need to address. I never realized how much that stuff affected my productivity and weighed me down. I appear to be more productive when I tackle my cognitive work right after I get up.

So that’s what I’m going to do from here on out because it appears to be working.