8 Morning Habits for Leaders to Achieve Peak Performance | Episode 204

Scott McCarthy [00:00:01]:
Today on the peak performance leadership podcast, I go solo today and I’m gonna talk to you about eight morning habits for you to achieve peak performance. That’s right. It’s all but the morning routine now. Are you ready for this? Alright. Let’s do it. Welcome one. Welcome all to the peak performance leadership podcast. A weekly podcast series dedicated to helping you hit peak performance across the three domains of leadership.

Scott McCarthy [00:00:36]:
Those being leading yourself, leading your team, and leading your organization. This podcast couples my twenty years of military experience as a senior Canadian army officer with world class guests bringing you the most complete podcast of leadership going. And for more, feel free to check out our website at movingforwardleadership.com. And with that, let’s get to the show. Yes. Welcome one. Welcome all. It is your chief leadership officer, Scott McCarthy, and thanks for coming out to admittedly a late episode.

Scott McCarthy [00:01:20]:
I know. My bad. I am usually on time, on target with the release of my podcast episodes. However, unfortunately, last week was a extremely busy week for me, and I couldn’t get to it. Because if you’re new to the show, I do this in my spare time and my free time. This is my passion. It’s not what I do on a daily basis. And last week, work was extremely busy.

Scott McCarthy [00:01:49]:
So, unfortunately, that had to take priority. But here I am. I’m here now, and it’s time to get to the goods of today’s episode. And just, before we dive into today’s episode, quick announcement. Today’s episode is actually coming from my new blog. That’s right. I am writing articles now on the website. So if you go to movingforwardleadership.com, right at the top, you’ll see a nice button says blog.

Scott McCarthy [00:02:20]:
You hit that, and you can see the written articles that, I’m throwing up on the website. Now that being said, there’s two there. I’ve just recently launched this thing. So, as well, I’m more of a talker than a writer. So my plan right now is to launch a article a month, and then follow-up with a podcast episode. And that’s exactly what we’re doing here today or what I’m doing, I should say, in that, I’m going to go over the core message of that article with you today, and that is eight morning habits for leaders to achieve peak performance. Now if you’ve been following me for a day, you will know right away I’m a huge fan of a solid morning routine. I will tell you that a solid morning routine gets me energized and gets me going.

Scott McCarthy [00:03:24]:
That’s right. You see, I’m up every day at 5AM or for you military folks, zero five hundred. Getting my morning workout in and just after that, going through my whole morning routine. So this has kind of been the inspiration behind this episode. So let’s dive in. So eight morning habits that you should dive into and, essentially, eight morning habits that you should try to accomplish before 8AM. That’s the goal here. Now that being said, do I expect you to hit all eight of these before 8AM? No.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:08]:
That’s the caveat. I don’t expect you to be able to hit all eight. And in fact, I don’t want you to hit necessarily all eight. What I would like for you to do is go listen to these eight, and I’ll explain them and, what to do and how to get into this habit. And pick maybe one or two to try tomorrow. Try it out. See if you like it. You like it? Great.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:36]:
Does something for you? Amazing. If it doesn’t, ditch it. Move on to another one. And just see how you can build your morning routine. And potentially, you know, okay. You pick up a couple habits. You ditched a couple habits. You go, let’s go back.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:51]:
Let’s retry one of those previous habits I have ditched, and then maybe you’ll find it, will jive and sync with you. So, anyway, let’s dive in. Morning habit number one. And this is the probably I started off with a doozy here, and that is avoiding the phone. How often do you find yourself you get up and before you know it, you’ve realized you’ve been awake for, like, thirty minutes, and your battery is, like, down 15% because you’ve been on it for thirty minutes straight. Right? Those overnight emails, messages, morning news clips, or heck, maybe you’re just watching watching Instagram reels of a couple pranking each other. Whatever it is, this is damaging your morning. You see, study from the theoretical implied fracture mechanics journal stated that grabbing your phone first thing in the morning basically makes your body skip two stages of the awakening process.

Scott McCarthy [00:05:57]:
And what it does is it takes your brain and immediately flicks it into reactive mode while skipping visualization mode, which actually enables us to become proactive because we’re thinking ahead in this visualization mode. We’re planning. We’re we’re thinking about what’s coming up in the day. So you need to stay away from your phone. So couple of tips for you how to stay away from your home. Leave it elsewhere, not by your bed. I often leave mine in my basement, or on my kitchen counter. I don’t even have it anywhere near me.

Scott McCarthy [00:06:42]:
Now you go, Scott, but my phone is my alarm clock. Well, get an alarm clock. Amazon, ten bucks. Or be like me. I use my watch. I put my watch on vibrate. I have alarm on it, and it wakes me up in the morning four, 5AM. Right? So it’s simple little thing, but it’s a habit that we need to get in.

Scott McCarthy [00:07:03]:
And that habit gets built not by the morning, but rather by the evening on what you’re going to do before you go to bed. Okay. Habit one, avoiding a phone. Habit two, probably my favorite, exercise. That’s right. Get some exercise in. And the reality is is that you don’t need to be lifting heavy weights or anything like this. According to, 2019 study by British Journal of Sports Medicine, they found that morning exercise improves attention, visual learning, and decision making.

Scott McCarthy [00:07:43]:
Let me repeat that. Improves attention, visual learning, and decision making. Does that not sound familiar to you, the leader? Absolutely. Right? These are all crucial things for us as leaders. We need to be able to have attention. We need to be able to visually learn and visualize. We need to make decisions because that’s what we’re there for. We make decisions day in, day out.

Scott McCarthy [00:08:09]:
Now do you need to be like me getting up at 5AM and crushing a hit workout or pushing weights around? No. You don’t need to. You don’t need to go extreme. As fitness coach and trainer Chris Gooden would say, you know, a simple 30 walk could easily provide you with the same benefits of a full workout in this context. So get up. Maybe get up half an hour earlier and go for a walk. Walk on the treadmill if it’s minus 25 Celsius like it’s been here in Kingston lately. But the moral of the story is get your body moving.

Scott McCarthy [00:08:47]:
Avoid your phone, get your body moving, and you’re gonna see results later in the day. Okay. Moving on. Habit number three, read. Many CEOs out there state that reading is one of the biggest benefits for them and part of their professional development, and they go after 52 books a year. That’s a book a week. Right? So if you could have these high performing CEOs, high performing leaders out there, and they’re going after reading every day. So 52 books a year, just to give you a quick math, average book is about 200 pages, so that’s about 30 pages a day.

Scott McCarthy [00:09:35]:
You can easily crank out 30 pages in half an hour to forty minutes of reading. And you don’t have to necessarily go that extreme, but make a goal of 10 pages maybe. Maybe just start with 10 pages and see where it goes. Or maybe put a time commitment there. You know? Fifteen, twenty minutes. Get your cup of coffee. You have your couch. Have a seat, grab a book, and away you go.

Scott McCarthy [00:10:07]:
Often, what I like to do is put my book where I like to sit and drink my coffee. Why? Well, the book is there. It’s a trigger. I have my coffee. I lay it literally on the same table as the book. I drop the coffee. I pick up the book, and instead, I don’t pick up my phone. Alright.

Scott McCarthy [00:10:28]:
There we go. Habit three, read. Habit four, which is probably one of the hardest ones for a lot of us adults out there, eat a healthy breakfast. Like, how many times as a child were we told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, yet millions of adults out there continue to skip breakfast, rush out the door, get their day going, maybe grab something through the drive through on their way to work. Right? According to doctor Lisa Hill, breakfast kick start kick starts your metabolism, helps you burn calories throughout the day. It also gives you the energy you need to get things done and helps you focus on work. And that’s the big crucial thing. Right? Focus on work.

Scott McCarthy [00:11:17]:
Why? Because you’re not focusing on your stomach going. Right? You’re focusing on you’re able to focus in on your work. So you find it if you find it hard to eat breakfast in the morning, I understand. You know? Maybe you’re a parent out there. You have multiple kids. You have to get them ready, etcetera. Don’t worry. I get it.

Scott McCarthy [00:11:40]:
I understand. But quick tip on helping you to, you know, basically get breakfast is, you know, you can do a quick protein shake. That will be a great way to do it. There are different types of ones out there. I would recommend to you a slow release, you know, multiple stage protein. What that does is actually it prolongs the the effect of the protein shake longer in the day so that you don’t get hungry, quicker. I use one called, Quattro by Magnum. Great one.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:17]:
Highly recommend it. Or you can pre plan it. Right? You can easily make something that you can quickly heat up, you know, 30 in the microwave, grab and go, and away you go. Either way, you know, you’re planning ahead a little bit, but it’s gonna give you benefits throughout today. Moving along. Habit number five, journaling. This is and I’ll be brutally honest here. This is one I which I can’t seem to pick up, although I do know that there are benefits.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:49]:
And according to Michigan State University, the study they did, they prove that there are apparently, it helps us perform more efficiently because it helps us, to process our emotions, helps us to get our thoughts out, and basically allows us to open up and have a bit more perspective on whatever issues are ongoing. So finding ten, fifteen minutes to journal definitely could benefit you. I personally, as I stated in the intro, right, now everything’s gonna work for you. I personally this is one which I can’t really get into. Habit number six. This one I definitely get into, and that’s planning your day. Right? Planning your day allows us to prioritize what’s important to make sure that the things that need to get done get done first. And this is backed up by the study of University of Illinois that it planning your day had significant improvement over your daily time management than those who don’t plan their day.

Scott McCarthy [00:13:55]:
And, really, does that shock you? It shouldn’t. Right? When you plan your day, as I said, you make sure you get the right things done first, and then you go into the other things. Moving along to the last two, warning habit number seven, practice gratitude. You know, you hear a lot of gratitude these days. I wouldn’t say it’s a new age thing, but it’s definitely on the up and up. And, you know, why not? I’m thankful for you, the listener, because without you, this podcast would not be what it is. So my gratitude to you. But, apparently, gratitude enables us to not get sucked into other people’s problems actually and make them feel like there are problems.

Scott McCarthy [00:14:45]:
It actually can help us, achieve, have a great, a peak performance by enabling us to have a positive outlook on things. By simply having some gratitude, help us overcome negativity, bad feelings, which what makes a drain on you and declines your performance. So gratitude journal, maybe you wanna combine two habits together, could be a great way to do it. And then finally, the last morning habit is make your bed. That’s right. Not trying to treat you like a child, but, you know, the famous speech by admiral William McRaven, he talks about how making your bed sets you up for success and that it’s a keystone habit for great leaders to kick start their day with good decisions. And then no matter what, no matter how bad your day goes, you come back to seeing the first thing you did that day and the first accomplishment you had that day. And you know what? It’s all good because tomorrow is a good day.

Scott McCarthy [00:15:59]:
So those are the eight. Alright? Again, in order avoiding the phone, exercising, reading, eating a healthy breakfast, journaling, planning your day, practice gratitude, and then finally make your bed. And as I said before, if you are doing some of these or you’re not doing any of them, don’t dive in trying to get all eight right away, but rather try a couple. See what sticks. What doesn’t stick, put it off to the side. Try another couple and continue that process. Once you go through all eight, you got the some that have stuck and you wanna try the other ones again, go ahead, add it in. This morning routine ritual needs to be yours.

Scott McCarthy [00:16:50]:
It needs to fit with your goals, your life, etcetera. You know, you may have to tweak some things, but that’s okay because you heard all the benefits of these eight habits that will enable you to achieve peak performance. And that’s what we wanna do as leaders. We wanna achieve peak performance. Why? So we go out and help our people to achieve their peak and organizations achieve its peak, lead better. Because leaders who don’t achieve peak performance go down that route of being a horrible boss. And you, the leader listening here, you’re not that person because you know what? You’re listening to this podcast, and that is a great thing. That shows me you’re not a horrible boss.

Scott McCarthy [00:17:36]:
Alright, ladies and gentlemen. That’s it for today. Hope you enjoy this one. Again, you can check out the new blog at movingforwardleadership.com and hit the blog button. Alright? Anyway, we will see you just in a couple days. I’m going to get this thing back on track with the schedule. Anyway, that’s it for now. We will see you in two days.

Scott McCarthy [00:17:57]:
As always, lead dump boss. Take care now. And that’s a wrap for this episode, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the Peak Performance Leadership podcast. But you know what you could do to truly support the podcast? And no, that’s not leaving a rating and review. It’s simply helping a friend, and that is helping a friend by sharing this episode with them. If you think this would resonate with them and help them elevate their performance level, whether that’s within themselves, their teams, or their organization.

Scott McCarthy [00:18:40]:
So do that. Help me help a friend win win all around and hey, you look like a great friend at the same time. So just hit that little share button on your app and then feel free to fire this episode to anyone that you feel would benefit from it. Finally, there’s always more. There’s always more lessons around being the highest performing leader that you can possibly be, whether that’s for yourself, your team, or your organization. So why don’t you subscribe? Subscribe to the show via movingforwardviewership.com forward /subscribe. And until next time, lead, don’t boss, and thanks for coming out. Take care now.