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My Morning Routine: Starting the Day Well

20130719_105716My good friend Gideon Strauss, Executive Director of the The Max De Pree Center for Leadership and editor of Fieldnotes Magazine, compiled a list of morning practices that help people start their day in the article “Starting the Day Well.” It was an honor to be included in such an impressive list of people! Here’s my contribution (read more morning routines here):

Coffee. Silence. Prayer. Reading.

My morning routine is so rigid, that if I miss it my day is shot. Ask my wife!

I wake up around 6:30 AM. Brew coffee. I then sit in silence and sip. After 10 or 15 minutes I pray. I’ve a created a prayer-by-notecard system contained in a little black box. The system is a bit complicated and it’s taken me over 10 years to perfect. Basically it involves a prayer from one of three prayer books (The Valley of VisionThe Lutheran Book of Prayer, or The Book of Common Prayer) followed by a few things to pray for each day, including family, community, church, upcoming speaking events, fundraising. I then read from a devotional of some kind that typically involves reading a biblical passage. After that I read or reread a book that I am currently reading slowly. Most often it is something by Eugene Peterson, N.T. Wright, or Wendell Berry, or it is a biblical commentary. I shower at 7:50 AM and I’m at the office by 8:30 AM. It’s a short commute!