Why I Wake Up Before My Son Cries
Episode notes
My 13-month-old decides what time my day starts. I've found a way to make sure he doesn't decide how it goes.
No expert here - just me walking through the morning routine my wife and I actually run right now, and asking you for yours.
What you'll take away:
- Why the 30-40 minutes before anyone needs you can flip a whole day from reactive to proactive
- How my wife and I share quiet morning time without saying a single word - and why that's the point
- The 4:30am routine I loved back in 2020, and the real reason I gave it up
Chapters:
00:00 Cold open
00:20 Why I wanted to talk about morning routines
01:00 The current setup: 5:40 alarm, coffee, water
01:40 Quiet time on the porch (together, not talking)
02:20 My 30-40 min "brain pursuit" - reading, now coding
02:50 Proactive vs. reactive: the time before our son wakes up
04:00 The alternative: waking up with a run
05:00 My 2020 4:30am routine (and why I stopped)
06:30 Guarding sleep + keeping it sustainable
07:00 Your turn - send me your morning routine
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Transcript
Transcribed from the recording and lightly formatted for reading. Nothing has been reworded, so the occasional mis-hearing is left as spoken.
Jeff Albaum
What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Curiosity Class. Today I wanna talk about routines, specifically morning routines. So if you've existed on the internet at all in the last 10 plus years, morning routines are a super common idea. But I wanted to share a little bit about what mine and my wife's look like and then hear from you all because I've, I don't know, I'm constantly on the hunt for new things to add and new ideas.
And also feedback, because it's always kind of refining for different seasons of life. So let's get right into it. Starts off, uh, our alarms go or my alarm goes off at 5 40 AM. And this is all new. Like this is, this has changed actually pretty recently. So the current set up in summer, 20, 26 with a 13 month old is as follows alarm goes off 5 40 AM. Wake up. You do like bathroom things, brush teeth.
putting contact lenses, et cetera, start coffee. That's also key. And so we're kind of ready to take the first sip of coffee by like 5.55, give or take. From there, chug water and try to drink a lot of water because I'm usually pretty thirsty from the night before. So chug a lot of water and around 5.55 or so, go outside. My wife and I have a, it's kind of like a sunroom, I guess you could say. It's like an
indoor outdoor space. So it's a covered outdoor space off of our kitchen. And so we go and sit there in the morning and either read or do some sort of work. And it's really nice. so we're kind of weird. like don't really talk during this time. It's kind of our quiet time. And so we'll go and we'll sit and like, yeah, we'll do kind of our individual work. So traditionally I've read, I've used this time to read a book and I actually stopped reading
as much recently, but I try to do some sort of like brain pursuit. So for the last two months or so, I've been learning how to code, taking like a coding course. And so it's really nice because it's still dark outside and I put headphones in and I just kind of like lock in and try to use my brain for 30 to 40 minutes. And it's really nice. We're like drinking coffee, we watch the sunrise, we're together, but we're not really talking.
And this is, this is our, our, what we do. So then, at six 30 or so, we're both available, such that when our, our son wakes up, we're able to go get them. So it varies. Like everyone with kids will know that what time they wake up is kind of a crap shoot. So it's anywhere between, you know, a range of like six 30 to seven 15. So anywhere in that range. but by six 30, we're, ready to, you know, ready for the day, so to speak. And we found that.
It's really, really, really nice to have time before our son wakes up for us. just like take time to do the things that you want to do. even if it's just 30 minutes, even if it's 40 minutes, whatever it is, it's like, that's huge. makes the rest of the day so much better because it's like, okay, I've already done something for me. I'm happy to give. Right. and who knows people with multiple kids are probably listening to this being like, enjoy it while you can. Like, I'm sure it changes a ton as, your family grows.
But for us in this, in the season of life, it works really nicely. And we noticed that when we don't have that time, like if we think, I'm just going to sleep in for an extra half hour or so, at least for me, when I wake up and our son is crying, for example, if I wake up and he's already crying, I feel like I'm behind the eight ball, like the entirety of the day. Like I'm just like, man, I, I, I'm just always trying to catch up as opposed to being proactive. Like I'm being reactive instead of proactive.
Show full transcript
Jeff Albaum
So it's, super helpful. And we'll try, even if we go to sleep a little bit later than we'd like to, we try to, still keep that, that wake time and morning time pretty, pretty sacred. So, that's what it's looked like recently. other kind of alternatives, like some, some mornings, instead of doing work, I'll go for a run at that time. And it's a really great way for me personally, just to wake up. cause it's like, you don't really know what you're doing for the first 10 minutes anyways.
You kind of get a free, like I'm a pretty slow runner. So I get like free most of a mile without really realizing it. Um, so that's been really nice. And then I, you know, I get back and, know, by six 15, you've, you've done your workout for the day and it feels amazing. Um, so that takes us to wake up time for our son. Then we'll go get our son around seven ish anywhere from six 30 to seven 15, um, wake him up. And then it's kind of just.
You know, get him dressed, feed him breakfast time, you know, eat something ourselves and that, that can vary. then, depending on the day, my wife will either take our son to daycare or she'll go to the gym, and I'll take him to daycare. And so, you know, depending on who's doing drop off that day, we start our work days anywhere from eight to nine AM. So pretty, pretty short ish morning routine.
but it's something that, you know, I think we both really enjoy and we get a lot out of, and I'll be interested, like I'm almost done with this coding course, for example. So I'm interested and I actually don't know what I'm going to do next. If I'm going to go back to reading, cause I really enjoy reading or do some sort of other, work type like mental, mental studying, mental exercises. don't know. so I'm actually very curious. I'd also love to hear from everyone else. What, what is, what is your morning routine look like?
Um, and how do you think about the morning? know, some of you might not be morning people, et cetera, but that's okay. How do you do your mornings? One of my best friends, uh, used to be a non morning person and used to be like, dude, if I have to be somewhere at nine, I wake up at eight 47, roll out of bed, you know, put water in my hair, brush my teeth and I'm out the door. Like what, what do mean? Why would I, why would I wake up? So, um, I love hearing how different people do the mornings. Um,
Back in the day, I think in circa 2020 pre-kids, um, I was a little bit of a crazy person. was during COVID, it was actually right before COVID. Um, I would wake up at like four 30 and do like a full workout and like come home and, um, uh, like drink coffee and read for an hour and then sit down on my desk. And it was like 7. And that was the best feel. think if you can,
If I didn't need more sleep, I think that's what I do every day. Cause there is no better feeling in the world than, waking up before the sun, doing a hard workout, drinking coffee and reading with like, and also at the time there was these beautiful, beautiful trees and there's like amazing deck that we, that we had. And I shared a house with a of, a bunch of guys and, like sitting coffee outside, reading a book, sitting down at your desk and at seven, seven AM, like you've done more in your day than most people have in their entire day. And it's only seven AM. And then you like,
hit the day hard and it's pretty unbelievable. The other side of that coin is I get really tired at like 8 p.m. So it wasn't much of a way to have a life, but it felt very, very, very good. So this feels, my current routine is a little bit more, I hope, balanced and hopefully more sustainable, because I do feel like we're pretty religious on sleep. Like we go to bed around nine to 10. So, you
That's anywhere from seven and a half to eight and a half hours of sleep every night. So definitely trying not to, sacrifice sleep because that is super, super important. but anyways, that is the morning routine in our household. So feel free to drop a comment on what your morning routine looks like. Hit me up if you want to share your morning routine with me. And I'm always looking for suggestions or additives. So, please let me know. That's it for now. I'll see y'all next week.
Bye, everybody.