peter.nakamura

My Morning Routine

There’s been a lot written in the past few years on the benefits of having a morning routine. I’ve definitely hopped on this bandwagon over this period and experimented with a variety of routines. I’ve tried waking up at 5am, sleeping in until I naturally wakeup, and everything in between. Over the past year or so, I’ve refined my routine to a point where it’s gotten quite comfortable and productive.

While I’m sure the current structure will change over the course of time and through different seasons in my life, knowing that I have a firm foundation in my morning routine is really helpful. I don’t complete all 8 components to my routine every morning. For example, if I have to catch an early morning flight, I may only complete 1 or 2 components and try to make up parts of it throughout the rest of the day. I try to stay away from making it a rigid timesheet and more of a guideline.

Before I share with you the components of the routine, there are a few notable benefits to mention about a morning routine.

1. Minimizes decision-making early in the day

Willpower is a limited resource and making sure you don’t expend too much of it early on the day is crucial to your daily success. With a clearly defined routine to follow in the morning, you minimize the number of decisions to make yet still maintain productivity. No longer are you thinking “what shall I do this morning?” You’ve set a series of helpful activities in the morning that have become a habit. That’s a good thing.

2. Starts the day with quick wins

Have you heard the expression “eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day”? Having a morning ritual to take care of the quick wins at the start of the day can make the rest of the day feel like a win – even if it was a really shitty day. You’ve taken care of some important self-care activities so you can chalk down the rest of the day as a success.

3. Provides an opportunity for self improvement

I really enjoy using the morning for self-improvement activities including reading, meditation, and journaling. Personally, the morning is when my mind is most relaxed and rejuvenated so putting in time for self-improvement work is highly effective.

So without further ado, here’s my morning routine.

1. Make coffee or tea

2. Read

3. Meditate

4. Journal

5. Set a work and personal goal for the day

6. Admin work*

7. Blog/write

8. 7-Minute Workout

*Includes replying to personal emails, buffering social media articles, reviewing personal finances, etc.

Each component of my morning routine takes between 5 to 15 minutes to complete. In order to make sure I keep on track with my routine, I use a Pomodoro timer to alert me after 15 minutes. It’s a helpful way to keep the momentum going.

The process of developing this routine took me about 3 years to complete. It’s important to remember that a routine is a cumulation of habits you’ve built up. So if you’re new to morning routines, I would recommend starting small. Pick one habit you’d like to do every morning and after you feel like you’re in auto-pilot with that habit, add on another one. This way you’ll build confidence in yourself and the joy you find in completing the habit every morning will lead to a virtuous cycle.

Do you have a morning routine or are you working on developing one? Let me know what yours looks like in the comments below!

Weekly Learnings Roundup (July 03, 2016)

Thanks for checking out the Weekly Learning Roundup. These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week.

It’s a motley assortment of tips, resources, and links that will hopefully give you a bit of inspiration for the upcoming week. Enjoy!

What I’m reading —

To Create a Habit, Tell a Good Story by Leo Babauta

Leo nails it on the head with this piece. Starting a habit is easy. It’s the stories that we tell ourselves as we’re developing and maintaining that habit which is harder. Some great, practical advice on telling a better habit story.

TV show I’m enjoying (again) —

Survivor

I know… you might be thinking “Peter, are you stuck in the 2000’s still with your TV show recommendations?” Granted it’s a bit dated, but Survivor (which is now headed into its 33rd season) takes the cake for real, human drama. The show is based on a group of approximately 20 people who are castaway on an island and must rely on and compete with each other to become the sole survivor. Over the course of 39 days, they compete in challenges and form alliances to avoid being voted out. The show is a valuable look into the importance of building social capital, creating meaningful connections, and all the while executing on your strategy at the right time. While the game might seem unapplicable to our daily lives, the emotional challenges are still highly relatable in the real world. Any other Survivor fans out there?

A quote that’s inspiring me —

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

— Bruce Lee

Productivity tip of the week —

Use your email as a to-do list

If you’re like most people, you likely check our email multiple times a day. So why not use it for more than just sending and replying to messages? I’ve been using my email as a tool to keep track of tasks that I need to complete. Task-specific emails get the subject line “Task: … … …” then I fill in the specific task and email it to myself. When the task is complete, I archive it and it’s complete. If there’s a task that I want to snooze to a later time or date, I use followup.cc to have the task come back to me at a better time. This significantly reduces my energy output from having to switch to another to-do list type tool.

Product or service I’m loving —

MeUndies

Probably some of the most comfortable underwear I’ve ever worn. Period. Use this code (via Tim Ferriss) to get 20% off of your first order.

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As always, thanks for checking out this Weekly Learnings Roundup. Be sure to follow me on Twitter – @peternakamura – to see the full list of interesting articles that I share on a daily basis.

Weekly Learnings Roundup (June 26, 2016)

These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week. It’s a motley assortment of tips, resources, and links that will hopefully give you a bit of inspiration for the upcoming week. Enjoy!

What I’m reading —

This is the “growth hack” that got my whole company started by Julien Smith

A really cool story about how Breather was able to get their business off the ground. You’ll be surprised at how simple and how well their “growth hack” strategy worked.

A book that I’m enjoying —

Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah Harrari

If you’ve read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond and loved it, you’ll love this one too. Harrari takes us on a journey to explore the evolution and history of Homo Sapiens.

A quote that’s inspiring me —

A healthy pair of eyes should see everything that can be seen and not say, “No! Too bright!”…So too a healthy mind should be prepared for anything. The one that keeps saying, “Are my children all right?” or “Everyone must approve of me” is like eyes that can only stand pale colours, or teeth that can handle only mush.

— Marcus Aurelius

Productivity tip of the week —

If you’re like me and own a laptop that you use both for work and entertainment, consider creating separate user profiles for business and personal use. It’ll prevent you from being distracted by entertainment and maintain some level of separation between the two areas. I’m in testing mode of this at the moment and the early productivity returns are good.

Program I’m loving —

You Need a Budget (YNAB)

This is the personal finance and budgeting app that I’ve been using over the better part of the last 3 years. Hands down, it’s the best tool that I’ve used; yes, it’s better than Mint. And it’s not because of their software – it’s their methodology.

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As always, thanks for checking out this Weekly Learnings Roundup. Be sure to follow me on Twitter – @peternakamura – to see the full list of interesting articles that I share on a daily basis.

Weekly Learnings Roundup (June 19, 2016)

These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week.

What I’m reading —

Great piece on sales strategy for those working in the startup and small business world.

The Three Frameworks You Need to Kick-start Sales by First Round Review

What I’m watching —

Convincing case around improving farming productivity to alleviate poverty.

Andrew Youn: 3 reasons why we can win the fight against poverty from TED Vancouver

A quote that’s inspiring me —

People find pleasure in different ways. I find it in keeping my mind clear. In not turning away from people or the things that happen to them. In accepting and welcoming everything I see. In treating each thing as it deserves.

— Marcus Aurelius

Service I’m loving —

car2go

If you live in a city and don’t own a car, car2go is a great car-sharing service. You get access to hundreds of vehicles across the city and you don’t pay for gas. car2go is available in quite a few cities across North America, Europe, and now even in China. I use it often for day trips around the city or to get to places that I can’t take public transit to.

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As always, thanks for checking out this Weekly Learnings Roundup. Follow me on Twitter @peternakamura to see the full list of interesting articles that I share on a daily basis.

A Conversation with Travis Hellstrom of Advance Humanity

In this post, I get to share with you a conversation I had with Travis Hellstrom. Travis leads Advanced Humanity, a consultancy that works with everyday humanitarians, nonprofits, and businesses. After college, he decided to forgo medical school to travel to Mongolia as a Peace Corps volunteer. He spent a total of four years in Mongolia where he also met his wife. Travis is an author of multiple books including the Unofficial Peace Corps Volunteer Handbook and Questions for the Dalai Lama, and just an all-round good guy.

I wanted to interview Travis because of a course he created called Crafting Your Purpose. It’s a simple four-week program designed to help you understand your values, your major life roles, and ultimately helping you craft your purpose. We breakdown some of the exercises in the interview and I ask him what inspired him to create the course. If you’re interested in learning more, you can access the first exercise for free.

Travis and I have a wide-ranging conversation in which we also talk about his daily habits, favourite books, and so much more. He’s a fascinating guy with a lot of depth and soul. Hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I enjoyed it myself!

Connect with Travis:

Website: http://travishellstrom.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/travishellstrom

Twitter: @TravisHellstrom

Resources from the interview:

Crafting Your Purpose Course

Peace Corps

Peace Corps Response – Short Term Placements

Unofficial Peace Corps Volunteer Handbook by Travis Hellstrom

Book recommendations:

7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey

Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port
Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John D. Mann
Pivot by Jenny Blake (pre-order now)

Weekly Learnings Roundup (Jun 12, 2016)

Thanks for checking out the Weekly Learning Roundup. These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week.

What I’m reading —

I admitedly don’t read a lot of poetry but Walt Whitman’s work intrigues me. I’m particularly interested in reading Whitman’s seminal book, Leaves of Grass, as I’ve heard it’s a classic from multiple people I admire. Enjoy this quick read by Maria Popova on Whitman’s advice on living a fulfilling life.

Walt Whitman’s Advice on Living a Vibrant and Rewarding Life by Maria Popova

Podcast episode I’m enjoying —

If you’ve heard of Stanley Miligram’s famous experiment, be ready to reconsider the findings. This fascinating episode by Radiolab looks at the dark side of human nature.

The Bad Show by Radiolab

A quote that’s inspiring me —

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others… re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul…

— Walt Whitman

Productivity tip of the week —

I think that having a well established evening routine is critical for daily productivity. A keystone component of my evening routine is shutting down all electronics an hour before my bedtime. There are many studies indicating that blue light emitted from electronic screens (phones, TVs, computers, etc.) inhibit melatonin which makes you feel sleepy. If you’re having trouble getting to sleep at night, try it out for a week and see how it impacts you.

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As always, thanks for checking out this Weekly Learnings Roundup. Be sure to follow me on Twitter – @peternakamura – to see the full list of interesting articles that I share on a daily basis.

Weekly Learnings Roundup (Jun 5, 2016)

Thanks for checking out the Weekly Learning Roundup. These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week.

What I’m reading —

According to Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, the pursuit of higher self-esteem has been misguided. It’s a timely reminder for me (and perhaps all of us) to be more self compassionate.

Why Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem via The Atlantic

Podcast episode I’m enjoying —

Instead of having a daily to-do list, it may be more effective to have a daily not to-do list. Check out the first recording in the link or Episode 9 in the Tim Ferriss Show in your podcast app.

The 9 Habits to Stop Now — The Not-To-Do List via Tim Ferriss

A quote that’s inspiring me —

Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed.

Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.

— Marcus Aurelius

Product I’m loving —

golden pu’erh tea from DAVIDsTEA

The Chinese have been drinking pu’erh (pronounced poo–air) for more than 1,700 years. It’s a type of black tea that is traditionally aged underground and known to have a variety of health benefits. It’s also a fantastic replacement for coffee lovers given its dark, earthy taste.

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As always, thanks for checking out this Weekly Learnings Roundup. Be sure to follow me on Twitter – @peternakamura – to see the full list of interesting articles that I share on a daily basis.

Weekly Learnings Roundup (May 29, 2016)

Thanks for checking out the Weekly Learning Roundup. These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week.

This week’s roundup has a ton of great resources for folks working in the startup world. If you haven’t subscribed to First Round Review (which is where most of the links come from), I highly recommend it. Tons of practical advice and experiences shared by people who’ve been there and done that with startups.

Hope you all have a great week. See you next week!

A quote that’s resonating with me –

Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hit you knock you off your feet; just say to it: Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test.

– Epictetus

Favourite links from the week –

Find, Vet and Close the Best Product Managers (First Round Review)

Answers To Your Tough Questions About Growth — Learned While Scaling Eventbrite’s $5B+ Growth Engine (First Round Review)

In the Best Sales Teams, About Half of the People Are in Support Roles (Harvard Business Review)

Here’s How Asana Won With Its Product Redesign (First Round Review)

Your Content Marketing Strategy Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated (Harvard Business Review)

Service that I’m finding valuable –

Mama Earth Organics

Mama Earth is a Toronto-based organic produce delivery service. I’ve been using Mama Earth for over a year now and I’ve really appreciated the service. Every week, I get a basket of organic, most local produce delivered right to my doorstep. It saves me time and mental hassle from having to grab produce every week.

Mama Earth delivers mostly to the Greater Toronto Area. If you live in an urban or suburban area, there should be a service like this available. Just search “organic produce delivery” into the Google and you can see what’s available in your area.

Audio that I’m enjoying –

The Tim Ferriss Show Episode with Pavel Tatsouline

For those of you looking to improve your body strength, this is an episode worth listening to from The Tim Ferriss Show. Tim interviews strength-training specialist Pavel Tatsouline around some of the best strategies to improve strength, power, endurance, and flexibility. It’s a marriage of all four elements that help you live a strong and healthy life. This isn’t a show just for folks looking to hit the weights at the gym – it’s about how you need to build strength to ensure you maximize your body’s capabilities. Enjoy!

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As always, thank you to those that liked, re-tweeted, or commented on my Tweets. See you on next week’s round up!

Weekly Learnings Roundup (May 23, 2016)

Thanks for checking out the Weekly Learning Roundup. These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week.

This week we’ve got a great assortment of articles ranging from Sheryl Sandberg’s powerful commencement speech to the surprising impact climate change can have on earthquakes and volcanoes. Tim Ferriss’s latest podcast episode is a great one. Unlike his usual episodes where he interviews world-class performers, we get a look into his own personal habits and rituals.

Productivity tip of the week:

Count your decision making “hitpoints”

In recent years, a great deal has been made around willpower. You may have already heard of the term “decision fatigue” where every decision that you make takes away from the limited store of willpower you have available everyday. It’s one of the the reasons why Mark Zuckerberg always wears the same hoodie to work or why pilots use a pre-flight checklist. They have important decisions to make and they don’t want to be using unnecessary willpower deciding what clothes to wear or remember what needs to be checked off pre-flight.

Recently, I came across the concept of imaging your limited willpower as “hitpoints”. By hitpoints, I mean like the ones you would start with as an arcade fighting character. The first character lose all of her hitpoints loses. Imagine you’re like one of these characters. You have a fresh set of 100 hitpoints to start the day and throughout the day you’re going to be facing decisions that will diminish your hitpoints. How would you use them? Where would you focus your hitpoints on?

Imagining your willpower as hitpoints is a really helpful way to focus your limited resources on the important decisions you need to make during the day. With this schema, how would you spend time conserving your hit points? Will you decide on your clothing choice in the morning or the night before? Will you decide how to spend your morning or will you have a routine in place so you’re not deciding what to do? Will you cook a meal the night before or will you choose a place to go for lunch?

There are a lot of areas that you can save your willpower. Yes, it takes a bit of pre-work or practice building your habits, but this can be a game changer. Imagine having your full willpower to face a tough challenge at work or a making a difficult decision? That could make or break your day.

A quote that’s making me think:

Anyone can become angry- that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way- this is not easy. – Aristotle

Favourite links from the week:

These Millennials Have Become The Top Decision Makers At IBM (Fast Company)

How to Optimize Creative Output — Jarvis versus Ferriss (Tim Ferriss)

“You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience”: Sheryl Sandberg’s powerful commencement speech (Quartz)

Global warming won’t just change the weather—it could trigger massive earthquakes and volcanoes (Quartz)

Book review: Grit is a tool in the toolbox, not the silver bullet (SharpBrains)

This scientist can hack your dreams (TED)

Trying to Pin Down the Mosaic of Millennial Tastes (The New York Times)

Audio that I’m enjoying:

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History

Dan Carlin might be one of the best storytellers I’ve ever listened to. And his Hardcore History has won over thousands of fans both history buffs or novices alike. It’s amazing how he’s able to paint the picture and pull you into his stories whether its the Mongolian conquest of the 12th century or the midst of the 1930s and 40s of World War II. Warning: If you have an addictive personality like I have, you may become obsessed for hours listening to his audio-episodes. Each episode goes for about $2 to $3 USD but they’re well worth it.

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As always, thank you to those that liked, re-tweeted, or commented on my Tweets. See you on next week’s round up!

Weekly Learnings Roundup (May 17, 2016)

Thanks for checking out the Weekly Learning Roundup. These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week.

This week, I really appreciated reading through Charles Duhigg’s post on What daily habits can someone adopt to lead a more productive life? via Quora. He doesn’t provide any specific habits that will make you productive, but he does recommend we all develop a “contemplation routine”. From Duhigg’s perspective, having a routine to regularly connect ourselves with the bigger picture – our priorities – is an important habit to develop.

This activity can take many forms whether it’s meditation, journaling, going for a walk, etc. and the intention is to take a moment to contemplate how the work we do that day, week, or month connects to the bigger picture. I think this is great advice and highly valuable. If you haven’t read Duhigg’s first book, The Power of Habit, it’s well worth the read and may help you with the implementation of this type of routine.

Productivity tip of the week:

Weekly Big Rocks

To complement Duhigg’s recommendation for a contemplation routine, something I do every Sunday is setup my Weekly Big Rocks. You may be familiar with this phrase from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The idea behind it is simple: set your priorities (your big rocks) first. When you spend time planning out the important tasks for the week, you focus on what’s most important rather than just diving into the minutia. Here’s a quick video of what that looks like.

Every week I look at the major roles I play in my life such as being a team leader at my organization, a friend, a boyfriend, a blogger, etc. and setup 1 or 2 big rocks to accomplish in that role for the week. It helps me look ahead at the week and schedule in the time to make sure I accomplish those goals. While not every week will be one where I have a major priority for every role, having the awareness that I’m skipping a major priority for that role that week helps me loop back at it the following week. I hope to write more about this in a longer post.

A quote that’s inspiring me:

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. – Bruce Lee

Product or service I’m loving:

humangear GoToob

When you’re traveling and need a reliable container for your liquids, this is the best container I’ve found yet. The tubes are really easy to fill and the liquids you put in pour out very consistently. I travel with MCT oil when I travel and I put them in these tubes. I’ve never had a spill or leakage thanks to these guys. They’re a bit more expensive than your typical container but well worth it considering they’re BPA free too.

Favourite links from the week:

Employee Engagement

Four Myths Most Bosses Believe About Employee Engagement (Fast Company)

What Enterprise IT Leaders Can Learn From the NBA About Employee Engagement (Samsung)

Health & Well Being

Why The Biggest Loser is Everything Wrong with Weight Loss (Bulletproof)

VIDEO: What really matters at the end of life (TED)

A Bank of England analyst wants people to use mindfulness to be happier with less (Quartz)

What daily habits can someone adopt to lead a more productive life? (Quora)

The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training (Tim Ferriss)

Millennials

How millennials earn success with struggle (CNN)