Manuel Loigeret
Manuel Loigeret is a French freelance app developer living in Montreal, Canada. Away from his work Manu enjoys practicing yoga and blogging in both French and English.
What is your morning routine?
I wake up every morning from Monday to Friday at 5:00am. I usually start my mornings by making tea and preparing a breakfast. While the water is boiling, I sit and meditate for ten minutes, then I eat my breakfast while playing a little on social media and reading. Afterwards, I start working or I organize what I have to do for the day. If I have a major project to work on I will skip the reading part and start straight with work, but that’s really rare.
I also exercise and stretch, take a shower, and get dressed. Basically it’s a time I keep to myself in the morning. Even if I never really work on anything specific, I like to take my time to get my mind and body awake and ready for the day. I usually start working around 6:00am. So that means at least one hour for me.
My wife wakes up around 7:30am. I usually spend some time with her, drink another cup of tea and I’m back to work around 8:30am.
During weekends I don’t have a schedule. I try to be a little more social so it usually means that I go to sleep later. My family doctor always told me that we must at least once a week have a long night of sleep. It’s like going to see a good movie to change your mind and relax (but it’s free).
How long have you stuck with this routine so far?
It has been around two years but I took some breaks on the way. It’s actually difficult to wake up at 5:00am during winter. Sometime, I purposely decide to wake up later. It’s just to be a little more in sync with the natural rhythm. Also this routine has changed and it’s continually evolving. When I started waking up at 5:00am I didn’t know what to do with myself, I was just doing it because cool people were doing it too. So it took me some time to find out that it was important to take care of me and start the day on a positive note.
Also it takes some time to get used to it. At first, I was a zombie, but after a month it was really natural for me to get up at 5:00am. I would say it’s a good thing to start as a good resolution for New Year and wake up around sunrise everyday. That’s what I did last year after stopping this routine for one or two months. In the end it makes it really natural and easy.
Do you use an alarm to wake you up in the morning, and if so do you ever hit the snooze button?
Yes I use the alarm on my iPhone. And just to be sure I wake up I put the iPhone in the kitchen. So I really do have to get up and go there. I used to have it next to me when I was sleeping but I was effectively snoozing a lot, so I chose to have a more radical answer to this problem. It’s stupid but my brain is even more stupid in the morning.
One thing I realized is that I need at least six hours of sleep. I can go under that if it’s just for a day or two but if it’s for a week I adapt my waking hour. I don’t want this thing to ruin my good mood :)
How soon after waking up do you have breakfast, and what do you typically have?
I have my breakfast right after my morning meditation. I usually have tea, a smoothie, one hard-boiled egg and a little bowl of cereal. I’m trying to reduce the amount of cereal, just because I have a tendency to eat a lot of them just because they taste good.
Do you have a morning workout routine?
Not really except a couple of stretches. I usually feel better working out later in the day. But sometime I just feel like it (essentially during summer) and I go run for half an hour.
How about morning meditation practice?
It’s an important part of the process. It really makes a difference for how I feel for the rest of the day. I usually just sit and try to concentrate on what is happening deep inside of me.
Morning is a good time to do that because (at least for me) there is not too much thoughts going through your brain. After that I really have this feeling that my brain is ready to use. It’s difficult to express this feeling with words, you have to try it.
Do you see to email first thing in the morning or leave it until later in the day?
I always wait at least one hour.
Like I said before, I play with Twitter or Facebook but no email. It’s just really bad if I check my email and some client tells me there is a problem on something or whatever (I have clients in France and when I get up at 5:00am they already have started their workday). Even if it’s not a big deal, I feel compelled to connect on Skype, talk to them. And basically I start working like that in my underwear and at 11:00am I’m still in my underwear and I don’t really feel good about myself. That’s why I try to avoid emails in the morning.
What and when is your first drink in the morning?
Every morning I make a fresh smoothie with at least five fruits. I know it does not work like that but I always think of this ad saying that we need five fruits and vegetables every day. So I do that and I feel like, I already got 50% of the fruits and vegetables.
On days you’re not settled in your own home are you able to adapt any of your routine to fit in with a different environment?
Yes, I generally don’t have a routine or I adapt to the routine of the people I am with. It just feels more important to share time with the people you visit. And generally if I’m at somebody’s house, I will probably chat and go to bed later, so waking up at 5:00am would really be complicated.
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