How to fill your morning with purpose and joy (Craig Kulyk)

[01:35] Paul: Today I'm chatting with Craig Kulyk, who's the creator of The Morning Effect. He's experimented with 100 morning rituals as he's gone from somebody that hated mornings to Morning Advocate over the past 7 years. He's also a fan of ultimate frisbee, cashews, and maps. Welcome to the podcast, Craig.

[02:04] Craig Kulyk: Thanks for having me, Paul.

[02:05] Paul: We talked a little before this and you were sharing how you never really had a conventional mindset towards work. I'd love to dig into that a little and perhaps start with exploring Right after college, you ended up going to Asia to teach for a few years. How did you decide that that would be your path right after college?

[02:31] Craig Kulyk: Well, to start there, we actually have to go a bit further back. When I was in university, my first year, I had this hankering to go and work somewhere else for a summer. I was living in Winnipeg. That's where I grew up. And I just really wanted to go away for a summer and have that experience of working somewhere else. I never went to summer camp or anything like that.

And so looking at different places I could go to, and I found this gondola that was in British Columbia called Hell's Gate Airtram. And I sent my application in and I got hired there. So that was when I was 18. And I had just a wild summer. I worked there and I also worked somewhere else in BC for for that summer on a little island. And it just really opened up my world to travel, to meeting people who were much older than I was, 'cause I was sometimes staying in hostels and meeting international travelers that tended to be in their 20s, sometimes in their 30s.

And from that point on, I just knew that I wanted to live a life that had more of those experiences. So the next two summers I went away and worked in other places in Canada. The following one was in Banff, and then the next year I went out east and traveled all around Eastern Canada and ended up working in Montreal. So that kind of set the stage, and the next couple years I spent back in Winnipeg going to school. I studied marketing and small business, and at the same time was working a lot. I was working several jobs to save money so that I could go to Asia.

And now entering to where you asked the question, um, at that point I already, like I said, knew that I wanted to have these unique experiences, and teaching English abroad seemed like a great opportunity to really get immersed into a different culture, but also to have some of my own personal growth at the same time, have the freedom and flexibility to travel. It just all seemed like a really interesting opportunity, and I jumped on that. So I actually went backpacking for 6 months before that, and then I ended up in South Korea where I was gonna spend the year, and I ended up spending the next almost 5 years off and on just teaching, and teaching in a variety of ways, teaching all different ages from business to student, sorry, from business leaders to kindergarten to junior high to high school, and it was a really interesting and enriching experience.

[05:05] Paul: What were some of the things that changed from going and expecting to stay a year to, okay, maybe I'll extend this a bit longer?

[05:14] Craig Kulyk: Well, you actually kind of hit on it in the intro a little bit, and it has to do with Ultimate Frisbee. So I, after being in Korea for about 6 months, I was kind of hitting that point where I actually was feeling quite homesick and I hadn't really met people that I felt strong connections to. And I'd been away from home at this point for a year. And I remembered a conversation that I had with someone when I was traveling, when I was in Malaysia, that they had said there's a really good Ultimate Frisbee community in Seoul, which was where I was living. So I went out to play Ultimate Frisbee for the first time. I had never played it, I'd heard of it, but just didn't know anything really about it.

And there was a really interesting mix of people. There were maybe 70% expats and 30% Koreans at the time, and they were quite welcoming. They liked to mix partying and playing frisbee and exercise, and it just— at that time, my life was like the perfect combination. And a month later, I was playing at a tournament in Shanghai and just got really embedded into the Ultimate community. In Asia and started eventually organizing tournaments and just going deeper and deeper into it.

[06:27] Paul: Why did you end up staying in Korea, and how did your mindset shift about work when you were there?

[06:34] Craig Kulyk: Well, I guess the other reason why I stayed in Korea— there were several reasons why. I mean, it was a— it was an amazing country to be living in. I was learning the language. The culture was just so different, and it is so different, and that was really fascinating to me. But also, I was exploring what work was interesting to me. I started to organize different events that, um, at first, the first one I think I did was, well, it was Ultimate Frisbee related.

And then the second one I did was a fundraiser for an orphanage that I had volunteered at in Cambodia to teach English at. And I found that I really enjoyed running events, and it turns out that I was naturally pretty skilled at it. So I kept doing that. I kept on organizing more events, and eventually led me to start this chapter of a nonprofit called Little Travelers in Seoul, where we would basically organize events and we would give away these little beaded dolls that were made by women in South Africa who were either infected or affected by HIV. And 100% of the money would go back to these women. So I started running these events.

Gained different skills in that way and started at that point to really think about, okay, what— where do I want to go with this? I knew it. I knew I didn't want to be an English teacher. That wasn't that fulfilling to me. It was— just became sort of a job. And that's when I decided to move back to Canada because I figured I needed to develop some other skills and I needed to try different types of work to see how I could navigate this life of unconventional work that gives me some sort of time freedom and incentives and excitement to still be able to travel.

[08:24] Paul: Yeah, so teaching something like English, a lot, a lot of times people that are doing that, you're working 15 to 20 hours a week, which I don't want to downplay it. I think teaching is can be pretty intense and demanding. But how did that shift your perspective as you were going back to Canada and just thinking about what work was, right? At that point, you said you were looking for like having a little more time freedom. That doesn't map well if you're looking for like a full-time job where you have to like go to an office, right? Um, so how did that shape your view of how you were thinking about work at that point, and perhaps a little different than other people?

[09:11] Craig Kulyk: Well, I had the luxury, as you're alluding to, of time freedom when I was teaching in Asia. I was only working for like 10, 15, 20 hours a week kind of thing in those last few years. So I had experienced that, and that allowed me to explore all these other parts of myself. So organizing events, learning Korean, traveling. And I knew that when I moved back to Canada that I wouldn't necessarily immediately have that same time freedom, that I might, you know, get a job where I was working in office and build up certain skills that would allow me to then sort of leapfrog off of that to do more unconventional work again. And that was kind of my intention coming back, was that I wanted to find a job that was using the skills that I'd already exercised, like running events or something to do with communications and marketing.

But I found it really hard. I moved to Vancouver in 2009, right before the Olympics, and that was part of my plan. I wanted to, to work for the Olympics and be here for the Olympics. And I did get a job, but it wasn't the job that I was looking for. I ended up basically moving furniture inside the Athletes' Village before the athletes came, and then during the Olympics, literally doing nothing for 8 hours. We would just sit and watch Olympics, and then we would move the furniture out of Athletes Village when they left.

It was not, uh, not the kind of work I was hoping for, and that kind of set the stage a bit for the next year and a half. I just, I found it really hard, and I think part of it was because there were a lot of people in Vancouver that had come for the Olympics that were looking for similar types of work, event organizing or nonprofit type work. And I probably sent out 200 job applications and I got maybe 2 interviews, maybe, I don't know, maybe 1. I don't know. It was brutal, brutal. And like, I was decent at writing resumes and cover letters.

It's not like I didn't get how to do that. It was like the opportunities just really weren't there and I didn't have a network. So I, after the Olympics, took a job landscaping because I wanted to, you know, make— I need to make money at that point. And I also wanted to do something that was outside and physical and just, you know, not have to think too much and, and kind of figure out what to do next. I did that for a season and still couldn't find anything that I— that was Anyone that wanted to hire me for the skills that I had. And then, uh, I ended up after that going back to— well, actually, oh, sorry, I was gonna skip this part.

Then I was gonna start a business. I was gonna start a business that was ESL related, and I ended up getting into this government-sponsored program because I was laid off from landscaping. And when you go on EI, Employment Insurance, you can sometimes get into these government programs. And so I got into this program with this business idea about teaching English in very natural settings. Like, we would go to the mall or we would go to tourist attraction, and like, it would be a very natural teaching environment. And I found out quickly that the business was just a bad idea.

Like, it wasn't at all gonna work. And from that point is when I started to think about, okay, what kind of business do you actually want to run? Like, what— like, not even what kind of business, but What's the outcome? Where do you wanna go with this? Like, what— I had to come back to the reasons why I wanted to start a business, which at that point was just like, I wanna give myself a job 'cause I can't find anything. So I went through, I started a period of discovery, I guess, and that took me years actually.

After that, I went back to the teaching for a little bit. Ironically, I was teaching how to write a resume and cover letter and get a job in Canada when I couldn't get a job myself. And then I— an opportunity came up with the Ultimate Frisbee League here, and I was already embedded into the community. I went for an interview for a league coordinator job, and I showed them all the things that I had done in Asia, all the events that I had run. It was— I had newspaper clippings of different articles that were written about the stuff that, that we were doing with the organization that I'd started. And they were impressed by that, but they thought like, this guy's not the best league coordinator.

We have a marketing job coming up that he might be good for. And, uh, this is already a really long story, so I'll condense it. I ended up getting that job about 8 or 9 months later, and I'm still actually doing that job full-time. And I've been working from home for 7 years doing that job, doing marketing for the Vancouver Ultimate Frisbee League.

[13:54] Paul: That's fantastic. So 7 years ago, You also note is the shift when you started experimenting with morning routine. So it might be a good transition here just to ask, what were your days like before you became a morning advocate?

[14:10] Craig Kulyk: Oh God, they were nightmarish. I mean, yeah, just the worst, the worst. One of my really good friends says that I was like a morning Gollum, like the guy from Lord of the Rings. Just miserable. So my mornings would go one of two ways. If I had to be somewhere, so when I was landscaping, for example, I would stay up later than I should have, sleep in until the last possible minute, and then get up and I was like running around the house as if there was a fire to get my stuff together and get out.

And I was always like pushing it, you know, a few minutes late or just like I'd have to cycle as fast as I possibly could to get to my boss's house on time. So it was either that, or when I started working from home, I would have this freedom. And so I just, you know, kind of get up and maybe go on my phone, go on the internet, and just procrastinate a lot. And by the time I start my day, it would be quite late, which meant that I had to work quite late, which meant that I didn't have much time in the evenings. And It just was a really unbalanced life.

[15:22] Paul: And when did you decide to start experimenting with figuring it out a different way? Was there a spark? Was there something you read a day when you were just like, all right, I need to get— I have some of this time freedom, but I have no control over how I'm spending my time.

[15:42] Craig Kulyk: There were a few things that were happening at that time. A relationship ended and That was part of it. I was feeling pretty crummy about that. And then I also got injured from playing Ultimate. It was a groin injury. I was kind of one of those players that just always was injured, like get injured, come back, get injured, come back.

And this one was pretty bad. I was out for a few months. And so I wanted to just do physiotherapy and I wasn't doing it. I was just lazy and I wouldn't do it in the evenings. So the first few habits that I really wanted to get going were physiotherapy, some meditation because I wasn't exercising and I wanted to be able to do something with my— to get that sort of the same, the same release that you get from exercising. We just, you know, stop thinking about things.

And flossing because I went to the dentist and my hygienist yelled at me because my gums would just bleed all the time. I wasn't flossing enough. So those were the 3 that I started with and thought, okay, well, if I can do this in the morning before I start work, that would feel really good. And I started with flossing one tooth, like, or two teeth, but, you know, one, one of them. And just stretching, I think, and physio was like 2 or 3 minutes. And then meditation was also very short.

[17:09] Paul: So what you You now have talked about 127 things you can do in your morning, right? And you have amazing resources on your website for thinking about what your morning routine could be. How did you go from those 3 things to thinking about, okay, I'm gonna experiment with a bunch of different ways of starting my morning? Or just, I guess, even stepping back, like, when did you—

[17:36] Craig Kulyk: so after those first 3 rituals, something started to become like design or more like regular habits, it's just I felt so good. Like, I felt so much more in control of part of my day. I felt like I was finally doing some things that I was procrastinating doing before. And I just kept on doubling down and saying, okay, well, what else can I add? What else can I— what can I do differently? And just really thinking about that time quite intentionally.

And over the years have tried like you said in the intro, over 100 different rituals. And I still am constantly changing things and trying new things. It's not just like— this is one thing I think a lot of people think about morning routines, that it has to be really regimented and boring. And it's completely the opposite. If you're gonna be successful in the long term, you actually really need to think about how are you doing this in a way that is going to be flexible, that's going to be able to adapt with the fact that life changes, that your situation changes and your motivation changes. And there's just things that are going to come up.

You're going to have an early morning flight. But how do you really deal with that, the interruptions, the flexibility, and the fact that you can get bored doing the same thing over and over and over again?

[18:49] Paul: Right. Yeah, I definitely get that sense from you. I think people get turned off from morning routines sometimes because you're reading about these people and they're like, The only way you can be an achiever is if you wake up at 4:30 AM and then do 2 Ironmans and cook yourself a meal. And it's like, geez, this actually just sounds terrible. How did you think about injecting fun? I mean, I just get the broader sense that you think about injecting a little fun and humor into everything you do.

How can the morning routine, the morning effect as you're deeming it, be something that's a little more fun and kind of an easier way to start your morning rather than just another productivity hack that's about starting a billion-dollar company?

[19:43] Craig Kulyk: Yeah, I think that's so true. And so much of the advice that you see online is all about that. And it's It's just not— it only goes so far, I'll say. So I started doing that kind of stuff for a few years. I was all about like productivity, let's go, let's go, let's go. And it got to the point where I actually got so burnt out that I realized that I had to do this a different way, that the morning is actually about— sure, it's gonna make me productive, and I'm like so much more productive now.

It's wild to think about it. But it really is about filling you up so that you're actually enjoying every day. It's not about getting as much stuff done. It's about being able to take a step back and to be witnessing your life as it's happening. And so to your question about fun, it's really about taking that step back and having the intention and the awareness about like, what is actually fun for me? Like, what is gonna be enjoyable at this point?

And when something becomes not fun, to realize that that's happening and also change that up. The point of doing a morning routine is not to have a consecutive number of days doing a morning routine, right? It's about the outcomes that you get from that, and it's about the experience of doing it that is joyful, that is filling you up.

[21:10] Paul: Yeah, so That gets to another thing you've written about. You touched on this. You said it wasn't about productivity. It wasn't about accomplishing as much. Why is time management or that term, why is that the wrong way to think about our days and our time?

[21:31] Craig Kulyk: Well, I don't think it's totally the wrong way. I think that it is important. You do want to be thinking about How are you crafting your time? And it's, it is a piece of the puzzle for sure. I think right now a lot of the advice is that it is the most important or the only piece of the puzzle. And that's where there's real problems with it because you end up just becoming a cog in a machine that's getting stuff done.

Done. Like when I was landscaping, I was like a machine. I turned my body into a machine and you're shoveling stuff, you're just kind of, you're doing it, you're doing it, you're doing it. But if you can actually be in that experience, if you can either turn your mind off or just use it almost as a meditative experience, you can really enjoy the fact that it's quite remarkable that I have this body and that I'm able to do this and that I can act in this way. And you can find ways to do that, things intentionally, and to really, to really pull out that, that joy from it. So it's on the productivity side, it's a combination of time management and efficacy, like making sure that you're doing the right things, you're focusing on the right priorities.

But there's that third layer of also doing things for the process of doing them and enjoying the journey that you're on. And you know, this is so cliché, it's so cliché, but it's so true. It's so true that like all we ever have is the journey, and anyone who's achieved any goal realizes when you get there, you're like, oh okay, what's the next goal? So like if you're constantly going after goals and you're not going to be enjoying the time you're doing it.

[23:17] Paul: Are there any ways you found to enjoy the journey?

[23:22] Craig Kulyk: Lots, lots, so many. That's why there's 127 rituals on my website. I think the biggest ones are exercises that help you bring more awareness and bring you more present. Meditation is very popular right now and it's for a very good reason. It is an incredible practice that helps you to become so much more present, so much more aware. And it really is, you start peeling back this onion and learning more and more and more and more about yourself, your experience, the human experience, the perspective of other people.

But meditation is not the be-all end-all. It's just a practice that helps you develop that awareness. There are a lot of other things that you could do where you could get similar, some similar results and not I will say not the same results. I mean, meditation has some unique benefits and I highly recommend that everyone does it. But if you're not feeling meditation, there are things like journaling or, I mean, this is not really a morning ritual, but therapy helps you to develop that awareness. Asking yourself daily questions can help you to see things from a different perspective.

So for me, it's like, it really comes down to awareness that is the centerpiece. Because you can't change anything until you're aware of it. And you're not going to enjoy your experience of living unless you're aware of what you're doing. We spend so much time, we're conditioned to be in our heads so much. And the first time I realized that like there's another way that you can actually not be in your head was kind of mind-blowing to me. It was like, what?

Like there's this whole other existence that people can have that's not thinking all the time. And so that's, for me, that's just a big piece of it is like constantly retreating out of thought and understanding, having that metacognition of like, what am I thinking about? How is that affecting me? And developing that continual state of increasing awareness.

[25:25] Paul: Of the 100+ rituals, I think I also like the fact that you call them rituals, right? I think there's something there around just getting a perspective on what you're doing and trying to enjoy those moments rather than like another thing that needs to be done. So I love that framing, but of the 100+, were there, are there any unexpected ones that you've tried that really seem to shift your mindset or be just something that's fulfilling that you didn't really expect?

[26:00] Craig Kulyk: Yes, definitely. And at different times there have been different ones. One that I did pretty recently, which was quite powerful that has led to another ritual that has also been super powerful is it started with doing the 80/20 exercise every morning and doing it for a different part of my life and just going deeper into it. So if I was thinking about, you know, for health, like what is the, what is the 20% of things that I can do for my health that delivers 80% of my results. And so maybe I'm like, okay, well, it's diet and exercise. Okay, so what is the 80%— what's the 20% of my diet that is going to give you 80% of my health?

And just kind of keep on going down further and further into that, as far as you can go. And I did that for about a month straight in every different area of my life. And then I actually took all the words and wrote them all down and looked at all the words and it came up with 10 of them that just kind of kept coming up again and again. And then did the 80/20 on that and was like, "Okay, what's the 2 words—" I like that. "That are the most important?" And it was really, really helpful just to get complete clarity of in all areas of my life, these are the things that are most important.

[27:29] Paul: And what were the 2 words if you're willing to share?

[27:33] Craig Kulyk: One of them was not going to be that surprising, was awareness. And the other one was contribution. And how do you think about contribution? Well, I think it's something to be thinking about, I guess. I, I think there are lots of different ways that we can contribute, and I don't think there's one right way. So for me, it's it's constantly checking into that and realizing or thinking about, I guess, and then assessing like, what are the reasons that I'm doing this?

What are the reasons that I'm thinking about this? And am I showing up in ways where I am contributing to other people or contributing to the world in other ways? So That contribution can be in a conversation. How am I contributing to this person's life by being present, by listening to them, by offering any suggestions? Interactions at the store can even be like that, or, you know, in my business, how am I doing that? And I just having that question kind of being there frequently helps you to see new ways to do that.

[28:54] Paul: Yeah, that's great. I also think— just want to give you a compliment here— I think your writing, you really go deep and explore how a lot of these things— your writings around mornings or your writings around productivity. And I also would recommend people to read your reflection on your silent meditation retreat. Really just brings a new perspective. And I think that All those things are just an amazing contribution. How has writing shaped your journey?

It seems like that's played a big part in terms of making sense of what you think and just connecting with people.

[29:36] Craig Kulyk: Yeah, that's actually been a pleasant surprise. So that could be a morning ritual that has become quite powerful, actually. I didn't really think about what writing might do or change in my perspective, but it has been very, very powerful to learn to use it as a way to organize thoughts and to cement those thoughts into ideas that remain. So I just, I noticed that, you know, if it's something that if I read a book and I put it down, I don't really go back to it or I don't write about it, I lose so many of those concepts. If I instead write a post that references some of the ideas from the book and ties that into other ideas or ties that in something that I'm thinking about, those ideas are much more likely to cement. And then the next level of that is what I learned when I just ran my first online course.

It was, it's a 6-week course about morning routines or morning rhythms. And teaching and delivering the content through an online course was just another level of cementing and learning that knowledge. So, it's just been this amazing path of discovery, connecting ideas together, learning myself, and then being able to use that to share with other people and hopefully that they can learn from it too.

[30:56] Paul: Yeah, I found that as well. Just in terms of teaching, as soon as you start thinking about teaching to other people, for some reason it just changes the context completely on the information. And suddenly you're thinking, okay, well, this makes no sense. I need to simplify this here, make this actually a little more useful. Uh, what were some of the things, maybe one or two reflections that came out of teaching the course, either from a teaching context or what you learned about helping people design morning routines?

[31:32] Craig Kulyk: Well, the first thing it reminded me of was how much I love teaching. When I was teaching in Asia, in Korea, I really enjoyed the teaching aspect. The topic of English, it became a bit mundane for me after a while, but coming back to that was really quite joyful for me. In terms of other things that I learned, I mean, there content-wise, there are lots of things that it just, it became very clear to me all these ideas that I had and all these things that I've been talking about, how to actually sequence this to help other people to expedite their journey. I mean, I've been working on this for 7 years and I knew that if I put it in a course that it would help people get there faster. What surprised me was how quickly people were able to take that and move and get results in 6 weeks that literally took me years.

Some of them, I mean, they got to maybe what took me 5 years in 6 weeks. And this has been a lesson that I've been hearing a lot just from in other parts of my life, the importance and the value of having someone, a coach, a mentor, someone who's walked your path before and can give you some advice, tips, process, what have you, to really expedite that. There was a meditation retreat that I went on in January. One of the teachers there who was quite remarkable, he's in his 60s and he's been meditating for 30, 40 years, I think 30-something years. He was talking about his path and he talked about meditating for 10 years, going to retreats, and obviously improving and becoming more aware and just kind of going down that path.

But it wasn't until he went to Burma and he was learning from a top meditation teacher, like someone who's been practicing tens of thousands of hours and has really mastered that training. And he said, It was amazing to him that within 2 weeks he got to the place that he was seeking for, for 10 years. And just the value of having a teacher like that is so important. So it's something that I've been doing myself. I'm just investing a lot more in learning from people who I know can teach me things. And that's, that was a huge mind shift for me because I'm not used to spending money like that on myself.

And it's been a slow increase in the amount that I'm spending, and it still makes me a bit uncomfortable because I'm not— I'm just not wired that way. But I have seen such value with myself, and I'm happy that I can— so, you know, I've started to deliver that to other people.

[34:25] Paul: Yeah, well, I think there's a tension sometimes that there's so much out there on the web in terms of, like, all the resources are out there in terms of teaching yourself how to do everything. I started going down a rabbit hole of online ads. I'm like, I'm going to figure this out. And what I realized is like, I just hate this stuff and like it just destroys my energy. So I found someone that could like teach me some high-level lessons in half an hour. And my realization from that was like, okay, this is interesting, but Now I understand it at least, but I also just want to like work with somebody who enjoys doing this instead of, uh, doing it myself.

[35:17] Craig Kulyk: Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. It's— and I think the more time you spend trying to develop different skills, the more you realize that you only have so much time. And if you're gonna get— develop those skills and, and you can pay for them to get there faster, it becomes worth it to you at some point because of the time that it saves. It's not that you can't figure it out yourself, and there's a pride thing there too, which was eating away at me for a long time. I was like, I can figure this out, I got this.

And like, of course I could figure it out, but I'm not going to live forever, and, you know, I want to figure some things out faster, and that's worth paying for.

[35:51] Paul: So I'd love to dive into your work scheduling. You've written posts about scheduling your work day, and you You design it around a number of blocks. It also made me remember, I'm not sure if you've stumbled across this article, Paul Graham's article, Maker Versus Manager Schedule. And that's very much about scheduling your day and this realization that when we leave our time to other people or just kind of take it as you're going, you oftentimes don't accomplish anything. That you actually want to accomplish. So when did you first get the idea for thinking about blocks to break down your day?

And then maybe walk us through how you think about that in terms of the different types of the different modes of working you try to enter into.

[36:49] Craig Kulyk: I'm not sure when it started or how I started. I'm sure it was an idea of someone else's that I just combine with some other ideas of someone else's. That's all we're, you know, that's all everyone's really doing is just combining different people's ideas and adding their own little splice to it. But I remember experimenting with it, starting to experiment with it years ago, and 40 minutes kind of just felt like a good amount of time for me for a work block, especially at that time I wasn't very good at focusing and focusing for 40 minutes. It was just kind of like, I'm sure, you know, the Pomodoro technique of usually it's 25 minutes where you kind of just do a focused work block. But for me, I'd been doing 25-minute Pomodoros and I extended it to 40.

And so that kind of just became my block was 40 minutes. And there were certain tasks that made sense to do them at certain times of the day. Checking emails was before lunch and then at the end of the day. Now it's actually pretty much only at the end of the day is when I process emails. I'll go in and check and respond to things that are urgent, but I really only try to do the processing block at the end of the day. But there's things in your day that you can really— you can identify that you're gonna have to do and you can plug those in.

So that's generally like the start is like, what do I have to do? Checking emails, one of them. When's the best time to do that? And for me, I have usually about 13 blocks in a day. There's 5 before lunch and there are 8 after lunch. And this is just my workday.

So this doesn't include my, my morning routines, which can have their own rhythm and blocks to them. So in my workday, the first 3 blocks are generally the most active thinking analytical type tasks or the tasks that I just like hate doing that I know that I'm not going to want to do, that I'm going to struggle with, like the things that are mentally draining. And if I don't do them in the morning, I'm going to really resist doing them in the afternoon. I do those in the first 3 blocks and then 4 and 5 are typically a continuation of those, but just not maybe as, as like high, high, high cognitive load. So those might be something like, you know, writing long emails I have to write or something like that. And then after lunch, blocks 6 and 7 are the one— like, I call them my passive tasks.

Those are just like— those are— those are— that's a time when it's hard for me to get that much done. And I'll often even have lunch meetings or Sometimes do exercise then or check social media then or read something. Like it's something that just gets me back into doing some light work and kind of just ramp up in the afternoon. So by blocks like 7, 8, 9, I then am doing more of the active tasks, but just not, they're not as intensive as the stuff in the morning. And usually kind of things that I'm looking forward to because I know that I'm going to be just feeling like I don't wanna be doing certain work at that time of the day. So things that I like, like medium mental capacity and something that I know that I'm gonna look forward to, like maybe putting a video together or a creative task actually.

There's a bunch of research that Daniel Pink has done in his book "When" where he talks about just the different rhythms for different types of people. Most of us are larks, which are like, if you're not an early bird or you're not a night owl, you're a lark, which means you generally get up, you generally have 7 hours sleep, and the midpoint of your sleep is generally between midnight and 3:00. So for larks, the typical way that we tend to to work is that in the morning, analytical tasks are— our brain's most ripe for analytical tasks. And in the afternoon, our brain is most ripe for creative tasks, especially like later in the afternoon. So that tends to be how I structure it. And then at the start and the end of my day, there's also kind of like a startup sequence and a shutdown sequence.

And Cal Newport has talked a lot about this in his book Deep Work. He really goes into some good detail on this. So if someone's interested in that piece of it, But always make sure that when I'm starting my day, there's certain rhythms and rituals, I guess, to them. At the end of my day too, there's like a wrap-up and planning my next day.

[41:26] Paul: And I'll link up the post as well. I think it's a fascinating read, has me reassessing how I'm structuring my days as well. Cool. So I'd love to dive a little more into the morning routines, perhaps A good question. Let's see how to frame this. I'm wondering what are some of the big pushbacks you get from people and how you think about overcoming those?

Because I think when you start telling people, oh, like you should think about having a morning routine, people probably have a pushback of either, oh, I I kind of have my thing, or I don't really have time for that. What are some of the pushbacks you hear from people and maybe some of the steps you've helped use to help people overcome those?

[42:26] Craig Kulyk: I like to use the word morning rhythm pretty often, and often instead of morning routine because it really is more about a rhythm. Routine makes it sound a bit more like it has to be regimented. In terms of pushbacks, it honestly depends a lot on the person. There are, well, every single person has a morning and every single person has a different life situation. So people who have less time, people have more responsibilities, it's a lot harder for them. So if you're a parent, of young kids especially, and you work full-time, it's a very different conversation than if I'm talking to someone who works from home and is starting a business and doesn't have any dependents.

So the pushback and the pain points are very different for different people, but honestly, the problems are all quite similar and the solutions the same. Essentially, it's just a different way of taking that solution and applying it yourself. And the solution really comes down to the awareness and the intention. It doesn't mean you have to have a 4-hour morning routine. It doesn't mean you have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning. But so the pushback I get is often either, I hate mornings, I'm not a morning person, I've never been a morning person, or I have too much, I'm too busy, I have too much responsibility, I can't.

Do this, or that they can't wake up when they want to wake up. Like, they're just like, they love sleeping too much and they like their warm bed. I mean, honestly, there are so many I could—

[44:10] Paul: I feel like I'm sure you've heard them all.

[44:13] Craig Kulyk: Yeah, I've heard, I've heard so many. So, but honestly, the biggest thing I'll say that it comes down to is, is is clarity, is getting just super clear. Like, if you have an early morning flight to go on a vacation to somewhere you've always wanted to go, you're gonna make sure that you get up and you get on that flight because you know what you want in your future and you know what your value— you know what you value in that moment. It's hard to do that every day, and this is what I teach, is like, how do you, how do you get clarity on that value on what you value, on where you wanna go in the future, and how do you connect that to your mornings so you have that motivation to start and you build that into some automaticity, into some habits. And so getting clarity on that why will help anyone.

And it could be tweaking something as simple as you might sleep a little bit more, or you might have a 3-hour morning routine and you're super productive, Or you might do something with your child in the morning that you didn't do before. You might develop a ritual that you do for 1 or 2 minutes together. So it really is quite different depending on the person, but there are a lot of similarities.

[45:26] Paul: Are there any interesting, you might call them success stories or impact you've had with people you've worked with that were kind of surprising to you or just really cool?

[45:40] Craig Kulyk: There's been, yeah, there's quite a few in terms of the beta course that I just ran. So I did a beta course in January and February, had 13 people in it. And some people, I mean, it really amazed me. They really went from like absolutely hating all things mornings to loving waking up and just finding 30 hours a month more than they had, feeling like there's this whole world of possibility now for them doing all these things that they weren't able to do before. So that was, you know, one person's transformation was quite big. But even the other people that didn't have necessarily significant transformations, they all said, pretty much all said that they just felt way more intentional about how they were using their time.

Which to me is, you know, that really is at the crux of it is like, how are you using your time? And if you can start that in the morning, if you can start to really pay attention to that in the morning, you start to see how that has a huge impact on other parts of your day and other parts of your life. And so that's why I call it the morning effect because it's not just isolated to the morning. It's much bigger than that. And once you start to go down this path, you realize that it's, it's actually a bit of a journey. And the journey takes you another step to another place.

You're like, whoa, this is an interesting connection. And to cite, um, to cite Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, right, he talks about these keystone habits, habits that you change that have this rippling effect in other parts of your life. Mornings are a keystone habit.

[47:26] Paul: I love how it's a framework for, or maybe an entryway to just gaining clarity around like how you're spending your time, what matters to you. And I love the way you're framing it. Before we close, I'd love to ask you about using tea bags as business cards. So when I first met you, that's how you introduced yourself. You gave me a Earl Grey creme tea, which was delicious, by the way. And just wanted to ask you, like, how you think about injecting fun in the way you're meeting people and how you use business cards like that to be memorable and meet people.

[48:06] Craig Kulyk: How did I come up with that? I knew that I wanted to do something unique and different. I had read another book, which is Captivate by Vanessa Van Edwards, and she talks about, you know, how do you stand out? How do you be unique? And so I was thinking just along those lines of like, what could I do? And I thought, I went to Google, looked up a bunch of different business cards and I was like, well, what can I do that's connected to mornings and connected to me in some way?

And I'm not a coffee drinker. I've never been a coffee drinker. My dad was, and I tried it at a young age and just like hated it and have hated it since then. But I did start to enjoy tea in the past decade. And I have a friend who has a tea company in Montreal and his tea is amazing. So I thought, oh, that'd be really cool.

I could like put together these little sample tea bags, slap some stickers on the front and the back, which is, you know, makes it like a business card. And I was like, oh, I could actually also add a different morning ritual on each of the business cards. It wasn't necessarily a different ritual on each one, but there were, I think, 40 or 45 different ones on the front with my little stick figure drawings. If you go to my blog, you'll see I I am just terrible at drawing and so have brought that into the forefront of the world to also laugh at the things that I draw. Then on the back had the contact information and it worked so well in so many levels, partly because it's unique, but some things that were unique about it that I didn't even think about were the tea smells amazing. I would just say, you have to smell this tea because I really want people to enjoy the smell of the tea.

And it was just, it was so enjoyable and memorable. It created so many great conversations. So I will definitely be doing that again this year with some different tea though. I had cream of Earl Grey last year and berry blossom. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do for this year's conferences, but if anyone's out there and you're at a conference and you run into me, then I will happily give you a a sample bag of some amazing tea.

[50:09] Paul: So hopefully some of you run into Craig and get some tea at an upcoming conference. Where would you want to point people to learn more? I know you have a couple of guidebooks about this. I know you have an interesting newsletter where you give away some free books, but how do people learn more or get more involved?

[50:29] Craig Kulyk: Sure. Well, as you can tell by a lot of things I've referenced in this conversation, I'm really enjoy reading. And that's a morning ritual that I was just not reading much at all. Like, I think I read a few books in 5 years. I started to do 5 or 10 pages a day, which has now led to an obsession with reading almost. One year I read 25 books, but this year I'm on pace.

I've already read like 14 books and it's April 1st today. So That to say that I am loving sharing reading with people and I do book giveaways once a month on my blog. So what I want to do for your listeners, Paul, is set up a custom landing page, which will be themorningeffect.com/boundless and I'll give away my two ebooks. So one of them is 127 Morning Rituals: The Ultimate List to Customize Your Morning Routine. The other one is 5 Simple Strategies to Customize Your Morning Routine. And I'll throw in— each person that signs up will get an entry into the month's book draw, which typically people comment on my blog or reply, but as soon as you sign up, you'll just get put into the draw.

So I'll throw that into the mix.

[51:46] Paul: I will link up to that and more we discussed today. Thanks for coming on the podcast today, Craig. My pleasure.

[51:53] Craig Kulyk: Thanks so much for having me, Paul.