Garbage in, Garbage Out
2,000 years ago Marcus Aurelius wrote, “‘The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.” Henry Todd, writing in the Daily Creative, tied this concept into the creative process: “There are few things that affect your creative process more than the quality of the stimuli that you allow to enter your mind. The better and more diverse “dots” you have to connect, the higher quality ideas you are likely to generate.”
I want to have control over what thoughts and stimuli enter my mind. I want to take into my mind carefully curated material, not just whatever grabs my attention in social media or other sources vying for my attention. I want to properly feed my creative mind.
My Morning Reading Routine
For the past 9 months, I’ve been practicing a morning routine based on apps on my iPad. I’ve found that having all of my morning routine apps on a custom home page reminds me of my intentions and keeps me on track with doing each of the elements of my morning routine every day.
As a part of my routine, I check the weather, my calendar, and my task manager to see what’s planned for the day and the week. I use a custom journaling template in Craft to ask myself some key questions and journal. I review my RSS feed and select a few for “read later.”
I then read from 3 different sources. My purpose is to learn, be inspired, and get insight into how to best live my life.
My 3 Morning Reading Sources
1. Readwise Highlights
I like to mark highlights when I read books, blog posts, or articles. The highlights are of thoughts or ideas that resonate with me, curated material that I want to keep a record of.
Readwise is an app that makes it easy to sync all of my highlights to one source. From Readwise, it’s simple to export highlights to other apps, such as my Building A Second Brain PKM system. Within Readwise, I can search all of my highlights in one location.
Another function I find extremely valuable is that I can have the app deliver me a set number of highlights every day for my review. The highlights are delivered in an attractive format with the colors and image of the book title, which I can use to be the feature image for a blog post or share on my FaceBook page.
Every morning I review 15 new random highlights. I’m constantly delighted and inspired to see thoughts I’d completely forgotten about or those that remind me of ideas that are important to me.
I often stop to reflect on one of the quotes or send a copy of a highlight to my blog post ideas document in Craft. Along with the quote, I include my initial notes about what I might talk about in a future blog post based on the highlight. A friend, Joe Moyer, bases most of his blog, 24 Letters, on Readwise highlights. Yes, they can be that useful and inspirational.
2. The Daily Creative
Thanks to a reference by Shawn Blanc in his newsletter, I discovered Daily Creative, by Todd Henry a few weeks ago.
This book, with very short chapters titled with each day of the year, is “a daily reader for busy professionals, creative and otherwise, designed to help you gain focus for your day and advance toward your goals.”
It takes less than 5 minutes to read each day’s selection. As someone who writes blog posts, I’ve found them to be very helpful to keep me motivated and inspired to do my work.
3. The Daily Stoic
Due primarily to the writings of Ryan Holiday, the ancient philosophy of Stoicism is enjoying a new wave of popularity. His books such as Courage is Calling and Ego is the Enemy have become bestsellers. The Daily Stoic contains “366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living.”
I found (to my surprise) that my personal values resonate with many of the teachings of Stoicism. My own spiritual journey started with a very conservative version of Protestant Christianity. I’ve been a minister for churches and a chaplain in the Air Force. Over the years I have moved away from that spiritual base and have exposed myself to many viewpoints. But more than anything, I’ve tried to back off and form my values based on my experiences and my feelings.
When I started reading about Stoicism, I thought, “this is what I believe and who I strive to be.” I was a part of the U.S. Air Force for over 33 years in several career fields. In that context, the primary values were duty, honor, discipline, courage, self-sacrifice for the larger good, and integrity in everything. I find the same values reflected in Stoicism.
For me, it is thought-provoking and inspirational to read a short meditation on some aspect of Stoicism each morning. I find it reminds me of my values, and encourages me to live them out every day. Occasionally, it challenges me.
The Benefits of Daily Readings
I find that doing daily short readings in Readwise, Daily Creative, and The Daily Stoic brings me many benefits:
- Inspiration for possible future blog topics. When I encounter a thought in one of my readings, it sometimes suggests a possible blog topic. I’ll send a copy of the thought to my blog topic list with my initial thoughts. Later, I may choose to write about the topic or decide not to and either discard it or put it on hold.
- Ideas for deeper reflection. Sometimes an idea suggests itself to deeper reflection, something to think over or let bounce around in my mind. At times, I’ll write about it in my journal that morning or a subsequent day.
- Inspiration and encouragement for my creative practice or life. Some thoughts inspire me to do a better job with my creative practice, or with some aspect of my life. Sometimes they deal with something I’m struggling with, and they provide encouragement to do the right thing.
- These readings are curated for the topic they deal with. When I read a book or blog post, I have to be the curator, selecting what I value and what I don’t value. Although you still have to do the same thing with daily readings books, I find that if I carefully choose a source a lot of the curation work is already done for me by the author. The writer is focusing on one topic and includes only the information they think is best to have.
Practical Tips for Doing Daily Readings
- Do the readings as a part of a daily routine, morning, or evening. We all know it can be hard to establish a new habit. I’ve found it’s made easier when I join a new practice to something already existing. For me, that meant adding these readings to my morning routine. Since I already do a morning routine every day, it became easy to make the readings a part of the habit.
- Find somewhere comfortable to do the readings. For me, that’s my living room sofa. Since my morning routine is based on apps on my iPad, I can sit comfortably on my living room sofa with a cup of coffee and do my readings. This makes it easier to actually do it. Having the habit every morning of getting my cup of coffee, and taking my iPad to sit on the sofa jump-starts my practice of daily readings.
- Use an apps-based morning routine system or a template to reduce friction. I find using an apps-based system makes it easier for me to do the things I intend to do. The apps are lined up in the order I intend to follow. All I have to do is tap on the app to do the activity.
- Use electronic versions of the books to reduce friction. By having both my books in the Kindle app, I can easily read an entry in one book, then switch to the next book. I don’t have to remember to bring the books with me to where I’m sitting, or get up to walk to the bookcase in the living room where physical books would be kept. I know some people prefer paper books, but for me, the benefits of electronic books outweigh the disadvantages. See my post. If paper books work for you, then use them.
- Start your readings on the date you begin, not Jan 1. Unless it is Jan 1, I suggest you start your daily readings on the date you actually begin your practice. If you start on an arbitrary date like January 1, you’ll have no way of checking to see if you’ve missed any readings (which you can do by looking at today’s date) as you go along. The readings books are not designed to be read in order from January 1; each reading stands on its own.
- Select the readings that resonate with you. What I use may or may not work for you. If you’re aware of other resources that you appreciate, use them. You don’t have to use what I use. “Daily readings” kind of books work well because they are designed to have each small section stand on its own. But if you can’t find a daily readings guide you’re not happy with, then you could decide to read a set number of paragraphs each day from a book.
Give Daily Readings a Try
If you don’t already have a practice of doing daily readings on the topics you’re interested in, I encourage you to start the practice. There are many benefits you can gain by doing so.
If you do a lot of highlighting and would find it helpful to be periodically reminded of what you’ve highlighted, give daily Readwise highlights a try.
If you’re a creator that would benefit from inspiration and encouragement to work on your practice, try Daily Creative. If you’re interested in practical tips for everyday life, try The Daily Stoic.
Or, if none of these interest you, find a reader in an area you are interested in.