The morning rituals of turbo-strivers are entertainment, not inspiration

Is this a winner’s morning routine: breakfast and the newspapers in bed, before starting work, also in bed? It certainly did the trick for Winston Churchill.

Yet among entrepreneurs and modern leaders, Churchill would be considered a slacker. In recent years, turbo-strivers have battled to pack in cross-training, meditation and bullet journaling in the hours the wartime prime minister spent snoozing.

One example went viral on Twitter this week after it was shared by the satirical account, The State of LinkedIn. It was from Christian Knudsen, a self styled “sales guru”, whose LinkedIn post (from three years ago) was tantamount to a dystopian poem: “4:30am. I wake up. Instantly. From the fogginess of dreams, to the readiness of full consciousness. As I have done for over fifteen years. A quick kiss to my wife’s sleep head, I proceed into my morning routine. Glancing into my children’s rooms, somewhat envious of the sleep of youth, I proceed downstairs to the kitchen, the smell of freshly brewed coffee filling my senses . . . Coffee in hand I head to my office. The glow of twenty-four screens erupt to life as I enter.”

Soon after Knudsen snaps from fog to consciousness, Jack Dorsey, former chief executive of Twitter, is also awake and busy. His routine is said to include waking at 5am to meditate for an hour, running six miles, then immersing himself in an ice bath.

However, nothing beats the schedule of actor Mark Wahlberg who wakes at 2.30am for a prayer and breakfast before a workout between 3.40am and 5.15am. While many of us (me) might be on our second coffee of the day at 9.30am, Wahlberg will be recovering from intense cardio in the -100C freeze of his cryo chamber. Proponents of these extreme routines are rarely encumbered by tantrumming toddlers or indeed any household drudgery.

MMMs™ (macho, masochistic mornings) are easy to pillory. But they are popular among those hoping that by following successful people’s schedules — bedmaking, journaling, reading, exercise — they, too, can make millions or at least, scale the corporate ladder.

Of course, as with the diet industry, there is a market for personal productivity. Tim Ferriss, the self-optimisation author and entrepreneur who earned fame with his book, The Four-Hour Work Week, has had considerable success with a podcast that asks sports stars, actors and entrepreneurs about their routines, among other things. Ferriss’s mornings include reflecting on stoic philosophers, such as the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who wrote: “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly . . . None of them can hurt me.”

There is a whiff of moral superiority about these morning larks that is irritating to us night owls (in my ideal world I’d go to bed at 2am just as Wahlberg wakes up). But it also seems rather bogus. Is an early start the key to success, or a happy coincidence? After all, for every entrepreneur mixing protein shakes at 4am, there will be several cleaners eating toast before travelling to the office to empty the bins and pour bleach down the loos.

I had hoped that the pandemic would put an end to the valorisation of MMMs™ but they proved to be the proverbial cockroach in the apocalypse. This year “quiet quitting” — working your hours and not a minute more — went viral on social media. Yet so did another trend: the five to nine. This turned self-care into performance art as TikTok videos followed morning routines, starting with a 5am wake-up, followed by extensive beauty routines, vigorous exercise and a complicated, nutritious breakfast, ready for the 9-5.

Such schedules impose reassuring order in a world obsessed with productivity. A recent survey by Microsoft identified a “productivity paranoia” among bosses that hybrid work enables employees to slack off. Perhaps it is rubbing off on some workers too?

Philip Hancock, professor of work and organisation at Essex university, identifies a “sharper bifurcation” after lockdowns between those inclined to “eschew the cult of productivity” and those doubling down.

“For most professionals,” he tells me. “The career ladder remains crowded and the need to get an edge is constantly being pushed — schools encouraging pupils to undertake extra curriculum activities, not as an end in themselves, but as a contribution to their CVs. As such, we have started to see every activity as an investment in ourselves within the marketplace.” This has the added perk of not costing employers or the state a penny.

Of course, productivity porn has another benefit: procrastination. So go for it. Read as many morning routines as you can stomach but make sure you do it propped up in bed. Churchill would approve.

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