I made up a word. It’s “Liforatory”. I made it up when I posted the blog “The Iceman Cometh“. I used it as the category in the blog post. It has to do with my life experiments and trying to make the 2nd half of life as healthy, productive and interesting as possible.

This is from my Liforatory.com web page:

One of the definitions according to Merriam Webster:

Laboratory:  a place providing opportunity for experimentation, observation, or practice in a field of study

Definition according to Eric Seelig:

Liforatory:   Our place providing the opportunity for experimentation is Earth.

Our field of study is:  Life / People / Skills / Mind / Body / Spirit … (the dots mean I am sure there are other things but I can’t think of them right now 🙂 )

 

Anyone who knows me knows that I can be scattered. One of my life experiments has been to plan my day to day activities. After reading about people who do this I have found that they all start with a morning routine. So I figured that is where I should start. I completely made this up and have no idea if it’s a good routine but I have been doing it for some years and it seems to help me get started in the morning. I tweak it now and then. This is my current routine.

  1. First thing I do is start the coffee pot. I get the coffee ready the night before so all I have to do is hit the button in the morning.
  2. Drink 8 ounces of water. Most people who drink water as part of their routine seem to drink quite a bit more than 8 ounces but I don’t want the water to cut into my very important coffee consumption.  😀 
  3. I do 50 juggles. Back in 2014 I bought this and taught myself to juggle. I read somewhere that one of the most important uses of the brain is for movement. I figured that learning to juggle would be a good skill to learn to gain some coordination.
  4. I do 10 pushups. It’s not a workout it is just to get the blood flowing.
  5. 50 more juggles and 10 more pushups.
  6. I go and pour myself a cup of coffee and sit down at my desk. I used to make my own version of bulletproof coffee. I used Peet’s coffee with Kerrygold grass-fed butter, organic coconut oil, and some protein powder. I guess I wasn’t very motivated to be extra healthy as that fell by the wayside. Now it’s just coffee with a little bit of Agave nectar and organic half and half. Maybe I will try my bastardized version of  “bulletproof coffee” again in the future. If I do I will let you know.
  7. I write in a journal. It’s not a place where I write my deepest darkest secrets. I write what I did the day before. It’s very boring. That started back in 2004 when I traveled to Morocco to film a TV show that built a reproduction of Archimedes Claw. Click here to see the show.  A good friend of mine gave me a notebook before I left and encouraged me to spend 5 minutes every evening writing in it. I did it begrudgingly. After I got back I was so glad I did. It is so much fun to go back and read about what we did from day to day. I started it up again several years later when I got the journal shown as a gift from my friends and their sons.  
  8. PangramsI read that some people brush their teeth with their off hand. ie if they are left-handed they brush with their right hand. I already do that so I thought I would try something else. I am left-handed. The last step in my morning routine is to write a pangram with my right hand. 

That’s it. That’s my morning routine. It takes about 10-15 minutes. It isn’t magic but it does help me get my day started. In the spirit of liforatory, I have started a web page at liforatory.com. I just have the framework setup right now and I am not entirely sure where I am going to go with it. The basic idea is to track things that I am experimenting with: workouts, recipes, building things, skills, meeting people … and the list goes on. I will keep you posted as I develop the website.

If you have your own version of a morning routine. Leave it in the comment section. I would love to know what it is.