Even when he was president, Jimmy Carter tried to carve out space for reflection and study. Just a few days after being sworn in, he was already asking his aides to push his meetings back. “I need more time alone early each morning,” he wrote to his team. He wanted an hour of reading and thinking and prayer.
The Stoics protected this time too. Marcus Aurelius writes–even though it was a struggle–about greeting the dawn. This is likely when he penned his Meditations. We wrote about Hugh Jackman a while back who talked about getting up in the mornings to read Stillness is the Key aloud to and with his wife.
But what about us? We’re sucked into the phone first thing. Or we’re waking up well into mid-morning and then we’re already behind. When Carter was pushing back those meetings, it wasn’t to gossip or get distracted…and having spent his whole boyhood getting up “an hour before daylight,” he was still getting to his morning meetings at around 8:30.
We recently asked, what do you give the most valuable part of your day to? The mornings are such a time. How are you spending them? How are you protecting them?