I’m fascinated by the daily rituals and habits of successful people. I’ve read a few, but not many, and I thought it might be interesting to get an inside look at someone who does a lot of blogging about these things.

So I asked Marc Jones if he was willing to write up his morning (and maybe other parts of his day) for my blog. He agreed, and here is what he wrote:

“I always wake up between 5:30 and 6 am. I usually do my morning reading around 6:30 or 7 am, depending on the time of year. Then I make a big cup of coffee and sit down to start writing.”

Before we go any further, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

“Sure! After college and some years working in film production, I found myself riding bikes across Europe with a friend. We were both working in film production, so we took some time off to figure out what we were doing with our lives. We decided the best way to do this would be to ride bikes across Europe for 10 months. So we did that.”

A few years later you started your blog “Ritualistic Habits” – Can you tell us a little bit about why

The morning routine of Marc Jones, a professional skateboarder and musician. I’ve been following Marc Jones’s blog for a while now. He is an amazing person, who I would love to meet someday. Let me introduce you to Marc Jones, who goes by the name of Stereo: http://stereoboysblog.blogspot.com/

The music he makes is inspiring to me, and the life he leads is even more so. In my opinion, he has all the qualities of an interesting person: He is very talented in many aspects, he is well-traveled and writes about these experiences in his blog and his music reflects his life very well.

He is also a skateboarder, with a great website dedicated to skateboarding: http://skateboardingzone.com/. Watching him skate makes me want to go out there and do it myself!

But in this post I want to tell you about his daily routines and habits, which I find inspiring – and most of them are quite simple!

Yes, that’s me. But it’s not really about me. It’s about my routines and what I do to be productive. I’ll share my morning routine, my afternoon routine, my evening routine, and some tips on productivity in general.

Tone:informative and factual

I’m sitting here at my desk and I’m surrounded by the things that get me through the day in a creative flow state. I literally feel like at any moment I could just jump up and be a creative machine.

I have a few rules about how to do this, and I thought it might be fun to share them with you today. These are the things that I pay attention to every single day, any time of year, rain or shine. With these steps, you can tap into your creativity too!

1) Waking Up…

7:45am- The first thing I think about is my breathing. As soon as I wake up, I lay there and very slowly breathe in for five seconds, hold for two seconds and then slowly breathe out for seven seconds. This helps my body and mind get ready for what’s ahead.

8:00am- After this slow breathing exercise, I immediately start visualizing my day ahead. What am I grateful for? What am I excited about? What goals do I have? This helps me get into a positive mindset right away and start being present in the moment.

8:15am- Next, it’s time to hit up my email inbox. This

I’ll start with the first thing that I do in the morning, which is grab my phone and check email. I’ll usually check it on the way to the bathroom, on my way to the kitchen to make coffee, and then again right when I sit down at work. It’s a good way for me to get my mind into work mode. Usually I have around 100 emails waiting for me in my inbox.

I like to first skim through all of them very quickly and look for anything that needs immediate action or response. After that I’ll go back and respond to anything that requires a longer response. If something requires immediate action I’ll immediately handle it or delegate it depending on what it is and who can best handle it.

I’ll go through this process about 2-3 times a day just depending on how much is going on in my life at that time in particular. When I get home from work, usually around 7pm, there will usually only be around 10-20 emails left that require any kind of action on my part so these are usually answered between 7pm-10pm each night when things have died down a bit in my life.

For most of my life I’ve tried to make a habit of daily practice. I write every day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. I exercise almost every day. I meditate in some form almost every day.

I’ve fallen off the wagon many times over the years. Whenever that happens, though, I’m always surprised to see how far back I slide.

When you’re at the top of your game, you’re very busy, and it’s easy to justify why you can’t get to practice. You have deadlines to meet or projects to complete or exams to study for. But when you’re not performing at your best, those same reasons become much less compelling. You don’t have the time to work on your practice because you’re too busy trying to catch up with what you missed while you were slacking off.

And so it goes until the next time you fall off the wagon, which will either be tomorrow or in ten years or never. The choice that defines whether or not you succeed is: “Am I going to do this today?”

It doesn’t matter whether it’s writing or exercise or meditation or playing soccer, each of us has a limited amount of willpower we can bring to bear on our goals each day—