Morning Routine

2025-10-16

I am a computer engineer and so I view my morning routine in the following way.

When I wake up I have a ton of tasks that I can do. Some examples are: start kids breakfast, start coffee for myself, start coffee for Sneha (wife), start breakfast for adults, plate finished breakfast, wake up oldest (child), wake up youngest (child), pack lunch for oldest, pack lunch for youngest, get oldest dressed, get youngest dressed, feeding oldest, feeding youngest, etc.

There are a ton of tasks. And some tasks are really a series of tasks, like making coffee can be broken down into: grind beans, put beans into group head, make espresso, get milk into steaming cup, steam milk, assemble coffee and milk, drink.

And so (like a single core computer) I am not super great at doing real multitasking, I can do things in a pipeline (concurrently) but can’t do things in parallel. So if I am making breakfast for kids and also making coffee my routine might be: heat skillet, grind beans, crack egg into skillet, put beans into group head, …

And so with this concurrent processing I can make coffee and make breakfast for kids at the same time.

But after doing this routine for a while I have realized something super important. It is probably banal but I find it interesting. There are probably about 50 steps in the morning routine and of them, there are one or two that are really really time sensitive. And I didn’t fully appreciate this, I would try to be extra efficient and be doing multiple things at once and would mess things up.

One of these things is making espresso. I can take any amount of time to grind the beans, put beans into group head. But once I hit the espresso button I need fully attention on the espresso for about 30 seconds, no distractions, no flipping eggs, no anything else. I guess I consider this a performative task, I need to perform so I need no distractions.

Another thing that takes full attention is steaming milk.

Most other stuff has a much more flexible time constraint. If the eggs stay in the skillet for another few seconds that is fine. If the kids get dressed now or in a few minutes that is not a big deal. etc.

And I guess I find this interesting because I think it reflects on other parts of my life. Most parts of my life are pretty relaxed, I dont need to have full attention on anything. I can pause and put things down, I can take my time. But once in a while I need to be ‘on’ right now. Like in a big meeting or watching a kid near a busy street. These things are very performative, I need to have all of my focus. And knowing which tasks in my life are performative is super important. Since I do breakfast every day the same more or less I have gotten a good idea through trial and error which tasks I need to pay attention to. But at work or with kids I have a lot less ‘at bats’ and I need to learn very quickly which tasks I need to pay attention to.

It is not that ground breaking, but I have learned when to focus (in the breakfast routine) and when I can be on autopilot.

-Gary