This morning I woke up at 5am, went for a 30 minute run, ate breakfast, sat in my yard to meditate for a bit, then did my usual “Pick 6” routine of choosing my vibes for the day.
What I do in that first window is something I came up with designing the day with enthusiasm – to decide, while it’s still quiet, what kind of day I want to live in, before anything else decides for me.
If I don’t consciously seek it for the opening of my day, something else in the world will seek it for me. Stories may fill in. The inbox may contain a voice. Someone’s urgency may influence. News articles, emails, other people’s agendas – they’re all there at the end of the morning, happy to set the emotional tone before I do it myself. And then the whole day can easily gain that word. I could spend the next few hours taking action in directions I would never have chosen.
So the practice is simple: make conscious choices first.
Choose six words to shape your day
Here is the concrete version I have been using since last year.
I keep a deck of index cards, each with a vibe name on it – like Delight, Flow, Savor, Ignite, Focus, Explore, and 100+ others. Some words are practical, some are playful, and some are sensual. The deck has a lot of scope, because so does my life. I made the first collection by hand – just the words for the different energies I might want to associate with. The core vibe of each card is in the center of the card, and the four corners hold related words that I associate with the core vibe. All actions because I like to think of vibes as energy channels, not frozen snapshots.
Every morning I choose six of these cards and stick them on a dedicated board in my office, as shown in the photo. The tags have magnets on top of them, so it’s easy to swap in new cards without drilling holes in them.
That’s the whole practice. I flip through the deck, note which words give me the right nudge, and pick a half-dozen that I want to set the tone for the day. This morning it was Integrate, Clear, Listen, Design, Build, Stabilize – which tells me today that you want to reinforce and integrate what has been going on recently, not introduce new ones. One morning I might be drawn to picking cards like Ignite, Energize, and Frolic, which give the day a completely different vibe. The cards do not represent my activities. They coined the word hearing area I want to have a date.
This morning I added this habit to the personal life navigation app I’ve been doing, so now I can just tap the cards I want. I took pictures of cards in 25 sets (total of 125 cards) and found that the AI extracted the words and created digital versions, including assigning emojis to each. It took all of 15 minutes to add this feature to my app, thanks to AI handling the coding.
But the analog version works just as well, and there’s something nice about carrying physical cards on the table. If you want to try this yourself, you don’t need anything but index cards and a pen (I used colored markers).
It’s a choice about power, not output
I experience life as a flow of energy – currents that I can let run automatically or shape on purpose. Early in the day is one of the best times to shape this energy because any tone that is set early tends to spread forward. The mornings that start to rework often remain inactive. Mornings that start with surprise and excitement often have a very positive impact on the day.
When I let someone or something else set the tone, I’m essentially releasing the emotional blueprint for my entire day from whatever happens to hit me the hardest. I would like to design myself – not to control the details of the day, but to go with the vibescape of my choice.
And here’s the part that surprised me: designing the day is about removenot to add. It’s not just the vibe cards I choose – it’s the ones I notice and don’t choose. In doing so I usually choose about 10-12 cards on my first pass, and the most interesting choices are the last few that I release. These decisions help me to strengthen my focus each day by calling out the ones I choose to ignore. This simple practice of carefully choosing my core energy for the day is more helpful than you might think, especially in terms of focus.
Try it tomorrow
If any of this sounds familiar, here’s a simple version you can try.
Tonight, write a dozen or more motivational words on index cards – any energy you want to feel for the day. Tomorrow morning, before you touch your phone, choose a few. Stay with them for a few minutes. Then let the day go on from there.
You may be surprised how much of the day you will remodel in accordance with the tone you have chosen on purpose. I’ve seen many times how these vibes can seep into my day in surprising ways, even if I’m just casually aware of them. When I go to change them the next day, I think about how they were formed the day before.
I’m re-establishing a motivational rhythm this month – more running, more creative engagement, intentional design of how my days really flow – and this little habit has become one of my favorites of the past year. It costs nothing. It is a powerful defense against disturbing influences. And it allows me to flow from day to day as something I create rather than something that happens to me.
The day will take shape either way. It might as well be the one you chose.
