Ten years later, and my first task of the morning is still the same thing.
Boring, yes. Effective, yes.
The routine is a decade old. The post I wrote about it is three years old, and I still run it. So do a lot of my team members. I used to require it. I stopped, because it turns out not everyone wants to work the same way, and a system forced on someone rarely works.
But I will admit, how I do it has changed. Half the steps are automated now with Claude Cowork. The other half you will have to pry out of my hands.
To bring you up to speed: every weekday morning I update my journal, do a two-day look ahead, write in an open letter to my kids, review the previous day’s meetings, process my inbox, respond to social media messages, process voicemails, and process texts. Eight things. It is simple, it is consistent, and it reduces anxiety more than anything else I do.
Claude does four of them better than I did.
Claude works in my Google Calendar, pulling my upcoming meetings, writing agendas, doing the preparatory research, and handing me a synopsis I can scan in a minute. “Looks like you only have 30 minutes to make a 45-minute drive between meetings, Scott.”
Claude combines my calendar with the previous day’s Fireflies transcripts to extract to-dos and add context to ongoing projects. I am in the middle of a rewrite of our company handbook right now. When yesterday’s leadership meeting touched on it, Claude grabbed the decision and fed it back into that project, so it cannot fall out of the final rewrite.
Claude processes my email. Removes the spam, files to the right labels, and bubbles up anything that needs me or is due that day.
Claude handles our companies’ social accounts, mostly the messages. Sometimes it responds. Sometimes it flags where I can jump in and add something. Either way the friction is gone.
The rote part of my Daily Start-up used to take 20 to 60 minutes. It now takes closer to 10.
The Four I Kept
Here is the part I did not hand over, and the reason is not sentimentality.
I still update my journal by hand. The point of that was never the record. It was clearing off my desk in my head before the day starts. A machine can produce the entry and skip the entire effect.
I still write the open letter to my kids. I started it in November 2007, when Hudson was one. A week ago I moved him into his new house. Thursday morning I got on a plane to move Taylor to Spokane. Nineteen years of entries, and not one of them was about capturing information.
I still review the previous day’s meetings myself, even though Claude already pulled the to-dos out. Because the to-dos were never the only thing in there.
And I still thank people myself. Could Claude draft the message? Yes. But it would never be able to replicate the intention behind it.
What Claude Actually Left Me
Claude did not make my morning easier. But not in the traditional sense of the word.
What it did was clear away the moving of information from one place to another, and hand me back the pile that is only mine.
Deciding whether to cancel that upcoming meeting, knowing it is going to disappoint the people who cleared their calendar for it.
Really considering whether what happened in that huddle yesterday was as concerning as I thought it was, and how I am going to approach it.
Formulating a real response to the email Claude flagged as urgent, which is urgent precisely because it needs a person.
That is not easier. That is a heavier morning with less noise.
The two-day look ahead is a good example. Same three minutes it always was. It costs more now, because two weeks ago I cleared my schedule and went back to work on sales and marketing, and I am actually going to do something about what I see in there.
The Line
Automate the review. Automate the processing. Automate the extraction.
Never automate the personal attention.
You are who you are, and where you are, because of the effect you have on your work and on the people around you. Do not rob the world of that. We need you to show up in that way.
So here is my challenge. Pick one thing you do every morning and ask a single question about it: is this output, or is this effect?
If it is output, for the love of Pete, automate it.
If it is effect, hold it closely. Guard it. Add your own flair to it. Do not let it go.
I used to close this newsletter with an offer to chat about the topic. But now is not the time to chat. Now is the time to get back to work.