I don't think anything can truly incentivize you to wake up at 4:45 a.m. except maybe a flight to a tropical vacation, and since this wasn't a vacation, I was very disappointed to be up so early.
But apparently, that's not how Cook feels. In fact, in his podcast appearance on "Dua Lipa: At Your Service," he said he spends his first hour on his email.
"I'm pretty religious about doing this," he said. "I read emails from a lot of customers and employees, and the customers are telling me things that they love about us or things that they want changed about us. Employees are giving me ideas. But it's a way to stay grounded in terms of what the community is feeling, and I love it."
There's no way my inbox is anywhere near as filled as his, so I checked my ad-filled email and read a few Slack messages before drifting back to sleep.
I awoke again at 6:20 a.m. and promptly put on my gym clothes and contacts, then headed to my living room for a workout.
Cook, 63, told Lipa, "I spend an hour in the gym, usually doing strength training, and I've got somebody to really push me to do things I don't want to do, and I do no work during that period of time at all, I never check my phone."
Cook might have a trainer, but I have Pilates Body Raven YouTube videos. Although I only worked out for about 30 minutes, the activity helped me wake up, and it felt good to push myself by trying something new.
Since I quit playing soccer after high school, I've struggled to maintain a consistent workout routine. Typically, I work out for a couple of days or weeks, then do nothing again for months at a time, so it was exciting to find a new activity I enjoyed. It motivated me to believe this could be part of my normal routine.