* Photo by Trey Ratcliff

Take it from two recovering workaholics: when passion strikes, our butts gets really good at staying firmly planted in our seats!

How can we keep our energy up to survive the long hours? And how do we maintain health when we’re working far more hours in a dark room in front of a computer than even cartoon Dilbert suffers during his 9-to-5?

Plus what do you do when you have to put in the effort and hours toward tasks you are NOT passionate about? How are you supposed to keep your mood elevated, your creativity fed, and your energy amped when all you want to do is run outside into the sunshine… or crawl into that soft warm bed for a nice snooze?

Jaime’s sitting here laughing as we write this, because she just recovered from pneumonia… and so remember that even as this daily protocol supports health and the energy necessary for productivity… intense burnout can still occur when that pedal is to the metal too long. Remember balance even when you feel like a rockstar!

In this article, we’re going to mention everything we do during our normal workday. We’ll mention our sacred morning practice time and other activities. However for the purposes of this article, we’re going to just do a basic overview of each element of the protocol.

In future articles we’ll tackle each element by itself for a deeper exploration, such as the specific meditation practices we find the most effective and the ways we routinely invite serendipity and adventure into our day-to-day lives (yes that sounds like an oxymoron to build adventure and surprise into a routine, but it works!). We’ll also provide additional articles that give you specific foods we try to keep in our diets, keep OUT of our diets, and recipes to top it all off!

As we create each of those, we’ll link them to and from this article for easy reference. So you may want to bookmark this page and return periodically!!

Here’s the quick breakdown of our daily protocol.

Daily Protocol

• Morning Sacred Practice & Meditation (1 to 2 hours): We fought against doing this and recently finally surrendered. Though we believed we wouldn’t have the time for it and still get everything else done, it has become our secret weapon to getting more done and maintaining energy throughout the day. We think that’s because centering first thing in the morning calms us before we dive into the chaos and stress.

  Also Angela finds in her morning soul writing that she enters a deep meditative state she’s able to keep throughout the day. Jaime reaches a deep state of gratitude and then meditates on “The Day’s Miracles,” which are the goals she’s set for the day. This keeps her focused and productive while issuing her attention from a place of peace, bliss and belief in success.

  * Photo by Mara ~Earth Light~



• Organic Coffee or Tea & Healthy Breakfast: Some people swear by the positive effects of coffee while others beg you to banish it. We say feel into your own body and decide for yourself.

  Sometimes we feel it is a wonderful start to the day, and other days one or both of us will simply know that tea is best. If you do have coffee, try to wait until after a morning centering or meditation.

  You can also substitute Yerba Mate tea for a good clean caffeine kick without drinking coffee. Here’s our favorite super-secret Yerba Mate Tea Recipe!

  * Photo by Visual Panic



• Tackle 1st Task on To Do List Immediately: Whether you make your day’s task list the night before or in the morning during meditation, be sure to dedicate a block of time to getting your first task done immediately.

  We try to choose a task that is important to complete, requires the most focus or creativity because we are both most alert and creative in the morning, but isn’t so daunting that we’ll procrastinate on it. {Jaime usually makes her most daunting task 2nd on the list so that she can ride the momentum of productivity and accomplishment in her first task right into the daunting task.}



• Periodic & Brief Movement/Exercise at Intervals: Jaime rebounds (jumping on a mini trampoline) for 5 minutes first thing in the morning after brushing her teeth and before her sacred morning practice. Then, after every bathroom break or when she just needs to move around, she’ll rebound for 2 to 5 minutes. She’ll do one main rebound workout for 30 to 60 minutes as well.

  Angela takes morning nature walks when weather permits, and will then have one 30 minute workout with weights or light exercise. This helps keep both of us moving on days when we’re too busy or focused to be active or outside for extended periods. Perhaps you take brief walks around the office building or your neighborhood.

  If the weather is oppressive like the heat here in Austin, doing stretches, yoga, or just dancing your booty off here and there throughout the day can work wonders! Just keep moving!



• Late Morning Vitality Smoothie: We keep our breakfast really light (such as egg whites and black beans and a bit of cheese, or a small bowl of kasha (a gluten-free hot cereal))… so around 11am we’ll also have a smoothie. The recipe can be found here. What we love most is that this smoothie is ultra tasty but low-sugar.

  You can pack it full of vegan protein powder and/or tons of different herbs and, at least to our tastebuds, it still tastes delicious.

  We’ll also sometimes substitute our smoothie with a fresh squeezed veggie juice!

  * Photo by Gabriel Bucataru



• Free/Fun Time: Some days are so jam-packed that we lose this free time, however we stay sane and balanced through the movement and meditation practices mentioned above. However, that said, we want to stress how important getting free and fun time into your day is! Strive for 1 to 2 hours of fun time, 3 days a week, and try to dedicate at minimum half of a day on the weekend. There are two sides to the energy and productivity coin. This also holds true for creativity and those bright ideas you depend on: where some of your efforts must feed your energy and productivity, burnout and exhaustion will occur and be forced upon you (i.e. you’ll get sick or chronically fatigued) if you don’t routinely enter a space of peace, play or adventure.

  There are many ways to do this. Be creative. Just make sure that you make time for adventure, fun and playfulness in your life. One way to do this is to promise yourself that at 5pm (or when you get home from work and can take time for yourself), you hold at least 1 to 2 hours sacred. Tell your family that this is time you need for yourself so that you can be fully present with them the rest of the time. Even 30 minutes can work wonders if you really dedicate yourself to holding that time sacred.

  During this time, release all thought of responsibilities, stress, tasks or concerns. They’ll all be waiting for you when you return to the real world. Close your eyes, get quiet and tell yourself, “I can do anything I want right now. What feels good to me? What makes me feel (desired feeling: maybe it’s relaxed, comforted, sensual, happy, rejuvenated, in tune, giggly). And just see what images or ideas come to you. For Jaime, such moments often lead to a rejuvenating bath with candles, classical music, a glass of wine and lots of bubbles! Other times it’s zoning out to Family Guy for two hours and laughing at pure absurdity.

  This is also a time to give your shadow healthy, positive expression. This is because the more you focus your energy and attention to productivity, creativity, success, and other wonderful positive things… the more the ignored parts of your psyche are going to cry out for that same focus and attention. To keep them from acting out and sabotaging you, now is a good time to give them expression. For us, we’re careful to not take in negative news, political bickering and the like… yet in these moments we LOVE watching Bill Maher – because he’s funny, we don’t agree with everything he says, and it lets us just hold space for the part of us that likes drama and strife.

  Another way to hold this space is with intention for adventure. Perfect if you are a fan of the Law of Attraction or Magnetism! Write down on strips of paper (that all look basically the same) different ideas for local adventures or fun time around town… reading fiction at a local cafe, or going to a natural history museum nearby… maybe calling up a random local friend to meet up for coffee or dinner or drinks… write down anything that sounds enjoyable or adventurous, but that you routinely stop yourself from doing because there’s other must-do-tasks or responsibilities.

  Other fun ones leave room for serendipity like “go to the local park, sit on a bench, and strike up a random conversation with someone,” or “get in the car and just drive. At every intersection, feel into your body and whichever direction pops up in your head or a sense of where your body wants to move, go THAT way. If a particular place catches you, go there and just walk in, don’t worry about whether it’s logical or seems like it’d be fun… just go with your first instinct or idea.” You’ll be amazed at what might happen! Jaime’s had some particular miracles happen when doing this.

  * Photo by Stephen Poff



• End Your Day With Sacred or Creative Study: This could just be 20 minutes. Remember that productivity that gets results and creates joy relies on mental and creative inspiration. That inspiration requires that you constantly take in new ideas, insights and information. Whether you watch 2 TED Talks, or read 5 pages of a book or magazine that will enrich you in some way… just hold space for 20+ minutes of study. This will keep you always stretching and evolving. You’ll be amazed particularly when you let yourself drift from book to book, resource to resource, during each study period.

  For example, Jaime recently had a certain spiritual path recommended to her. After researching it online one night, she had the most vivid dream that was nothing more than the image of one book, followed by another, and a voice saying “Read these too.” And so the next day, during her study period, she began reading one of the books and sure enough, the intro was a very intelligent comparison of the Ancient Indian Vedas and the very spiritual path she was researching – showing discrepancies that were honest mistakes, but that she needed to be aware of. After reading a few pages, she started to get bored and wanted to search the internet to learn the deeper meaning of a few words she’d come across. That led her down another fascinating rabbit hole of study.

  Somehow, for both of us, when we do this, everything random that we seem to find all fits together perfectly as if it was a prescribed course lesson. So we invite you to let yourself be random, acknowledge when you get bored, and don’t force yourself to read something because you decided that morning (or even right then) that you would. Go with the flow, follow your gut, and trust that the next big idea, breakthrough or insight you need will come to you… and you will be led to it… if you just let go and meander a bit.

  * Photo by Andrea Bricco



• Lots of Water and a Good Night’s Sleep: After two weeks of the above protocol in its entirety (we’ve been experimenting with different versions and aspects all year, but we believe we’ve found our sweet spot in this exact protocol!) we’ve noticed a few fascinating things… barring the horrific allergies here in Texas, and recovering from illness, the above protocol has noticeably affected both of us in terms of sleep and water. For Angela, this protocol is calling for MORE sleep as she’s focusing her daily sacred practice around deeply intimate and vulnerable soul writing, which is calling up a lot of content from the subconscious that is hence being worked through. At the same time (and somewhat frustratingly), she seems to be sleeping LESS. We’ll continue to see if this evens out as she continues the protocol.

  In Jaime’s case, this protocol has balanced her after an intense period of frustration, grief and crisis during her bout of pneumonia (it aggravated the sense of not being able to live life, accomplish her dreams, or enjoy happiness). As a creative go-with-the-flow person, Jaime was shocked at how creating this container around her day, that honored both her internal process and her needs for productivity, her emotions naturally calmed down. The sense of crisis vanished. Energy, joy and creative ideas returned.

  Where she needed so much sleep before, she’s now falling asleep easily (nightly sacred study is a great way to unwind and relax) and waking up earlier and earlier without an alarm. For always being a night owl this is a big deal! We’ve also both noticed that we drink more water. We think this has to do with the body’s need for more water when deeply processing emotionally or physically (such as after a massage, a big soul-cry-breakthrough, or an energy healing). This too shows us that things are happening below the surface that we’re not even entirely aware of.

  * Photo by Alice Popkorn

Now that you’ve seen our Daily Protocol for vitality, energy and productivity we invite you to try the elements that speak to you or to create your own! We give this as an example of what has worked for us after much testing and experimenting.

However we are each different with different needs and focuses. So don’t hesitate to explore and experiment yourself!

Do You Already Have a Daily Protocol?

We’d love for you to share it below in the comments!

And if you’d like to submit a more in-depth explanation of your protocol, how you came to it, and how it can help our readers, we invite you to submit it to us for possible publishing here at O! Lila (with you as the author, of course!). Just email it to us at support@olila.com for consideration.