The Patrick Stewart Morning Read
Wake 30 minutes earlier and give the first input of your day to a book, not a screen.
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- 93%
Hugh Jackman took this wholesale from Patrick Stewart, who at around 60 did the arithmetic and realised he was never going to read all the books he wanted to read. Stewart's fix was structural rather than aspirational: whatever time his call was, he woke 30 minutes earlier, made a cup of tea, went back to bed and read. The three exclusions are as important as the inclusion — no newspaper because it makes him angry, no email because it makes him anxious, no scripts because that is work. Jackman runs the same block with his wife Deb: he goes down and makes a coffee for himself and a tea for her, takes a cold shower he picked up from Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Body while training for Wolverine, then the two of them read aloud to each other for at least 30 minutes, splitting the book half and half, and then meditate together. The output is two-layered. First, the books actually get read. Second, and the part Jackman calls a godsend, is that the reading keeps stirring up whatever the subconscious was brewing overnight — ideas as often as anxieties — and the couple simply stops and talks about it, so no matter how badly the day gets away from them the quality time is already banked.
Origin
Jackman was on set with Patrick Stewart, who told him that at around 60 he calculated he would never read all the books he wanted to and started waking 30 minutes earlier no matter what the call time was. Jackman describes himself as having nicked the idea outright and then built it out with his wife into a shared morning block.
Core principles
- 01The day always gets away from you, so anything you schedule for the evening is a thing you have decided not to do.
- 02The first input of the day sets the nervous system for the rest of it, which is why news and email are disqualified before reading is even considered.
- 03The variable you move is your wake time, not your day — whatever hour you were going to get up, you get up thirty minutes earlier, so the routine survives a 5am call sheet.
- 04The book should be a vacation book, the kind you pick up when you have nothing to do, not work disguised as self-improvement.
- 05Reading aloud together converts a solitary habit into relationship infrastructure, because whatever surfaced in your subconscious overnight gets a place to be said.
- 06Stacking a cold shower and a meditation onto the same block turns three fragile habits into one anchored block that has to be broken all at once or not at all.
- 07The point is not the page count — it is that no matter how badly the day goes, the quality time has already happened.
How to run it
- 1
Do the depressing arithmetic
Estimate how many books you actually finish per year and multiply by the years you plausibly have left. Stewart's whole practice started from this one calculation, and Jackman repeats it as the motivating shock.
Pro tip Do the sum on the physical stack you already own — abstract numbers do not move anyone.
- 2
Move your wake time, not your schedule
Set the alarm 30 minutes before whatever time you would otherwise have had to get up. Stewart's version works because it is relative — a 5am pickup simply means a 4:30 wake, so the routine never collides with the job.
Pro tip Making it relative is what makes it survive travel and irregular work.
Watch out If you instead fix an absolute clock time, the first unusual call sheet kills the habit.
- 3
Ban the three anxiety inputs
No newspaper, no email, no work material. Stewart's stated reasons are that the paper makes him angry, email makes him anxious and gets his mind going, and scripts are work. All three foreclose the state you are trying to protect.
Pro tip Leave the phone in the other room rather than relying on willpower at 4:30am.
Watch out Checking email 'just quickly' converts the block from restoration to triage in under a minute.
- 4
Choose a vacation book
Stewart's specification is the kind of book you pick up when you go on vacation and have nothing to do. Jackman's current example is David Brooks's The Second Mountain, and he has gifted books from the podcast — Esther Perel, Seth Godin — into the same slot.
Pro tip If you feel you should be highlighting it, it is the wrong book for this slot.
- 5
Read aloud and split it half and half
Jackman and Deb read the same book out loud to each other, taking turns. Reading aloud slows the pace and makes the material shared rather than parallel.
Pro tip Thirty minutes is Jackman's floor, not his target.
Watch out Reading separate books in the same room is a different practice and does not produce the conversations.
- 6
Let it interrupt into conversation
Jackman describes being five minutes into the reading and one of them simply saying they are worried about something — the kids, staff, whatever the subconscious brewed overnight. He treats those interruptions as the feature, not the failure.
Pro tip Evening is when the subconscious is brewing hardest, which is why the material surfaces first thing.
Watch out If you enforce the reading and suppress the interruption, you lose the highest-value part of the block.
- 7
Stack the cold shower and the meditation on
Jackman's full sequence is coffee and tea, cold shower, read, meditate together. The three habits share one anchor, which is why none of them has to be separately defended.
Pro tip He calls this their favourite time of the day as a couple — the enjoyment is what makes the stack durable.
In the wild
Patrick Stewart, on set with Jackman, explained that at about 60 he realised he was never going to read all the books he wanted to read — he had actually done the calculation. So he decided that no matter what time his call was, if he was being picked up at 5:00, he would wake 30 minutes earlier than he otherwise would have, get a cup of tea and go back to bed to read. He explicitly excluded the paper because it makes him angry, emails because they make him anxious and get his mind going, and scripts because that is work.
→ Years of consistent reading that survived film schedules, plus an hour or so on weekends — a habit that flexes with the job instead of competing with it.
Jackman goes down, makes a coffee for himself and a tea for Deb, brings them back up, takes a cold shower he picked up from The 4-Hour Body while getting ready for Wolverine, and then the two of them read aloud to each other for at least 30 minutes before meditating together. Right now they are reading David Brooks's The Second Mountain, and they will stop mid-paragraph when something on either of their minds surfaces.
→ Jackman calls it their favourite time of the day as a couple and an absolute godsend, because whatever happens in the day, the quality time has already been had.
Tim recognises the failure mode immediately from his own relationship — it is so easy to say you are going to find the quality time at dinner, or after dinner, or at this point in the afternoon, and then the day gets away with you. He names Jackman's fix as front-loading it so it cannot get lost.
→ A diagnosis of why evening-scheduled connection reliably fails, and a structural rather than motivational fix for it.
Common mistakes
Scheduling the reading for the evening
Stewart's whole reason for doing it first thing is that the day just gets away from you and you think you will read later in the evening, but you do not. Evening reading is the default that already failed.
Letting email or news in first
Jackman relays Stewart's reasoning precisely: the paper makes him angry, emails make him anxious and get his mind going. Once the mind is going, the settling effect the block exists to produce is gone.
Fixing an absolute wake time
The design is relative — 30 minutes before whatever you were going to do anyway. Pinning it to a clock time guarantees the first early call sheet or flight breaks the streak and the habit does not come back.
Treating the interruptions as failure
The conversations that the reading sparks are, in Jackman's telling, the highest-value output. Enforcing the reading over the conversation optimises the metric and destroys the point.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone with an irregular or early schedule who keeps promising themselves they will read more, and couples whose quality time keeps getting deferred to dinner.
Not ideal for
People who genuinely cannot control their wake time, or who are already sleep-deprived enough that removing 30 minutes of sleep costs more than the reading returns.
From the transcript
“every day i nicked the idea from patrick stewart”
“i don't read the paper because it makes me angry i don't read my emails coz it usually makes me anxious”
“the reason i do it first thing in the morning is the day just gets away from you”
“and we know that no matter what happens in the day which invariably gets away from you you've had that quality time together”
From the episode
#444: Hugh Jackman on Best Decisions, Daily Routines, The 85% Rule, Favorite Exercises, Mind Training, and Much More