Morning Routine | Ideas To Make You Happy And Productive All Day

The morning is the foundation of your day. If you want to experience a great day every day, it starts with having an awesome morning. And the only way to predictably start your day off right is to have a morning routine.

There Is No Perfect Morning Routine ☕️🥞🍵🧘‍♂️

A morning routine is a list of things someone does every morning out of habit. Every person already has some kind of morning routine, including you. You might shower, exercise, eat breakfast, or check your phone first thing in the morning. There is no right or wrong morning routine. The key is to evaluate your routine and make whatever changes you need to for your routine to support your goals and overall health.

Morning Routines Are Often More Trendy Than Consistent 😎

It would be nice if there was one single morning routine that everyone could follow to get amazing results. But of course, there are as many morning routines as there are people in the world. And if you try to follow someone else’s routine, you’ll usually burn out or quit.

While hearing about others’ routines can be helpful, the key is to craft a routine that makes sense for your goals and lifestyle. If you’re trying to follow a routine that just doesn’t make sense for who you are as a person, you won’t stick to it. A morning routine has to be uniquely yours to stay consistent. And consistency is key.

Having An Intentional, Personalized Morning Routine Is A Great Idea ❗️

When you create a personalized morning routine that helps you reach your goals, and you stick with it, an amazing thing happens. You start crushing it. Your goals and dreams start taking form and becoming reality. Why? Think about this. There are 365 starts to your day every year. What if, instead of focusing on your life goals for maybe 50 or 60 of them, you spent time intentionally building toward the kind of person you want to be for 300 of those days? Or more? How quickly would that move you down the path you’re wanting to follow? I’ll answer that one for you. You’ll move down that path VERY quickly. That level of consistency and focus will do wonders for your goals.

What’s The Point Of A Morning Routine? 🤔

There’s a reason so many famous people have clearly defined morning routines—they work. When you find the one that’s right for you, and you work at it until it becomes a habit, you’ll start seeing amazing results, too.

And consistency really is the key here. Find something that works, even something small, and stick with it. You’ll never regret investing in yourself and your relationships through consistent habits.

Morning routines set you up for a successful day, and help you reach your goals. They help you get what’s important out of the way first so your goals don’t get lost in the whirlwind that is the rest of your day.

A routine provides a few wonderful things:

• A sense of purpose and accomplishment at the start of the day
• Consistent investment in your physical health through exercising
• Consistent growth in your mental health through things like meditation, reading, and think time
• The tone for the rest of your day. And when you start your day from a healthy mental and emotional state, studies show you’ll perform better at school or work, spend less time watching TV and eating unhealthy food, and spend more time exercising

A morning routine is your secret weapon to dominate your day from the moment you wake up, and consistently work toward reaching your life goals. If you get your mornings right, so many other things will fall into place.

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Do You Start Your Morning In Chaos Or Structure? 

There are two ways you can start your day. With intention, or reaction. You can have structure, or you can have chaos.

Starting Your Morning In Chaos 🌪

We’ve all experienced a morning birthed in chaos. You hit the snooze button 3 times, and lurch out of bed at the last possible moment before rushing to the bathroom to change and brush your teeth. You check your phone and rage about everything going on with politics, your friends, and the economy, and then grab some toast or a granola bar on the way out the door. You hop in your car and you’re off to work with two minutes to spare, your mind whirling, and a red line from your sleep mask still imprinted on your cheek.

This isn’t a fun way to start the day. You’re usually groggy for the rest of the morning, and nothing seems to go right. And the worst part is, once you get home, you’re just ready to crash, and you don’t feel up to working on your goals. You watch TV or go out with friends, and by the time you go to bed, it’s almost midnight. You go through the whole cycle again, and wonder why you never get any closer to reaching your goals.

That summation of a day birthed in chaos may or may not have been shared from personal experience. Living in chaos isn’t easy or fun, and it will keep you stuck.

Living in chaos is like living paycheck to paycheck. You need every cent, but if you use every cent, you’ll always be broke. The only way to break the cycle is to put some money aside whether you can afford to or not, and learn to work with it. Once you have a little cash set aside, you can actually start getting ahead.

Starting Your Morning In Structure 💙

Starting your morning in structure is like putting that money aside. You may not think you have time to spend on your goals, but by taking a closer look, you realize you can’t afford not to spend time on what’s truly important. You’ll make the time, and sacrifice what you need to in order to spend even a few minutes every morning on something lasting.

In order to start your morning in structure, you need to begin the night before. It starts by going to bed at a decent time and making sure you get a solid night of sleep. You wake refreshed the first time your alarm goes off. You exercise, shower, eat, read, pray, think or journal before heading off to work. When hard things happen throughout the day, you’re grounded enough so it doesn’t bother you. You deal with each situation as it comes, your mind and body feeling strong and prepared for whatever you might face. When you arrive home, you take time to rest and invest in relationships before getting to bed early again and starting the cycle over. This time, you can feel yourself growing as a person as you consistently invest in yourself and others through your morning routine, and your resulting thoughts and actions throughout the day.

This is a far cry from starting your day in chaos, and will get you exponentially better results as you consistently start your day right.

So let’s dive into some ideas to help you start your day in structure instead of chaos.

Start Your Morning The Right Way ✔️

Below we’ll explore some of the practical aspects of starting your morning the right way. Think about your current reality and what you want your reality to be as we go over each one.

Get The Right Amount Of Sleep 😴

The average adult needs anywhere from seven to nine hours of sleep a night. You probably already know about how much sleep you need to feel rested and refreshed. Getting enough sleep is essential to starting your morning right. This is because your morning starts with your nightly routine. If you don’t get enough sleep the night before, everything else throughout the rest of the day will be more difficult. By implementing a nightly routine, you’re investing in your sleep hygiene, and when your sleep hygiene becomes healthier, you’ll experience better sleep, a clearer mind, and a healthier body.

Plus, when you couple your evening and morning routine, you can keep your healthy productivity cycle going day in and day out (check out our blog on Pre-Bedtime Routines here for more info).

Set A Time To Wake Up And Stick To It ⏰

Your body was made for routines. It loves knowing what’s coming next. If you wake up at the same time enough times in a row, your body will start waking you up at that time without an alarm. This helps you wake up less tired, and get started on your morning routine when you planned to.

Waking up early can be hard. Especially if you’re more of a night owl. The good thing is, you don’t have to switch from waking up at eight to waking up at six in one day. Give yourself a few weeks of gradually going to bed earlier and getting up earlier by 10 or 15 minutes a day to transition to your new desired wake-up time.

If you struggle with the snooze button, set your alarm a few minutes early so you can still press snooze, but get up on time, too. A word of warning here. When you press snooze and go back to bed, even for 10 or 15 minutes, your body thinks you’re going back to bed for another sleep cycle. This will cause you to feel groggy for several hours after getting up. The best option is to set a time to get up, make sure you go to bed on time, and then get up as soon as your alarm goes off.

Set Your Bedroom In Order 🛏

There’s not much that kills motivation faster or builds stress more quickly than a messy environment. Studies show that the environment we work in matters to our mindset and well-being (yes, even for men).

With this in mind, make sure to make your bed every morning. It will give you a sense of accomplishment, and will contribute to your sleep oasis staying clean and relaxing. If you have a partner, make sure you both know that whoever leaves the bed last is responsible for making the bed.

You can also tidy up your clothes or other belongings. That way when you leave the room, you know you’re leaving something completed and in order behind you. It’s a great feeling.

Keep Distractions Minimal 😬

Perhaps more than any other time of the day, your morning is a sacred time. It sets the tone for the rest of your day and is your main opportunity to advance your goals. 

Throughout the day, you’re available to your family and work, people are contacting you, news and updates are coming in through media channels, and all the while you’re trying to knock out the items on your todo list. Many of these things can’t be eliminated. Learning to deal with them is part of life.

However, your morning is your sacred space to prepare for the day and work on your goals without distractions. It’s a time that needs to be guarded and treated with the highest level of intentionality.

It’s easy for your phone or email to sneak into this time. It feels like a good opportunity to catch up on communication, or look something up. While there’s nothing wrong with these things, your morning may not be the best time to tackle them. First, your goals are more important during this time than anything in your email or on your phone, so your goals should take priority. Second, doing even a single thing on your phone is a slippery slope. What starts with responding to one text or opening one media notification quickly becomes a half hour of communication or inconsequential media consumption. Often, it’s better to just leave your phone out of sight during your morning routine so you can stay fully focused in this important time.

Ask Yourself, “What Do I Need Most Today?” ♡

One of the most important things you can do to set yourself up for success is to ask the question, “What do I need most today?”

By asking this question, you’re ensuring that you know and act on what will make your day feel complete. We all have things that are important to us that if we don’t do, our day feels wasted. We could get a lot done at work, but it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t accomplish this one thing.

What this one thing or things is varies, but it could be something like doing or saying something kind to your partner, finishing a project at work, checking off an important item on your todo list, or calling a friend.

Making sure you do this thing (or things) is important for two reasons. First, it makes your day meaningful in a way that aligns with your values. Second, it helps you fulfill your purpose. We all have ways we contribute to those around us, and each way is as unique as we are ourselves. Anything we can do to become the kind of person we want to become, and help those in our sphere of influence become their best selves is worth prioritizing.

This is why we want to make sure we’re spending time during our morning routine either growing as a person, helping others grow, or preparing to do so.

That being said, making sure we’re in a good physical, mental, and spiritual state before starting our day and interacting with others is critical.

Below are a few parting thoughts on getting to a good place in each of these areas every morning.

1. Physical: Taking time in the morning to eat well, exercise, and stay hydrated will put you in a good physical state for the rest of the day. This could look like working out or going for a walk, eating a balanced breakfast, and drinking a few cups of water before heading to work.
2. Mental: Your mental health has a huge bearing on your emotional health, as well as your productivity. Taking time to read, think, or listen to a stimulating or uplifting podcast can all be great ways to get into the right headspace for the day.
3. Spiritual: Being in a good place spiritually is what leads to a sense of groundedness. Meditating, reading Scripture, reviewing truth statements, and praying can all contribute to your spiritual health, and help you face hard situations calmly and graciously.

There are many other factors that go into creating a powerful morning routine, but what we’ve discussed above will help you have a solid start. Keep experimenting, and don’t give up on your morning routine even when it becomes difficult to refine or follow.

Take Action! 💥

Action 1: Download our “Pre Bedtime Routine” PDF

Action 2: Write out your current morning habits, both helpful and unhelpful, and decide which ones you want to change

Action 3: Add or take away one habit from your routine this week and track how it goes

Make The Time ⌚️

You can create an amazing morning routine for yourself that helps you feel centered, grounded, and accomplished first thing in the morning. By taking the time to invest in the most influential part of your day, you can experience great results for the rest of the day, and beyond. It’s worth taking the time to craft your own unique morning routine.