6 Steps to Incorporating a Morning Routine

In a previous post, I talked about the importance of habits and routines in improving our lives. Today I want to talk about the importance of a morning routine specifically – because it is that important!

No matter if you are a morning person or not (by the way, I am not), but there’s no doubt that how you start your day has a big impact on how it is going to develop. Having a morning routine helps set up the tone for your entire day. This is why establishing a morning routine is so important. It’s about much more than the morning itself.

How often do you hit the Snooze alarm?

I know I still do it more than I’d like to admit. Do you set an early alarm to make sure you have time for exercise, meditation/yoga, or simply some peaceful time to have coffee while the house is silent? I do, too. Are you successful everyday in hopping out of bed and getting all your morning plans done, like reading a book or the newspaper, catch up with your emails while having coffee, feed the pets? I’m sure most mornings (or some of them) you are.

But there are always those days when you just can’t get yourself out of bed. You hit the snooze button a dozen times, or just turn the alarm off altogether and go back to sleep, especially if you are not expected to be somewhere specifically. On those days, however, how does you day go? Is it productive? Do you feel good about it? Do your interactions go well? How does that day compare to the ones you were able to get up the first time?
If I had to guess, I’d say that the days when you got up as soon as the alarm went off went a lot smoother. They were productive, happier and more fulfilling days. Repeatedly hitting the snooze button, however, didn’t just affect your morning, but the entire rest of your day. What I’m trying to say is that you set the tone for your day first thing in the morning. So the best thing you can do is to make sure you get up on time and start your day off in a positive and productive way.

Below I’m going to give you tips on how to make your morning the best it can be to improve the outcomes it can have over your life. As we have established, this helps your day flow easier and this is what we are all about. Not only will your days be more productive, but you will enjoy your mornings more.

1. How would your perfect morning be like?

The first thing you need to do is determine what is more important to you. Each one’s priorities are different – so each person’s morning routine should be too. What are the things you would really like to achieve on a daily basis that would make a big difference, but you just can’t seem to bring yourself to do?
In other words, what good habits would you like to establish that would make a real impact on your life? Take some time to think about it. It could be exercise and health-related or education or work related. It could have to do with being more involved with your kids or spouse or spending time being artistic/creative.

Once you’ve determined what you would like that list to look like for you, we’ll be able to incorporate it into a morning routine. Please note this is not supposed to be stressed or rushed – imagine your perfect morning for a perfect day. That could be having time for a hot relaxing bath, or walking the dog right after breakfast. Or it could be connecting with your family over breakfast together or maybe it’s setting time aside to advance a personal project.

The key is to start with what matters the most to you

For now, this is just daydreaming so don’t worry yet about the implementation. We’ll figure out in a bit how to find the time to fit it all in. Just imagine as realistically and in as detail as possible what your morning could look like after today. Write it down.

The reason you need to spend so much time on this is because you can’t make any meaningful changes until you know what your objective is. When you set out on a road trip, you put the destination in your GPS before you start driving so it can pick a route and take you where you want to go.
This step is complete once you have clearly defined what your perfect morning would look like.

2. Finding Time In Your Busy Morning

Specially if you have kids, you know mornings are always busy and can even be chaotic. But it doesn’t have to be that way. As we mentioned above, your morning can set the tone for the rest of your day, and a rushed and stressful morning is definitely not a part of the plan. You want it to be calm, productive, and feel you’re in control.
So how do you do that? You guessed:

Get Up Early Enough

What you need to do, as you predicted, is to forget the snooze button exists. Specially if you are not a morning person, as I am not, it is difficult to set the alarm to an hour that will allow you to do everything on your morning list without being rushed. Believe me though that, after a few days, it gets easier. Getting up early enough and not hitting the snooze button are essential to accomplish a successful morning routine.

When you don’t give yourself enough time you will inevitably get stressed to get it all done by the time you need in the mornings, so you set yourself up for failure. Besides, and unforeseen issues (like losing your car keys again) will definitely throw you off because you had no planned time for those and quickly turn your morning from bad to worse. And if you start your day off on that foot, you can bet it will sour the rest of your day.

Getting up early enough, however, puts you ahead of the game. You can go about it in a calm manner and still manage any issues that may come up. In other words, getting out of bed early sets you up for success.

What could be improved?

You may feel that, to get everything you need and want to get accomplished in the morning, you might as well get up at 4am (or earlier). Well, while some people do, depending on what time you go to bed this might not be feasible or healthy either. A pro-tip in this case is to look at your current morning routine for opportunities of improvement. Where are you spending most of the time? Look for things you can change and tweak to find more time for the things you really want to do.

If your goal is to squeeze in an extra 20 minutes before breakfast to meditate, you don’t necessarily need to set your alarm back 20 min – see if there is anything you could ask help with, take care ahead of time, or eliminate to make that time.
For example, if you spend a lot of time cooking breakfast, is there something you could get done ahead the night before? Can you get your spouse or kids to help? Make sure clothes are set aside the night before, including any kids school material, uniform, sports items, and that cell phones and car keys have a designated place so you don’t waste any time locating them. Many times small changes like these can make a big difference in optimizing your morning. Can you come up with a few small tweaks to save you 30 minutes in the morning?

3. Also, determine what you shouldn’t be doing

I want you to also consider what you shouldn’t be doing in those first few hours of the day. It’s important to reassess, because often we have followed the same morning routine for a long time. It’s important to review if we are making the best use of our time.

The point is not to do more things in less time

Establishing a morning routine is not about figuring out how to do more tasks into fewer hours, nor to wake up so early to get it all done that you are tired all day. This will just make you burn out.
Think differently. If you want an extra 15 minutes for reading, exercising, or meditating, don’t just assume you’ll need to get up 15 minutes earlier, or cut 15 minutes off your other morning activities or multitask like eating breakfast while you exercise. Don’t add to your already long list of things that need to get done. You’ll only add to your stress.

It’s all about making smart choices

The idea is to find the best use of your time in the morning. Get the perfect morning you defined and compare with your current morning routine. What is not a part of your ideal morning? Start by cutting things out, and you’ll find time to do what’s important.
How can you find a way to identify things you can stop doing, however?

The first is to look for busy work

Busy work is something you do out of habit that doesn’t really need to be done on a daily basis. Yes, you guessed right: your habit of checking your phone and spending half an hour of social media in the morning could be taking prime time off your morning. Or, if not that, what else could you remove? If that’s how you choose to spend your morning, that’s ok – but if you’re doing it just out of habit it may be time to rethink it.

You’re doing things or others that they can do themselves

I’m guilty of this too. Again, if you have kids in the house, we parents often fail to recognize they have grown old enough to do themselves a number of tasks we have grown accustomed to doing for them. We prepare them breakfast, pack their school lunch, clean up and pick up after them and make sure they have everything they need for their day. It made sense when they were small, but we tend to continue long after they’re capable of doing things on their own. The funny thing is many times, the same goes for our spouse.

Have circumstances changed someway that has allowed them to suddenly be able to bear more of the morning tasks than before? Finding those small tweaks could be the way to make the time in your morning for your perfect routine in a way that works for everyone.

4. Design your new morning schedule

Now that you know what you want to do in the morning, what you don’t want to or need to do, and where to find the extra time needed, it’s time to put it all together.
First, highlight from your list the items that are most important to you. Schedule at what time you want to accomplished these tasks and their duration. For example, if you want to meditate in the morning, decide at what time and if that’s supposed to be before or after you take your coffee? Or if you want to read a book for 20 min, if that is before or after your meditation, etc.
Then slowly add all the tasks that need to be accomplished to the new schedule. It may take sometime to get it right, but with some flexibility and creativity you will be able to make it work.
Establishing a new morning routine is not something that comes natural to most of us. It might take sometime to get into the groove of things. For now, write your new morning routine schedule down. This not only helps you get oriented in the morning (possibly before you’ve had your coffee) but it also helps you solidify the plan in your brain.
Put the list somewhere you will see easily in the morning, or incorporate it in your vision board. It will be a reminder of how you are intending to spend your morning.
Don’t be afraid to keep tweaking it as time goes on. Until you get into the habit, you may need to make adjustments and that is ok.

5. Turning your new morning schedule into a routine

To effectively turn your new morning schedule into a routine, it will at first require some will power. You will want to go back to your old ways (because you were used to them) and hit that snooze button. It won’t be easy at first, but with habit and time, it will come easier and easier until it’s practically automatic.
So make sure you are able to stick to the new routine for a few weeks. That’s the best way to turn it into a strong habit. Know that, sooner than you think, it will feel like the new normal and you will get used to it. Not to mention, the satisfaction you’ll get from having accomplished the change for the better.

What to do you when you slip up

Prepare for moments when you’ll slipup back into old habits, because they will to happen. It’s natural, and all you have to do is to catch it early and get back on track as quickly as you can. No hard feelings. For example, you have been doing great waking up 20 minutes earlier to meditate before coffee. One day you went to bed late the day before, were too tired in the morning and overslept. Or you had a bad weather or a bad cold, and you couldn’t take the dog out for that walk. That’s ok, it happens!

What matters is to keep up and get up and back in the game the next day! When life gets in the way of your new morning routine, just make sure to get back on track as quickly as possible. As soon as you notice it happened, try if possible to fix it. If the weather was bad, do a shorter walk in the backyard. If you overslept, do a quick meditation before breakfast. The main idea is to get back on track as soon as possible. Then the following morning, try to get back to the regular morning routine. Use your reminders for a few days until you are sure to be back on track. The results you’ll get will be worth the effort.

6. Reassess regularly

Creating and implementing your perfect morning routine is a great thing. It allows you to get what you want to have done without having to spend a lot of energy and time. That’s great. It’s also great to move away from old habits that were not helping you move ahead with your goals.
However, once we establish a new routine, it’s hard to stop to reassess. It’s also easy to maintain it exactly the same despite changing circumstances. That’s why we need to take some time every now and then to review all of our routine and habits, including the new morning routine.
Put it in the calendar to reassess your routines every few months, and add a reminder to it. Make sure you do this. If you do it regularly it shouldn’t take too much of your time and can be a valuable exercise in the long run. Our lives and circumstances change. We should adapt our routines accordingly.

How to reassess your morning routine

When you want to review your morning routine (or any other), you will want to ask yourself:
Is it going well?
If it is, move on. Otherwise, it may be time to make adjustments to make sure you find what works well for you at that particular point in time.
Another take on this is to find what you love and what you hate about the new morning routine. Then adjust it until you get close to loving everything about it and still getting the results you want.
Remember, the changes are an indication that you’re making progress. It could just be that your priorities changed.
Make sure you change your routine to reflect that.
Keep evolving, keep changing, and keep using those first few hours of each day to establish some positive change in yourself and those around you!