When looking for the best morning routines, the key is finding a system that works for you. Everyone is different. In preparation for this post, I researched 16 successful people. Along, with morning routine best practices in general. Every single person had their unique variation of what a helpful morning routine looked like for them.
However, there are common threads we can pull on to dive into specific types of morning activities that benefit us more than others. After all, if we are getting up early to start the day in a better way, we might as well do what is proven to work for most people.
The beauty is you can always try the below practices, modify them to your unique lifestyle, keep what works for you and throw out the rest.
Overall Tips for Setting Your Morning Routine
Before getting into the specific morning routines, let us build some context of general best morning practices, and the foundation needed to start the day with success.
1. Keep the Phone Away
Starting your day with your phone increases stress and anxiety. Dr. Nikole Benders-Hadi found that
“immediately turning to your phone when you wake up can start your day off in a way that is more likely to increase stress and leave you feeling overwhelmed.”
Dr. Nikole Ben
Beyond the added stress due to the news or what your friends are up to – starting your day connected to the world leaves you vulnerable to focusing on other people’s issues.
One of the keys to a morning routine is your focus on your goals and your priorities. By starting your day on emails or social media, you are forced to react to other people’s stuff instead of proactively focusing on your own goals and life.
2. Run Through Your Getting Ready Order
Turn off your alarm, brush your teeth, make your coffee, wash your face, make your bed, feed your pets, have some water, review your to-do list, and/or whatever else you do to get your day started. Think of these small actions as your boot-up sequence. These activities segway into a peaceful and routine way to out of bed to start on your productive day. Mainly, these are the items you do in the first 5 minutes of your morning.
3. Your Morning Must be Sustainable for You
In a study about creativity – scientists discovered making creativity a habit was what differentiated those who had novel ideas from those who did not. By constantly trying to have creative ideas (10 minutes a day of brainstorming), people found they were more likely to have break-through that was deemed novel and useful by most people. In effect, they made creativity a sustainable and workable habit they could incorporate every single day.
Just like instilling creativity – your morning routine must work for you as well. If you can’t wake up at 5 AM consistently, don’t make that your marker for morning success. Aim for 6:15 AM if that is what works for you. It is better to build the morning routine habit for years than it is to try to make something work for you that gets dropped after a few weeks.
Want more insight on building healthy habits? Check out our guides that explore habits in more detail!
The Benefits of Developing a Morning Routine
1. Morning Routines Help with Decision Fatigue
Medical News Today defines decision fatigue as
Decision fatigue is the idea that after making many decisions, a person’s ability to make additional decisions becomes worse
Jon Johnson, reviewed by Dr. Marney White
The basic idea is people can only make so many decisions every single day. That is why people tend to slump around 1 or 2 PM -they’ve been making too many decisions all morning. By minimizing the decisions in the early morning, such as what to have for breakfast or even when to wake up, you are reserving your decision-making powers for more critical tasks like handling work issues or working on your dream projects!
2. Morning Routines build Positive Momentum to face the Rest of the Day
In his famous Commencement Address and subsequent book, Admiral William H McRaven advises new graduates to make their beds every morning. Doing so builds positive momentum that can be used to conquer the day. He argues that getting the day started with little wins lets you build that needed momentum to tackle more ambitious goals later in the day.
3. Morning Routines Make You More likely to Practice Empathy and Self-Care
To study empathy, 172 university students were measured on levels of emotional empathy. Those with high emotional empathy were less likely to engage in aggressive behavior and more likely to engage in helping behavior when they noticed distress in another person.
In our guide on Self-Compassion, we discovered that those who practice more self-compassion are also more likely to assist others who are in need as well.
When you have a morning routine that works for you – you get your life back. You can focus on your goals, yourself, and building the life you want. Having that time helps you tackle other’s problems in a better state of mind throughout the day since you have already worked on filling your own needs.
The Overall 6 Best Morning Routine Practices
1. Nourish
- Water & tea / coffee (in moderation)
- Automatic light breakfast
After you run through your “boot-up sequence” make sure you nourish your body. Have water before getting to your cup of coffee or tea. Make some automatic breakfast picks like yogurt, cereal, fruit, or a type of protein bar. Scott Adams (the Creator of Dilbert) starts with a granola bar while Seth Godin (a famous internet marketing guru) starts with a frozen banana and some nuts.
Start the day with some nourishing food to fuel you through your morning routine!
2. Exercise
Some people are intense with their morning exercise routine. Jocko Willink (former Navy Seal Commander and now Leadership Consultant) starts his day at 4:55 AM with various intensity workouts. From HITT to 100 pull-ups, push-ups, dips, running, and everything in between.
Studies show that also simply doing light exercises in the morning, such as 30-minutes of walking or a variety of body-weight exercises, improves attention, visual learning, and decision-making throughout the day.
3. Be Creative
Studies show that willpower and creativity are highest in the morning. Meaning – if you have tasks that need to be accomplished and/or that require more cognitive power – the morning is generally the best time to do them.
Granted, some people like Walter Isaacson (author) write from 9 PM-2 AM, most people work best in the mornings. By carving time in your morning routine, you can better tackle your creative work.
Whether that means writing blog posts, drawing a picture, brainstorming a side hustle, thinking for your work, or simply balancing your finances – whatever you need to do gets your undivided attention and best cognitive ability if you work on it first thing in the morning.
Need some inspiration to be creative? Check out the below guides to foster your most creative mindsets!
4. Prioritize
Steve Jobs (Apple and Pixar Co-Founder) famously started each day with the question:
If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
Steve Jobs
Another variation is by Ron Friedman, psychologist, and author:
Ask yourself this question the moment you sit at your desk: The day is over, and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?
Ron Friedman
Ask yourself this question in the morning or the night before. Having this frame of mind lets you either tackle your priority right away or lets you know what you need to get done when you get to the office. Instead of responding to other’s priorities via email, by setting time in your morning routine – you can prioritize your day.
These two guides can help you better work through those priorities or even help you identify them!
5. Reflect
What is it you want from your life? How can you do better at your job? What is great about your life right now?
We often don’t make space for these types of questions. However, the effects of not stopping and asking ourselves reflection questions can dampen our performance and lead us to live lives we don’t love.
In a study, employees who spent 15 minutes at the end of the day reflecting on lessons learned performed 23% better after 10 days than those who did not reflect.
Another study found that commuters who were prompted to use their commute to think about and plan for their day were happier, more productive, and less burned out than people who didn’t plan.
Those two studies are about work performance. Beyond that – making space each morning via your morning routine lets you set your priorities, work on what you value, and spend time reflecting on what the ideal life means to you.
6. Connect
You can use your morning routine to connect with others as well. You can get some work done, and then give people a text, make breakfast, make a quick call, or catch up via email. Letting you experience the joy of connecting with others that mean the most to you to start your day off right.
Key Take-Aways
Morning routines help you start the day with positive momentum and in a frame of mind that you are in control of your day.
Morning routines leave you space to work on your priority objectives, reflect on what you want from life, and provide space to connect with those who mean the most to you.
Action Item
Do you already have a morning routine? Look to add some variety to it. Which of these general ideas are you not practicing? Try to incorporate it into your upcoming week and see if the activity makes your morning better.
Need to develop a morning routine? Pick three of the morning routines and wake up thirty minutes earlier to start incorporating them into your life. See how you feel after one week and update your routine until you find something that works for you!
