Why you need a morning routine

We start too many mornings by grabbing our phone and scrolling until we’re just about late for work. Our brains are being pulled in many different directions, and we’re not having any thoughts of our own. Once we start work, we might begin by checking email, and by the time we’ve finished going through our inbox, it’s already 11:00 or 12:00. And still, we have yet to think a thought that hasn’t been influenced by someone else, nor focus on something we find meaningful. If any of this sounds familiar, then you need to reclaim your morning by designing a routine that sets you up for success and meaningful work.

Many people complain about not having enough time to do things they find important. But, if those same people spent less time using their phones, it would free up time and energy to do some of those important things. Spending hours on your phone, using social media, or doing busy work could each be what is holding you back from achieving what you find important. And that’s exactly the problem with a morning routine full of social media and email.

The solution to a scattered schedule is to put what you can on autopilot, so you have a default plan without having to think about what to do every morning. Fill your morning with activities that set you up for success. Create regular routines and rituals for the things that you find important, to signal your brain that you are taking yourself and what you are setting out to do seriously. A morning routine is most useful when it provides an escape from technology. So, it is best to design your morning to be spent without your phone.¹ Keep it in the other room so you don’t even see it and become tempted by it. Protect yourself from distractions in the morning and take the time to set yourself up for a successful day.

Deciding what to include

Success can be achieved by tweaking your daily habits. And creating a great morning routine can set you up with the habits that will lead you to the results you are looking for. Don’t have unreasonable expectations for what your morning routine will provide, though. It should prepare you for your day, not be the means to success in and of itself. Your morning routine should be a set of things that will prepare you for and start your day off on the right foot. It doesn’t need to take a long time. Twenty to thirty minutes can make a real difference.

Humans have limited mental capacity each day. And as we give our attention to various things, we are reducing our remaining capacity we have for other things throughout the day. It is important to be particular about the things we give our attention to, especially in the morning before you even start your day.

If you don’t know where to begin in designing your specific morning routine, write out what your morning routine looks like now. If you’re at a loss to what that actually is, track what you are doing each morning for a week.² Don’t worry, it will be for your eyes only, and it should not be material for judgement. Instead, it is for the purpose of bringing awareness. Once you have your list, for each item, mark whether you find it to be a positive (+), negative (-) or neutral (=) activity. Provide a brief description of why you gave it that mark, and whether it will be beneficial to you in the long term. Now, is there anything you want to change? Something you want to add or remove?³

You’re ready to build your morning routine. Rather than building from where you are now, start from a blank slate. Build the routine you would want if it could be exactly what you want. A recommendation is to end your morning routine by planning your day, as a transition from your morning into your day. Pick your most important task of the day and plan on doing that first. By deciding what you are going to do first, you will naturally begin thinking about it and loading its context into mental memory. Use this as an opportunity to visualize the ideal performance of that task and what success would look like.

My concrete routine

To provide an example of designing a morning routine, I’ll go through the process for myself.

Before going through this process, my routine looked like this:

• Make coffee
• Journal (sometimes)
• Meditate (rarely)
• Scroll on my phone (often)
• Read (sometimes)
• Start working—from home—immediately (often)
• Deep work
• Plan the rest of the day

Note that I didn’t do each of these things every day, but these were the things I found myself doing in the morning over the course of a week.

The scores I gave myself, along with descriptions:

• Make coffee (=) Nothing wrong with coffee in the morning. It’s fine to keep doing this.
• Journal (+) I really like getting thoughts out of my brain and onto the page. I could see this benefitting me long term as it helps me clear my head before starting the day.
• Meditate (+) I have found this puts my mind in the right space to start my day. This will definitely be helpful long term.
• Scroll on my phone (-) I always feel bad about myself afterward. It would not be good to keep doing this.
• Read (=) I really like reading in the morning, but it takes a long time and I get anxious about other things I should be doing.
• Start working immediately (-) It never feels good going straight to work. I should really give myself some personal time in the morning. It would not be beneficial to me to do this long term.
• Deep work (+) I can focus best in the morning. I should definitely keep doing deep work.
• Plan the day (+) It feels good to have a handle on the day. I should absolutely keep doing this.

My first thought when looking at this is that it’s scattered and not consistent at all. Things to change would be to cut scrolling on my phone. Also, reading doesn’t belong in my morning routine. That should be a planned activity for the day to come instead. Starting work immediately doesn’t seem beneficial, so that should stop. Deep work is also not morning routine material. Also, I should be planning my day before doing any work to make sure I am clear on what my most important task of the day is. I should keep doing deep work, but probably as the first planned activity for the day.

From a blank slate, I would design my morning routine to be:

• Brush teeth
• Make coffee
• Journal (morning pages)
• Meditate
• Plan the day
• Eat breakfast (while starting to think about my first task)
• Start first task (deep work)

Setting up for success

Create a set of daily rituals and perform them every morning as your routine until they are second nature. But be careful about trying to do too much. Don’t let the routine overwhelm or consume you. It feels like you have to make large changes to see a difference in yourself. But that usually leads to burnout and failure. Small changes have a larger impact in the long run.

If something isn’t quite right, make changes to your routine, and stay consistent until you find the right way to start your morning. Don’t wait for perfect conditions across your life to make a change. If you do, you’ll be in exactly the same place in a year as you are right now.

I’m not going to claim to be perfect. I don’t perform my morning routine every single morning. Sometimes I wake up late and feel like I need to start working right away. What I will say is that I feel a big difference in myself on the mornings I perform my morning routine than I do on the mornings I skip it. I feel more scattered, like I’m just constantly trying to catch up and never quite can. When I perform the routine, I feel very in control of myself across my work day. I’ll be doing my best to keep performing my routine as often as I can. I suggest you do the same.

1. If you need your phone or other technology for something you want to do in the morning, of course you should use it. This isn’t about abandoning technology completely. It’s about being intentional about what you use your devices for and not becoming distracted by them. ↩︎
2. Avoid the “this activity is an exception” trap. Just write down what you are actually doing each morning. Every week will contain something different that you could call an exception. ↩︎
3. This exercise was inspired by James Clear’s Atomic Habits Workbook. ↩︎