Conquering Your Day Starts With An Effective Morning Routine
Posted on July 07, 2022 by Michael McDonald, One of Thousands of Health and Fitness Coaches on Noomii.
In this article, I share tips from my morning routine to help you develop your own strategy for conquering your day before it even begins.
I was not always a morning person. But, like most people, I have always loved my sleep time. Once I discovered how much I could accomplish in the early morning hours, the desire for an extra hour or so of sleeping in quickly dissipated.
The following steps are my personal morning routine to ensure that I maximize my time on a given day. I hope that you can take these suggestions and create your own routine that allows you to conquer your own day and become a more productive person.
If you can conquer the morning, you can conquer your day.
My Morning Routine Begins the Night Before
The first step in ensuring I can execute a successful morning routine is planning and preparing the night before. By preparing the materials, plans, and goals the night before, I find that the urge to hit snooze on my alarm greatly diminishes. Moreover, having everything I need for the day laid out reduces wasted time trying to stumble through my foggy state looking for what I need. The same can be said for planning on what I need to do do first. Here is a short checklist to ensure your night sets conditions for a successful morning:
– Set out any clothes, shoes, etc beforehand – Stop using all electronics an hour before bedtime – Keep your room as dark as you can for sleeping – Turn off your wifi router and keep your phone out of your bedroom – Set out your morning hydration and coffee (or tea) material – Establish a list/plan of exactly what you want to accomplish the next morning; don’t skip on specificity – Get to bed early!Waking Up Early
The central key to a successful morning is waking up early. How early? That depends on what you would like to accomplish and your particular time frame, but I routinely get up at 4:30 am. As a parent, the time before the kids wake up is worth its weight in gold. This allows me to get the majority of things done that I am unable to do once the little cave-people are awake (a reference to Dr. Harvey Karp’s The Happiest Toddler on the Block).
Hydrating Right Away
Once I am awake, I rehydrate my body right away. Believe it or not, your body burns a lot of calories while you sleep and is quite dehydrated by the time you wake up. If you are in the habit of drinking coffee for your first drink of the day, you only exacerbate the dehydration problem even more. You want to ensure you drink 8-12 ounces of water with a good source of electrolytes to replenish and furnish your body with the essential nutrients to tackle your day. Himalayan pink salt is often referred to as a great source for replenishing those key nutrients, however, a recent study from Australia found there is no significant benefit to pink salt over other variations of salt. Instead, I prefer to use Health Ranger’s Concentrated Minerals or Key Nutrients Electrolyte Powder to help fuel my body for the day or my morning workouts.
Prayer and Quiet Time
I specifically do my prayer and quiet time first in my morning routine. I have found in time past that when I try to put this later in the day, it is easy to not do it at all. By specifically beginning my day with the Lord and His Word, I ensure I fill my spirit with the right nutrients no different than refueling my physical body. This also serves as a statement to the Lord that I value Him more than anything else in my life. While I am not perfect on this, I try to avoid looking at my phone until this is complete. Keeping the distraction of my phone away first thing in the morning has neurological benefits as well as helps me to focus on what I am trying to accomplish each morning.
Exercise
Most days I prefer to get my workout in the morning so I don’t have to worry about it later throughout my day. While there are many benefits to working out in the morning, that discussion is more than we can cover in this article. Everyone’s body is different and responds differently to morning versus afternoon workouts. For me, working out in the morning provides a sense of clarity, accomplishment, and motivation to conquer the rest of the day. Running is especially effective at releasing endorphins and creating that sense of accomplishment.
Multi-tasking vs Task Stacking
Normally, I would discourage multi-tasking as numerous studies have shown we are less effective when we try to focus on too many things at the same time. But, when it comes to your morning routine, task stacking certain things will allow you to maximize those precious hours before your day truly starts. As an example, when I am working out, I rarely listen to music. Instead, I listen to podcasts, teaching sermons, or other educational content to engage my brain. This not only allows me to focus on my workout, but allows me to keep up to date with current events, learn about a new topic, or build my spirit with encouraging sermons.
Planning
Completing my morning workout and quiet time has earned me a well-deserved nutrient-saturated meal and a nice cup of coffee. While my body recovers, I continue to engage my mind by planning out the rest of my day – setting priorities, examining my progress on goals, and journaling. Of note, this is not the time to begin checking emails and other work material. This is specifically personal preparation for my day and how to maximize the remaining hours.
Benefits of Morning Routine
Brett McKay of the Art of Manliness did an excellent short article and video on how stacking the most important things in your day upfront keeps you from running out of time by the end of the day. Demonstrating this principle using different sized rocks stacked in a jar, when you start by placing the large rocks – the most important things of your day – followed by the smaller rocks – less important things – you can fit everything within the jar, representative of your schedule. Beginning with the small rocks will result in not being able to fit the larger rocks in the jar. What things in your schedule represent big rocks versus small rocks?
People often laugh at the thought of waking up each day at 4:30 am. You might be laughing when you first read that as well. Consider this. By waking up three hours before my family, I essentially just deposited three additional hours in my work-week-bank. Multiply this by six days a week (yes, I do give myself one day to sleep in and take it easy), I just grew my work week by 18 hours. Multiply that by four weeks in a month, and I increased it by 72 hours or three days. What could you accomplish with an extra 18 hours in your week or three days in a month? There is suddenly no excuse for not being able to accomplish your long-term goals or dreams! Moreover, this allows me to finish my “work” day earlier and gives me more time for leisure later in the day with my family.
Lastly, by sticking to a consistent morning routine devoid of the day’s typical distractions, you can tap into the flow state more quickly. Originally coined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1975, many good articles expound on what flow state is and how to utilize it. In my own words, a flow state is simply cruising in sixth gear where you can focus so completely on a task that it flows easily and no longer feels like work. By engaging my mind after a fresh night of sleep and keeping myself from the typical distractions of the day, I can get a good hour or two of work done in the flow state. This alone provides me the motivation for getting up early.
Developing Your Own Routine
I hope this gives you the motivation for developing your own strategy to win the day. Feel free to take some of my practices and tweak them to fit your particular needs. I challenge you to keep a routine for at least a month and then look back at your progress. You won’t be disappointed!
