The best morning routine for a productive day: make it yours!

Wondering how successful people start their day? In this article, you’ll find the best morning routines and ideas to help you start the day right and be as productive as possible.

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There is one morning routine that is the best. Do you know which? Yours!!

You can spend hours reading online articles, days compiling lists, weeks reading books on the topic. There are so many tips, suggestions and good examples out there but somehow you still don’t have a good time waking up or you wouldn’t be reading this article. Do you know why Bill Gates’ morning routine may not work for you? Because you are not Bill Gates.

Sounds silly right? Then why are you trying to find your perfect morning routine online and want to copy it? We are all wired differently…

Templein Bali, Indonesia
Templein Bali, Indonesia (photo by TravelB4Settle)

“My morning routine” – Be yourself!

The key to having a successful morning routine is to be honest with yourself. Honesty in crafting your morning routine will turn it into a winning one because it’s achievable. If you have never woken up at 6:00 AM in your life, what makes you think you will do so now just because you wrote it down on a piece of paper? The winning morning routine isn’t a cooking recipe, to be followed to the letter to get the tastiest pancakes. You are going to have to come up with your own recipe. And we all know how the first pancake turns out…

Be patient and keep trying.

Craft your best morning routine

Let’s say you really want to wakeup at 6:00 AM everyday (for reasons both of us may never understand). Today you woke up at 9:00AM. If you set your alarm 3 hours earlier tomorrow, when it goes off you don’t stand a chance at getting up. Maybe the first day, but it’s not going to stick. What you can do is, as in life in general, work towards your goal: set the alarm 5 min earlier every day. Yes, it’s going to take you 36 days to get there, but by the time you get there, it will have turned into an habit and not a short-lived struggle.

So why should you keep reading this article if there are no magic instructions? Because it will help you craft yours.

What you can find online isn’t a perfect morning routine to copy and paste in your life but loads of good advice. So much of it that it’s overwhelming. We wanted to make it easier for you to be your best self by having all the best tips together.

What you have to do now is just sit down with a piece of paper and work through the points in this one article.And do so honestly.

 Hammockin a river – Chiang Mai, Thailand
Hammockin a river – Chiang Mai, Thailand (photo by TravelB4Settle)

Healthy Morning Routine: Take care of your body, mind and soul

All the best morning routines start with you. Making yourself the top of the list is always a smart choice and you’ll see that in the morning routine of the most successful people on earth. All these routine can look very different but below are some key take-away points:

Get out of your bed (and your pj) and straight into your morning routine

Staying in your PJ is attractive and you might do it the first week you work from home but it doesn’t help you get stuff done. What will is, establishing a fixed routine that you won’t have to think about but that you will follow instinctively.

“ There’s nothing you can’t accomplish if you get the habits right” – Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit

Have a fixed wake up time

Decide at what time you arewaking up every day and stick to it. Again, be realistic (remember our 6:00AMchat?). In general, it is good to wake up early and tackle the day butthat’s not true for everyone. If you have always been a night owl, plan yourworking hours accordingly, to not do so would only be counterproductive.

Connect with your soul

Do yoga, meditate, pray, journal. Research has shown that taking the time to reconnect with oneself improves your general well-being. If you need some inspiration, try expressing gratitude like May McCarthy or doing Tony Robbins’ self-developed “priming” technique, a mix of yoga and Buddhist meditation. Or just start by taking a minute each morning to count your blessings.

Connecting with soul – Pushkar, India
Connecting with soul – Pushkar, India (photo by TravelB4Settle)

Adopt a morning workout routine

It’s important to maintain work-life balance and not be sucked into doing work right away. Early morning workout routines offer many benefits, from the physical, such as speeding your metabolism, to the psychological, such as improving your circadian rhythm and your state of mind. The best early morning exercise is a 45 min cardio workout, both for your head and your heart. If you have been forced to work from home because of Coronavirus, take advantage of the time you are saving not commuting to get more active.

Eat a good breakfast

A healthy breakfast is regarded as the best way to start the day by many. However, you should tailor this advice to yourself. Eat when you are hungry and don’t force yourself. We all have different needs, what’s important isto not ignore them because we jump straight into checking emails and returning calls and we don’t have time. What you eat in the morning can vary from a wholeEnglish breakfast spread or just a smoothy, what’s important is that you take your time to nourish your body. How else can your mind work all day? 

Fruitmarket in Phuket, Thailand
Fruitmarket in Phuket, Thailand (photo by TravelB4Settle)

Morning Routine: Prepare for a productive day

Have a dedicated work area and a set time to start work

If Coronavirus has forced you to work from home and you are new to this, the best advice that seasoned remote workers give is to approach your work as you would have before. It means being dressed, showered, teeth brushed and having your drink ready by the time you have to start work.

Plan in advance

Working from home allows you an unprecedented level of freedom on your workday schedule. Whilst that is a great advantage of remote work it can also be one of its biggest drawbacks. It’s important to have a structure for your workday. Where is the freedom in that?You get to design it so it fits around your life. You need to have set times though as it will help you get things done, stop you from procrastinating or wasting your day. Plus, there is always time to break your own rules. 😉

Hot tip from Kenneth Chenault, American Express CEO: Decide the day before what your first task will be. That way you can get straight into it come morning.

Workingin Cayenna Beach Villa in Santa Marta, Colombia
Workingin Cayenna Beach Villa in Santa Marta, Colombia (photo by TravelB4Settle)

Be smart about your day.

That means, do creative work when you are most productive. For most people, it’s in the morning. Please don’t check your emails first thing unless you actually decide that is how you should start your day. There is a whole book about why you shouldn’t though: Never check e-mails in the morning by Julie Morgenstern. You can waste a lot of prime creative time checking email and social media and reacting to other people’s requests and desires instead of achieving something worthwhile. Do you think “checked my emails” is a good answer to Ron Friedman’s key question, one that he suggests asking oneself the moment you sit at your desk in the morning:

“The day is over and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?”

Our last suggestion: Spend one or two weeks working on your morning routine. Track your habits to better understand yourself. Write it down, see how it goes and revise it if necessary. Once you commit to it write it out and stick it at your workplace. Morning routines should be strictly followed so they can turn into habits. It’s a long road though so be kind to yourself. It takes more work than  “copy & paste” but it’s the only way it will work. Because it’s yours.

In the end, the important thing is that you get the job done, even if you ended up through your routine out of the window. A good morning routine will help you start your day but enjoy the flexibility and freedom of working from home. And with that, we just wish a top of the morning to you!

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