Week 6: Crafting your ideal morning routine
Welcome to Week 6. Rise and shine!
And yes, I know this email is hitting your inbox at night… so, less “rise and shine” and more “sweet dreams!”
But in all seriousness: a successful morning routine starts the night before. Intention and preparation make a morning routine work.
Before we dive in, a disclaimer: at no point in this email will I tell you to wake up early. If you opened this thinking you were going to read my manifesto for 4:30am alarms, sorry to disappoint.
Your morning routine, like everything we’ve been working through on this journey, is entirely yours – and thus, should complement your lifestyle and your goals.
I’ve always been an early riser – I’ve even always been an early riser that loved to exercise first thing. Ask my mom: at 6, I was waking up before sunrise and exercising to Denise Austin’s daily workout on… whatever channel that was.
It’s in my nature to set the early alarm and get moving; I love it (maybe not the waking up part, but I love having a lot of time to spend in the morning).
You might absolutely despise waking up early, and that’s ok. Let’s craft a morning routine for YOU this week.
Step 1: Audit your current morning routine
You may not have a very intentional morning routine right now (and if you do, that’s great!) – but odds are you have a morning routine.
That morning routine might look like:
Wake up at 8am
Roll out of bed
Brew coffee with one eye open
Toast a bagel
Look at the clock and say “oh shit!!”
Run to take a shower (while drinking your coffee)
Forget bagel on your way out the door
If you can’t pinpoint a constant (or at least somewhat constant) morning routine, spend the next couple of days keeping track.
Here are a few questions to guide your audit:
What time do you wake up?
How do you feel when you wake up? Are you sluggish? Are you energized?
Additional note here: What did you eat last night, and at what time?
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
What’s the first thing you drink when you wake up? What’s the first thing you eat?
Do you exercise in the morning? What kind of exercise are you doing, and for how long?
How long does it take you to get ready for work?
What time do you leave for work?
After you’ve compiled at least a couple of days of this feedback, ask yourself…
What elements of my morning routine do I feel like I need?
What elements could I do without?
What do I feel like I’m missing?
Step 2: Set your intention
Your answers to those final three questions are where the ~*magic*~ starts to happen. This is the foundation we build on:
What elements of my morning routine do I feel like I need?
Keep these.
What elements could I do without?
Lose these.
What do I feel like I’m missing?
Add these.
With this, write out your ideal morning routine, step-by-step. This is the routine we’ll work toward; and having this written down gives us a plan we can visualize.
Step 3: Baby steps (and habit stacking)
Change is difficult, especially if that change wakes you up a couple of hours earlier. The key to enacting lasting change is to take it slow.
If your ideal morning routine in fact does start a couple of hours earlier than your current routine, don’t set that alarm tomorrow: I can guarantee you’ll end up fully exhausting yourself and jumping ship before the week ends.
Instead, give yourself the time to adjust to your new routine: set your alarm 5-10 minutes earlier than usual, and gradually build to your new, 2-hours-earlier wakeup call. This way, the physical adjustment won’t be as demanding and the mental adjustment will feel much more manageable.
If you’re introducing a new element of your morning routine, like reading, find an existing habit to tack it on to. Maybe you read 10 pages of a book while you sip your coffee, or maybe you listen to an audiobook while you shower.
This is called habit stacking, and it’s a game changer.
Set yourself up for success (and stay flexible)
Like I said at the top of this email: your day starts the night before. And with that said, learn to recognize how your evening habits impact your morning routine.
I told you I’m a natural early riser, but if I get to bed past 10pm, I can promise you that 4:30 alarm is OFF.
I set myself up for success in the morning in a few ways—sleep included:
I meal prep my breakfast
I write and follow a workout plan that makes me excited to wake up and get moving
I don’t eat heavy carbs before bed, and I don’t eat too close to bed time (if I do either of these, I wake up feeling like shit)
I avoid alcohol before bed (if I drink, I wake up every hour on the hour)
I aim to get to bed before 9pm, so I can support my early morning routine
Coming next week, we’ll dive deeper into supporting your morning with a strong evening routine.
Until then—get some sleep, we’ve got a good morning ahead of us!