Mornings are a bummer to most people, since apparently sleeping in is a very trendy thing to do. However, with a few simple tricks, mornings don’t have to be so lame! If you could rearrange your first few waking hours to boost your motivation, your entire day can be incredibly productive and fruitful.

How you schedule your morning can be a tricky thing, though, since there’s no sure-fire way for everybody. Most people do something along the lines of waking up, then showering, and then eating breakfast. All in all, these three steps take about one to two hours. But what if there was some better way to schedule your mornings?

Luckily, there is! There are a variety of ways to reset your morning routine to make it more productive, and to set the tone for a fabulous day. However, to save you the time, I created this article, which will hopefully introduce you to several ways to make your mornings brighter. This article was influenced by Steve Pavlina’s “How to Create a Personal Productivity Scaffold” post, but I threw in some of my own viewpoints and things that have worked for me so you can get a deeper understanding into purely the morning routines.

Plan your day out the night before.

Yes, this advice has been given by countless other people. But tested time and time again, it always holds its water.

By planning the next day the night before, you get a clear look of what you have to do the next day. Instead of scrambling around the next morning attempting to make a to-do list, you already cleared the air so that you can get straight to working on your first major project when you wake up.

You can schedule anything the night before for the next day. Seeing as this article is for a more productive morning, however, I think it’d be apt to give a small list of how you can begin your morning:

  • A quick breakfast
  • Meditating, praying, or quiet reflecting
  • Reading personal development literature
  • Journaling (my personal favorite!)
  • Reviewing minor and major goals
  • Modifying minor and major goals
  • Exercising at home, going for a walk or jog around the neighborhood
  • A short practice time for a skill, such as cooking or piano practice
  • Getting quick, easy tasks done, such as paying bills or checking email

Of course, that’s if you want a productive morning. There are also some things you don’t want to do, such as:

  • Read gossip websites
  • Read the newspaper or watch the TV news
  • Get distracted by singing along to music (God knows how many times this one has got me!)
  • Losing sight of the big picture of the day: to get things done

But I know you would never do any of those things in the latter list, right? ;) (I’m not saying that watching the news or reading the paper or any of those things are bad ways to start your morning - but more often than not, people engage in those activities and lose track of time.)


Get up when your alarm goes off.

Don’t sleep in! Sleeping in is a bullet in the heart of morning productivity. If you sleep in, you tell your brain “ah, it’s okay, we don’t have to be productive today!”

Just get up! Don’t think about how much sleep you got the night before - human beings can run on less than 4 hours a sleep if needed. Don’t think about how nice your bed feels - there are better feelings out there (like eating! :P). If needed, set your alarm clock on the opposite side of the room to purposely make you get out of bed. That simple trick always works for me!

As a sidenote on the topic of getting up, I’ve never noticed there to be a specific”best” time to get up in the morning. Some people like to get up at 4:30am and get started on their projects by 5am, other people like to sleep in until 10am and not start their day until 11am. Personally, I’ve tried getting up at all times between 4:30am and 4:30pm, and getting up at about 5am is perfect for me. If I get up past 10am, I feel like the majority of the day was already wasted, and I’m not nearly as half as productive as I would be if I got up at 5am. Experiment, log your results, and see what works for you. There is no right or wrong answer as to what time you need to get up. (Unless you have a “real” job… then I guess that really does set up a right time…)


Eat breakfast.

Studies have shown again and again that (a healthy) breakfast is needed to fuel your brain and can alter how you think for the rest of the day. Some people, like me, prefer smaller breakfasts such as a bowl of oatmeal, while other people like large breakfasts, such as the whole bacon, eggs, and toast meal. Find out what works for you, and eat up! It’ll make you feel good, and keep you energized for the entire morning. :)


Schedule productive things you enjoy doing.

It doesn’t matter if you have the most glistening, brilliant, productive day scheduled out - if it’s full of tasks you loathe even laying a finger on, that schedule would have more use lining a bird cage. You need to put activities in your morning routine that you enjoy doing. Hate to exercise and would rather have scalding water thrown on your body instead? Don’t schedule to exercise right when you wake up! Morning routines should be motivational; they should inspire you to step forward into your day with your head held high, with the feeling that you can accomplish anything!

Also, your morning routine should consist of productive tasks. Why? Because by doing productive, small things, you accomplish a lot of very mini-goals and objectives, which makes your subconscious think you can accomplish much greater things later in the day. (For some reason, I find this to be incredibly true.) So, don’t take a nap 20 minutes after you awake! Read a personal development blog instead. Don’t take an hour long shower - take a quick 10 minute one so you can get right to work. Relaxing can come later - productivity comes first.


Don’t slack off!

How you decide to spend your first few hours of the day alters your entire day. If you get up, loaf around, take an hour and a half for breakfast followed by a 45 minute shower, you effectively wasted over two and a half hours of your day… and most likely won’t have the motivation to continue onward to accomplish real things. However, if you immediately get up at 5:30am, eat a quick 15 minute breakfast, exercise for half an hour, then take a 15 minute shower, by 6:30 you’re dressed, ready to go, and are energized and alert to tackle your first assignment of the day.

Of course, this can work for any time of the day - you might have had the laziest morning of all, and at 1pm decide to kick it into high gear and get more done in 2 hours than you did for the last 8 hours you were awake. But wouldn’t it be nicer to get everything done in the morning, and then take a well deserved break in the afternoon?

An Example of My Mornings

Here’s an example of how I lead most of my mornings, from when I get up to when I start my day:

  • Wake up!
  • 15 minutes: Eat a quick breakfast (oatmeal, a bowl of cereal and two pieces of toast, etc.)
  • 30 minutes: Some form of exercise (not necessarily my main exercise for the day, but maybe a light exercise such as walking around the neighborhood or very light jogging)
  • 15 minutes: Shower
  • 10 minutes: Review short- and long-term goals I’d like to accomplish
  • 15 minutes: Journal about my goals, what I’d like to accomplish during the day, and anything else that comes to mind

As you can see, it’s not a very intensive routine. It’s fairly straight forward, and can be modified with other activities easily.

How will your mornings look now?

Mornings don’t have to be lame, stupid, and irritating! Try different schedules, and see which works for you. Try to make the first few hours of your day full of small accomplishments and motivational, and see how the rest of the day falls into place. I guarantee it’ll work out better than sleeping in! :P

[tags]scheduling, productivity, managing time[/tags]

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