Have you ever woken up feeling groggy in the morning? Tired, unable to do anything and overall feeling bad. Waking up groggy usually sets up the tone for the day, at least for me, and I was a victim of this for a long time. Until I wanted to achieve successful productivity.
I used to wake up, use my phone all morning, and do literally nothing else for the entire day. That was until I learn how to optimize my mornings, and now I wake up and do the hard work, setting the tone for the day. Are you ready to learn how to boost your mornings so much you’ll finish a weeks worth of work in one morning? Let’s dive straight into it!
In this blog, you’re going to learn both the science behind the morning routines, and my personal experience. I believe that learning the science can only take you so far, and that an important reaching successful productivity is through anecdotes and other stories. You see, what works for one person might not work for another, however, you can only learn that by listening to others. So, without further ado, let’s start by learning the science of productivity
The Science of Morning Routines: Why They Boost Productivity Successfully
Starting the day off with a structured morning sets the intention for the day. As I said earlier, whenever you procrastinate in the morning, you’ll feel it all day. This is an important fact for us to know since fundamentally morning routines are based on this.
When you wake up focused and with clarity, you set the tone for the rest of the day to be focused and clear. Some ways you can just wake up like this is to get enough sleep, see sunlight in the morning, and wake up at a reasonable time for you.
Circadian Rhythm
Waking up at a reasonable time means you base it off your circadian rhythm. Simply put, your circadian rhythm is your bodies internal clock which controls all your energy throughout the day. Most people have a circadian rhythm where they do their best work in the morning.
However, a small group of people do their best work at night, unfortunately, society is set up in a way that prevents that. However, you should still take some online quizzes like this one to see your archetype. Waking up early also helps your day since you can spend all your energy in the morning doing something important, therefore, all your biggest decisions are made. You wouldn’t need to make anymore massive decisions
Waking up early and working on something important also helps decrease cortisol. Cortisol is basically the stress chemical, which will make your mood for the rest of the day better.
Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting Your Productive Morning Routine
The first step to creating a morning routine is identifying your goals. I will make more posts in the future going more in-depth about goals, however, for now you should know this. What is the most important part of your life right now?
Is it fitness, your business, a YouTube channel etc. Whatever it might be, you want to start by working on it immediately for as long as you can. Keyword, as long as you can, this is because you can’t set the bar too high or you won’t reach it
James Clear mentions in his book Atomic Habits that small changes will lead to lasting routines. To explain this, let’s say I have a YouTube channel. Ideally, I would want to record a video every single morning, however, since I’m just starting out, if I record 1 minute of the YouTube video, I can do something else.
The next day the goal will be 90 seconds of the video, and this will keep going up until I can start recording full on videos like it’s nothing. This gradual increase in raising the bar is what will make your morning routines successful
Top Habits of Highly Productive Morning People
So, now that we know how to make our morning routine, what are some habits I should include in it. The main habits that I personally do and other successful people do is waking up at the same time everyday, Journaling/Gratitude, and planning for the day.
Waking up early consistently at the same time everyday is the most important thing you can do when you start out. Whether you wake up at 5 am, 6 am or 10 am, waking up consistently is the most important part.
Not only will it make your productivity successful, it will build some discipline which is key to a large part of your life, and it will help boost your sleep too.
Another important habit to have is to Gratitude Journal in the morning. If you’re anything like I was, you would have just cringed at what I said. I used to think that Journaling was the lame thing that old people did. Journal is now an important part of my successful productivity.
However, I have really changed my mind on this and I recommend you do too, it really helps your life out in ways outside of productivity. Just get a piece of paper and write one sentence down about what you’re grateful for, that’s it.
The last important habit you should have in the morning is to plan the rest of your day out. You can use a planner, notion, or any website you like. I personally use a paper planner because I feel like I follow my routine more when I do, but that’s just me. There are several techniques you could use for morning planning, like the Ivy Lee method or the MIT Strategy
However, I usually just like to keep it simple and make a time table with everything I am doing for the rest of day. If you would like some planners, check out this link, you don’t have to buy it, but I would appreciate if you did and helped support me.
How to Stay Consistent: Making Morning Habits Stick
The best way to keep consistent in your morning routines is to keep it simple like I said earlier. Keep the bar low in the beginning and gradually increase it with every day. However, there are some other strategies you can do to keep yourself consistent.
Habit Stacking
Another method mentioned by James Clear in Atomic Habits is called Habit Stacking. This is when you piggyback your old habits on your new ones. For example, if I record 2 minutes of this YouTube video, I’m allowed to have a little snack. Habit tracking is a great way to associate your new habits with positive feelings so you’ll keep doing them.
Researching common obstacles is another key way to stay consistent. Some of the most common obstacles that people like myself encounter is dealing with waking up earlier, unexpected disruptions, and not seeing results immediately.
You should consider researching all of these to see how you can avoid falling into the most common traps
Just a quick note on not seeing results immediately, just trust me when I say it’s worth it to go through all the work to achieve your goal. When you do anything in life, you need to have enough patience to stick to it or it’ll just fail.
Habit Tracking
In order to avoid it failing you can use a habit tracker. Another method suggested in Atomic Habits, using a habit tracker is a great way to see progress and keep track of your habits. Just get a piece of paper, put the habits you’re tracking, and check off a box whenever you start doing them.
It doesn’t matter if you just opened the YouTube tab, you can check off the box. This helps set the stage for doing more since you’ll naturally want to do more, leading to more successful productivity
Conclusion
Morning routines are honestly what helped change my life and productivity for the better, and I really recommend that you do them too. I don’t care whether it’s 3 am or 3 pm for you, plan your morning routine for tomorrow. If you want to boost your successful productivity, you can check out my shop and see if you find anything interesting.
Your productive comeback doesn’t start tomorrow, it starts now. If you want to help boost your productivity even more, consider getting Atomic Habits by James Clear, this is the book that changed it all for me. Comment your habits/ and or morning routines down below, and if you think I missed anything important you should mention it, and good luck with your successful productivity.
And don’t forget, this is my favorite saying
Nothing changes if nothing changes