By Daniel Robledo| Last Updated June 21, 2020

It is 8:30 in the morning and your alarm goes off.

You start hearing that annoying beep-boop and you know you should get your ass out of bed.

You stand up like a zombie, get to your bathroom and you question whether or not to attend that class you have in 30 minutes.

You wonder if you could start your days with more energy, motivation, and fun.

Does this sound familiar to you?

If you are anything like me, you’ve struggled more than you’d like with morning slump and you want to learn how to make your days start with happiness & productivity.

Let me tell you that is possible and the solution is more simple than you may think, it is to develop a Morning Routine.

Today we are going to learn how to develop a start for your days that provide you with happiness, fun, health, and productivity.

Trust me, once you put the time on your morning routine, you won’t want to go back to your zombie-scrolling mornings.

Why To Have A Morning Routine

Before we jump into the process of developing a morning routine, let’s review why a morning routine is important in the first place.

The No-Decision Advantage

Routines, in general, are important for many different reasons but, one fact that stands out from the rest is the decisions-relief.

Whenever you build a routine, you are developing a habit of performing a series of actions that lead to a specific result without you even noticing you are doing those actions.

This leads to a less stressed brain, your willpower and decision making power is a limited resource, the less you spend on mundane tasks, the better.

A perfect example is when you walk from your home to school, college, work… You’ve done this same walk so many times that you don’t even notice you are walking.

Productive Momentum

Focusing now on the specific benefits of a morning routine, it’s important to notice that a morning routine should contain as many quick wins as possible to build “productive momentum” into your day.

What I mean is that you need to start your day with some victories, even if they are as small as waking up on time, doing 3 minutes of exercise, or drinking a full glass of water.

These quick wins cause your brain to enter on a “Success Spiral” — a state in which you chain one win with the next and you start getting so much more done than if you did not start with some momentum.

The Perfect Moment Of The Day

Another great benefit of developing a morning routine is that you can implement tons of little healthy acts that over time will build up healthy habits (exercising, meditation, stretching, expressing gratitude…)

Also notice that if you wake up early enough, you’ll be up when everybody else is still sleeping and you’ll enjoy a time of no-distractions in which your productivity levels will skyrocket.

Scientific Evidence

To end up with the morning routines’ benefits, Harvard professor and biologist Christoph Randler surveyed a sampling of undergrads to find out when they had the most energy and how likely it was that they would take on challenges.

The results? Students who were more energized in the morning were more proactive when it comes to addressing issues than those who got energy spurts later in the day.

We will talk later about loads of science-baked suggestions that you can add to your morning routine, but for now on, let’s learn the principles of building a great morning routine.

How To Develop A Morning Routine

Developing a morning routine is a 3-step process that contains a lot of experimenting.

Not everybody is a morning person and there is no scientific evidence that humans are more productive in the morning than at any other moment of the day.

So, if you are not the kind of person that enjoys waking up very early and work in the morning, don’t worry, you can also develop a night routine before you start your work in the last hours of the day.

Finding Your “Why”

First of all, you need to find a reason to get out of bed, a motivation that drives you to jump out of bed the moment your alarm goes off.

If you try to start building morning habits, which may turn out to be more difficult than you’ve expected, without a very strong reason to be doing them in the first place, your motivation will go out of fuel in no time.

There are two main strategies of finding your morning routine’s “Why”:

• Try to adapt your morning routine to your goals.
• Try to find something fun to do in the morning apart from the productive & healthy stuff.

Deciding The Time You Wake Up

Now that you know why you want to start developing a productive morning routine, you need to decide the time you wake up.

Here, it is important to understand that you don’t need to wake up at 05:00 am every day to be productive — although it could be a great idea if you’d ask me — because the routine itself is what makes you productive, not the time you wake up.

Planning The Time

I would suggest that you write down the main activity that you want to do in the morning, it could be attending your classes, going to work, working on your project…

Now, think approximately how much you’ll need to do every little habit of your new morning routine and add some extra time as a buffer.

• If you are bad at planning, you may want to check out my Ultimate Daily Planning Post

When To Go To Bed

Now that you have the time you need to wake up to accomplish everything you want, it is time to decide which time are you going to bed.

Because one of the worst things that you can do in your life is to sleep deprave, studies have shown that for every 1 hour you gain by not sleeping, you lose 3-4 hours of productive time.

I would suggest either sleeping 7 and a half or 9 hours — since sleep cycles occur every 90 minutes and you want to wake up at the end of one of them, not in the middle of one of them — and to sleep the same time every day, yes, including weekends.

If you want to easily calculate the time you need to wake up (or go to bed), I will suggest you check out the web Sleepyti.

Do Not Hit The Snooze Button

To finish this point, I have to tell you that your 1# goal when waking up is to not hit the snooze button.

When you hit the snooze button, you are accepting that the very first thing of your day is a defeat.

You’ve decided the night before to wake up at a specific time and you’ve failed, believe me, you do not want to start your days with a sense of defeat.

A great technique to help you get out of bed is to have an automatic wake-up response.

Something you do the moment your alarm goes off (hopefully jump out of bed), it can be anything as long as it wakes you up.

Building The Routine

Alright, now you know why you want to build a morning routine and you know when you are waking up, let’s start developing that routine.

To start with, let’s get the fundamentals right:

• Take care of your environment (Make your bed, spray something that smells good, play some good music if you want…)
• Do something that you enjoy.
• Do something productive or healthy.

As you surely know, the key to building any habit is to start small, focusing first on these 3 fundamentals of morning routines, you will get the inertia you need to build a full morning routine.

The Essential

Let’s continue adding more activities to your morning routine, I think there are 7 essential activities that any morning routine should have:

Nutrition

Your body needs energy to function, and that energy comes from the food you eat.

Eating a healthy breakfast will give you the energy you need to start your day greatly.

There are certain people (including myself) that do not enjoy that much cooking & eating in the morning, for these people “Intermittent Fasting” is the way to go.

Fasting is the process of not eating, “Intermittent Fasting” is a food schedule in which you restrict anything you eat to an 8-hour window.

There are tons of scientific evidence that back up the IF’s benefits.

I have been doing this process for more than a year now and it works perfectly for me so I do not have breakfast in the morning.

Hydration

Continuing with, water is an even more important aspect that food in human life.

Although you are somnambulist-water-drinker, you probably wake up in the morning dehydrated and you need to refill your water resources.

Having a full glass of water first thing when you wake up is both a healthy habit and a great way to wake up quickly.

Learning

Next, learning is a crucial factor in human life, and implementing it in your morning routine will give you a consistent path of developing new knowledge.

You can find a lot of learning resources to implement in your morning, including:

• Books
• AudioBooks
• PodCasts
• Articles

Exercise

Science has shown us that exercise is the one activity that boosts the most our productivity, health, and overall happiness.

Including just a 10 minutes exercise circuit in your morning routine will boost your energy levels so much that you’ll even want to include a full workout routine into your mornings.

Meditation

Meditation has always been an activity saw as something just for gurus or monks but in the last years, scientific researches have shown all of the benefits that this activity brings us.

The great fact about meditation is that it is so simple to perform that you have no excuse not to do it.

Just sit down for 5 minutes, close your eyes, keep straight and focus on your breathing.

Whenever a thought pops up in your mind and distract you from your breathing, observe the thought, accept it, let it go away and come back to your breathing.

Practice this habit every day in the morning and gradually increase the time you meditate, I guarantee you that the benefits will blow up your mind.

Journaling

As I’ve told you other times, externalizing your feelings is a really powerful way to control and enjoy them.

Having a journal in which you can express your feelings, thoughts, and anything that pops up in your mind is a great stress-relief strategy and you should include it in your morning routine.

I have been journaling every day for more than a year now and I’ve discovered that journaling is all about asking yourself the right questions.

I will suggest that you start with these:

• How am I feeling right now?
• Am I happy with the things I’m doing?
• Does anything have been bothering me lately? Why?

Light Exposure

The last essential activity that you should include in your morning routine is light exposure since it is a great way to wake up and D Vitamin is great for your skincare.

The perfect way to get light exposure is to go for a quick 15-minute walk in the morning, you may even put on some headphones and listen to some learning source.

Leveling Up Your Morning Routine

Hopefully, now you have a productive, fun, and healthy morning routine ready to go and you have already set an alarm for tomorrow morning to start practicing this new habit.

But, if you want to make your morning routine even more exciting and easy to follow, let’s see a couple of little things you can do to level up your morning routine.

Evening Routine

The very first thing that you should do once you have your morning routine is to try to reduce friction as much as possible when it comes to performing your morning routine.

This means, identifying any dependencies that your morning activities may have. They may be:

• Using headphones to listen to music, audiobooks, or podcasts.
• Changing clothes to workout in the morning.
• Needing space for meditation.
• Using some digital or physical media for your journal.

Now it is time to make those dependencies almost invisible, and the way to go here is to develop an Evening Routine.

You should take at least 15 minutes before going to bed to prepare everything you’ll need the next morning:

• Put your headphones charged at your front desk.
• Prepare your gym clothes and put them below your bed.
• Take out that yoga pellet to meditate.
• Bring a little notebook or download an App that you can use for journaling.

Developing an evening routine is as important as a morning routine since it provides you with almost the same benefits but with the addition of a good quality sleep.

Track Your Progress

The next thing I recommend you to do — as I do with every new habit that we build here — is to track your progress and reward yourself.

You’ve probably already known that tracking progress and gradually rewarding yourself is the most effective way to make a habit stick, and developing a morning routine is no exception.

So, starting tomorrow:

• Track your daily progress, you may want to use some app like Habitica.
• Reward yourself with some fun for every back and then that you get out of bed immediately.

Combine Activities

I know what you may be thinking right now: “This is great but, I do not have 2 hours every morning to do all of these things”.

You are completely right, not everybody has a flexible schedule in which to include a 30 minutes meditation and a full workout besides a walk to the park and a reading session.

But here we are people with a productive and problem-solving mindset, right?

The solution to this problem is what I like to call the “Tasks’ Intersection Process”, this means combining two or more tasks in one activity to reduce the time they consume in your morning.

I have been doing the “Tasks’ Intersection Process” with everything my morning routine includes and I have gone from a 2 hours morning routine to a 1 hour morning routine without taking out any activity.

Here are some suggestions on applying this technique:

• Read while eating breakfast (This is where audiobooks are so useful).
• Perform walking-meditation (Walk with only paying attention to your walk and your surroundings).
• Listen to something educational while you exercise.

Morning Routines Examples

To finish this post, I want to show you some examples of how a typical productive & healthy morning routine looks like.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is a successful businesswoman and the hoster of The Oprah Winfrey Show – which I highly recommend –  that have told many times that one of the things that she hates the most is setting an alarm to wake up, even tho, she keeps a very productive morning routine that had helped her in her career.

• She wakes up at 6:20 am and take a tea.
• Then she workouts and afterward meditate.
• Finally, she eats breakfast and gets to work around 9:00 am.

Thomas Frank & Matt D’Avella

Thomas Fran and Matt D’Avella are two productivity & personal development-content creators. Both have similar morning routines and have said that it has been one of the most productivity boost sources in their daily lives.

• They wake up around 6:30 am and 7:00 am.
• The exercise first thing in the morning and go for a walk afterward while listening to audiobooks.
• Then they eat breakfast and get to work around 7:30 am and 8:00 am.

My Morning Routine

I have been experimenting so much with my morning routine a lot and I have found that this is the morning routine that works best for me.

• I wake up at 6:30 am.
• After basic hygiene, I prepare Coffee while listening to an audiobook.
• Then I read for about 30 minutes.
• Afterward, I meditate for 15 minutes and exercise for 10 minutes.
• Then, I work on my projects for 1 hour.
• After that, I spend 15 minutes walking and then I check my Email
• Finally, around 9:00 am I get to my college classes or to work again if I don’t have classes.

Develop Your Morning Routine

Now that you’ve seen some great examples of how a productive morning routine looks like, I hope you know everything you need to start developing your morning routine.

Remember that not everybody is a morning person and that you can delegate your work and healthy habits to later in the day.

In case you want to start developing your morning routine right now, keep in mind to start small, track your progress and little by little develop a fun, healthy, and productive morning routine.

Start Right Now

I want you to start right now developing your morning routine and to give it a try tomorrow:

• Decide right now one fun activity and one productive habit you want to develop.
• Try to wake up 30 minutes earlier this week and do those two things.
• Keep adding habits and build your morning routine.

I would be glad to hear from you in the comments below and you can hit me up on Twitter to tell me about the morning routines you are developing!

Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it and see you soon!

Media Credits:

Fernández, Marco. “Afternoon Sunshine” Marco Fernández Instagram, www.instagram.com/fdz.stories/.

Fernández, Marco. “Light Landscape” Marco Fernández Instagram, www.instagram.com/fdz.stories/.

Randler, Christoph. Christoph Randler, 2010, Defend Your Research: The Early Bird Really Does Get the Worm.