Want less stress, greater focus, and feel ready to conquer your day? You need a morning routine. Here’s why it works and how you can start one.
In 2017, I was stressed. I was working overtime hours on multiple projects…..for months on end.
I was burning the candle on all fronts. Besides work, I was writing She Engineers on nights, weekends, and evenings after work. I also have three children, and the baby was two at the time.
I was gaining weight because I had way too much to do and no time for focus on self-care. I was stress eating, and I was not getting enough sleep in order to fit everything into my schedule.
And I kept on thinking to myself, “just a little while longer, and things will go back to normal, and then I can take better care of myself.”
Something had to give, but what I didn’t anticipate was that adding something to my day would be what caused my stress levels to decrease. I didn’t anticipate that adding anything would result in more productivity, less stress, and feeling like I could conquer the day.
To put a different way, I didn’t change anything about the overtime, the writing, or the kids. Nothing changed about all the things that needed to be done.
All I did was slightly modify my own schedule to incorporate a short morning routine. I started with just 10 minutes a day of meditation, which has now morphed into the routine I’ll share with you later in this blog.
The result? I feel less anxious, less stressed, and more focused throughout the day, especially if the morning hours (which tend to be my most productive).
I had stumbled upon the benefits of a mindful, disciplined morning routine. And upon further research, discovered that thousands, if not millions of people, use one to be successful, and indeed some of the most successful people on the planet are fanatics about their own morning routines.
Yet, I had to find it on my own, some 10+ years into my own career.
It’s not something that was shared by a mentor or a colleague.
But it makes SUCH a big difference to my own very hectic and jam-packed days, especially right now in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, with three kids and my spouse and I all working from home.
There’s some irony in the fact that spending more time on yourself results in less stress, more calm, and higher productivity levels due to a higher levels of focus.
This was counter-intuitive to me at first, and is counter-intuitive to many engineers, because the math doesn’t appear to add up. From an equation standpoint, more time on yourself = less time for other things, right?
Wrong.
Consider this: we’ve all had experiences where we’ve worked during our own non-peak times out of necessity (for me that’s late at night, often before a deadline). We know instinctively that it took much longer to finish a task as compared to working during our “prime-time” hours.
Have you ever measured that cost to you in time alone? I have. For me, it takes at least twice as long to do the same task in my non-peak hours as it does in my most productive hours.
Do you have time to waste? I don’t either. Let’s explore what adding that morning routine did for me, and what it can do for you.
WHAT A MORNING ROUTINE WILL DO FOR YOU
Google “morning routine”, and you’ll find dozens of suggestions on both what to do and the benefits you’ll see in a morning routine. Here are a couple I have noticed myself, backed up by science:
1. More calm and control in the morning. That means I rush around less, which means my entire household is calmer. That translates into less fighting with the kids to get dressed or eat breakfast, which means that when it is time to work, I’m not already exasperated with the world. Additionally, research really does show that people whose performance peaks in the morning are better positioned for career success.
2. Less stress overall. When you start your day with stress and anxiety, some form of it persists until you go to sleep. The same is true when you start your day with calm and ease.
3. Increased productivity and focus. That quick-win in the morning from my morning routine revs me up and leaves me ready to tackle the day, creating a domino effect when it comes to productivity. Many of the world’s most successful people cite that their morning routine as being critical (learn more in this Fast Company article).
4. Worry less. That release of the “feel good” chemicals in your body does a lot of things for your internal physiology that leads to less stress, less anxiety, and being empowered throughout your day.
5. Improves your health. An effective routine includes exercise, with its well-known benefits. I also find that after my morning routine, I’m motivated to grab a healthy breakfast, instead of sugar-laden choices that I know are bad for me.
6. I am happier throughout the day. The combination of all the above creates a ripple effect. It got me out of the habit checking email or the news when I woke up. It gives me a sense of accomplishment before the day really begins. The overall result is a happier person.
7. Gives you clarity on who you are and how you want to show up in the world. A large part of an effective morning routine involves reflection, which brings clarity that isn’t possible in any other way. This has been one of the biggest benefits for me, and one that was unexpected when I first started my own morning routine.
8. Saves my brainpower for bigger, more important challenges. Once the routine becomes a consistent habit, you stop thinking about it. That means that you have minimized decision fatigue before you start your workday, allowing you more focus to get work done. Minimizing decision fatigue is one reason why, for example, heads of state and very successful people wear the same clothing over and over again. You can only make so many decisions in one day.
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WHAT TO INCORPORATE INTO YOUR MORNING ROUTINE
Everyone already has a morning routine. That morning routine can be chaotic, as mine was for years.
The good news is that it only takes a little bit of preparation to turn a chaotic morning into a calm(er) one.
Here’s the story of how and why I started using the routine that I do (and recommend) now.
In 2017, I attended my first-ever business retreat and finally met in-person one of my book-writing mentors, Chandler Bolt, founder of the multi-million dollar company Self-Publishing School. As we sat in a small group and went around the room sharing our ideas, the woman next to me was asked if she’d ever tried meditation, which led to a discussion about morning routines and self-care in general.
It was during that discussion when I was first exposed to The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. Hal was hit head-on by a drunk driver at the age of 20. His heart stopped beating for 6 minutes, he was in a coma for 6 days and broke 11 bones, and his doctors told him we would likely never walk again.
Hal not only walked again, he went on to run an ultra-marathon and become incredibly successful in the business world. During his own recovery, he created the miracle morning routine, which can be done in as little as 6 minutes per day. The Miracle Morning Book itself has over 4500 ratings on Amazon with an average 4 ½ review (as of the time of writing this blog).
This is the routine I now use myself and find it easy to do and effective. The beauty of this system is that it can condense to 6 minutes or you take a full 60 minutes.
The components are easy to remember with the acronym SAVERS. Here’s the breakdown:
1. Silence Sit in silence, meditation, or prayer. You’ll feel calm and stress will melt away.
2. Affirmations Write or say phrases that indicate the person you want to be in the world. Examples include: “Abundance is my chosen reality.” Or, “I am healthy and choose to only put food in my body that fuels my energy.” We’ll talk about affirmations – including a list of specific ones I’ve found helpful - in more detail in next weeks’ blog.
3. Visualizations You arrive at the end of today and think, “Wow, this was an amazingly successful day that I feel awesome about!” Close your eyes and visualize exactly what happened to make you feel that way, as if you were watching yourself in a movie where you are the star. Repeat that process for one of your big dreams or goals. Put yourself in the moment where you achieve that goal. To facilitate this step, I’ve found it helpful to create a physical or virtual vision board.
4. Exercise You don’t have to do an hour of cardio or weightlifting. The goal here is to move. Take a walk, do some bodyweight exercises like pushups, or dance around to one of your favorite songs.
5. Reading Pick a book that will help you grow mentally, physically, or spiritually. If you’re just starting out with morning routines, that book for you may be the Miracle Morning.
6. Scribing This is a fancy word for journaling. If you dislike writing or struggle to know where to start, keep it simple and write down one thing you learned from your reading that you can implement that day and three things for which you are grateful.
You can do each of these for anywhere from 1 minute each to Hal’s “recommended” routine of 10 minutes each (for a full hour), depending on how much time you have available.
HOW TO ESTABLISH A MORNING ROUTINE WHEN YOU HAVE NO TIME
I am (now) a huge proponent of morning routines, and have found that the busier I am, the more critical this is to my own sanity and well-being.
That doesn’t mean that I am consistent all the time. A few months ago, my travel schedule didn’t always allow that consistency. Right now, we are under a stay-at-home order with three kids. My routine is often interrupted, no matter what time I wake up.
Here’s what I do when I get off track, which is also helpful when you are establishing a routine.
1. Treat myself with compassion. I logically know a routine helps me de-stress and focus, yet sometimes it feels like another thing on my to-do list. Sometimes I sleep in or my routine is interrupted. That’s OK. A 5-minute routine is better than no routine.
2. Start small. You don’t need a one-hour or even a 30 minute morning routine. Figure out which part of the morning routine makes you feel the best throughout the day, and do that for 5-10 minutes immediately before you start working. For the vast majority, silence/meditation and/or exercise will be the biggest difference-makers (I know they are for me).
3. Change the time of your morning routine. Right now, because everyone is home and doing online learning at home, the kids often get up when they hear me get up. They can exercise with me, but that means the quiet parts of my morning routine time often occur immediately before I start working. If you have a similar challenge, you could also consider splitting up parts of your routine to different parts of the day (i.e. taking your long morning walk at lunchtime).
4. Schedule it. You’re reading this and know you want the benefits a morning routine provides. What can you do right now to get started? Schedule 15 minutes into your calendar tomorrow, at a time early in the day that works for you. Not an early-morning person? That’s fine, schedule it when you wake up or right before you start working.
At the beginning of this blog, I mentioned that I added one thing to my routine initially that helped me feel so much calmer and productive during my day. The single thing that got me started with morning routines was meditation, that I started doing for only 10 minutes a day. After a week, I noticed when I missed a day (and so did everyone around me).
Thanks for reading! We’d love to hear what you think! What do you think are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to establishing a morning routine?
