Your best morning routine is more than the ideal start to your day. It’s an opportunity to reset; to forget about what happened yesterday, develop a positive mindset about the day ahead, and to take care of yourself before stressors have a chance to crop up.
While most of us want to get the same things out of our morning routine, we go about starting our day in different ways. Some people love to get up early and exercise. Others are happy to lie in bed until the last minute. Some drink coffee, others drink only water, and some skip straight to breakfast.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of those morning habits. So which is the best morning routine for you?
The key is figuring out what works for your schedule, body, and brain.
Your ideal morning routine might be three minutes or three hours. What matters is that it prepares you not just for a productive workday, but for a calm and intentional day from start to shuteye.
Only you can find your best morning routine for yourself. But you can build it by testing out ideas from the 12 below.
1. Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a big word, but what it means is simple:
Paying attention to your thoughts without judging or trying to change them.
You can practice it sitting, laying down in bed, while exercising, or at any time you feel stressed.
2. Take a Walk
A great opportunity to practice mindfulness — and get some exercise to boot — is to take a walk as part of your morning routine.
If you want to make time for a walk, you may need to start your morning routine earlier. As a rule of thumb, plan to walk a mile in about 15 minutes. If your best morning routine involves walking three miles, for instance, you’ll need a 45-minute block of time.
3. Reach Out to a Connection.
Start your morning routine by reaching out to an old acquaintance or by making a new professional connection.
There are multiple ways to do this. Shoot an email while you wait for your morning coffee to brew. Send a text asking how that new job is treating your old coworker.
Do avoid calling people out of the blue before 9 a.m.
4. Drink Tea
If coffee isn’t your style, why not try out tea as part of your morning routine?Green and black tea are popular picks.
5. Read
One of the most popular ways to wake up is with some light reading. Rather than scroll through your Facebook feed, make some progress on that library book you checked out last week. Read a page or a chapter of that book lying on your table.
6. Talk to Your Partner
If you and your spouse’s work schedules do not match up, you may not see him or her until late in the evening. Why not get quality time with your partner in the morning instead?
7. Outline Your Goals
What better time to plan out what you want to achieve each day than right when you wake up?
One shortcut with this morning habit is to write down a singular focus for the day. Maybe you want to reconnect with family, or perhaps you’ve got a proposal to get out the door. Then, you can rest easy knowing everything else can be pushed to the side.
8. Ask Yourself a Powerful Question
“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
Your question might be something else:
If your goal in life is providing for your family, you might ask, “How will I help my family today?”
If you’re struggling with self-care, “What does my body and mind need from me today?” may be a good option.
9. Eat the Frog
When you wake up, what weighs on your mind? Solve it as part of your morning routine. By tackling the hardest things first, the rest of your day tends to fall in place.
10. Listen to relaxing Music
If Bach and Beethoven aren’t your style, listen to whatever relaxes you. Who says 6 a.m. is too early for some head-banging metal or hip-hop?
If you have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, upbeat music will do you a lot of good than cool calm music.
11. Do Yoga
One of the best ways to work up a sweat in the morning is with yoga. If you’ve never done yoga before, start with foundational poses like downward dog and child’s pose. After mastering those, challenge yourself with an online routine.
12. Check in with Family
Almost none of us get as much time as we’d want with family.
If your family members would not appreciate an early-morning call, send a text. If you haven’t checked in with multiple members for a while, send an email sharing what’s new in your life.
Kickstart Your Early Morning Routine
Starting a morning routine is about your mindset and perseverance. If you wake up thinking “This is going to suck,” then it probably will. To build the sort of mornings you want:
- Set an alarm: If you want to have time for a morning routine, you need to wake up early. Give yourself at least an hour before work, and realize you may still need more time.
- Get up at the same time every day: Tempting as it is to sleep in on the weekends, don’t. Make your morning routine a habit by doing it every single day.
- Tell others your plans: If you tell your partner you plan to be awake at 5 a.m. and exercising by 6 a.m., you’ll be that much more likely to do it. Peer pressure doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
- Give yourself a reward: Humans are reward-oriented beings, just like other animals. If you like shopping for shoes, create a chart for yourself: If you stick to your morning routine for a full month, perhaps you’ll have earned a shopping expedition.
- Forgive yourself if you slip up: Like it or not, there will be times when you hit “snooze” on your alarm clock. Don’t beat yourself up; tell yourself that you’ll do better tomorrow.
Nothing matters more to your productivity or overall happiness than how you handle your mornings.
Change your morning routine, and you’ll quite literally change your life.
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