The Importance of a Morning Routine

You wake up. You are bombarded with a million thoughts. This leads you to stay in bed. It then becomes a negotiation with yourself about staying for 5 more minutes. Then you convince yourself that it’s ok if you skip a workout today, as long as it gets done tomorrow. Finally, you tell your entire morning to do list to fuck off. All of this happened and you haven’t moved an inch. Why is that? Well, immediately upon waking up you are slapped in the face with the decision that makes or breaks your day. Do I get up or not? This is where people make the mistake of hoping they wake up with motivation. Hope is unreliable, and so is motivation. That leaves us with discipline. The only way to ensure your ass is getting out of bed and attacking the day is to eliminate the decision of whether or not to get up as a whole. Let’s dive in.

Your Day Depends on it…

People commonly think of the morning as insignificant to the bulk of their day. I disagree. Logician, Richard Whately, says “"Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it." The morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. To spend it with no plan is wasteful. But it starts with getting out of bed. Navy Seal Jocko Willink observes, “There is one thing that gets you out of bed in the morning, and that is discipline. Because your dreams and your goals are not there waking up for you in the morning.” The key is to stop thinking. When you hear the alarm in the morning, just get up, it needs to be robotic. Another 5 seconds and you give the comforting voice in your head a chance to make it’s argument. After you’re up, you need to think of these morning hours as an opportunity you are giving to yourself. “While everyone else is sleeping, I am up and being productive.” That needs to be the mindset. Waking up early gives you the edge. Hours of peace and serenity that are not available in the afternoon. It’s a clean slate of time that is yours to utilize.

Priming Your Body

Although not for everyone, this is a routine put together by the Stanford Neuroscientist, Andrew Huberman. He explains that viewing sunlight after waking up gets your systems firing and is the single biggest contribution to setting your circadian rhythm. Starting the day by looking at phone light brings no benefits and often leads to a rabbit hole of wasted time. He also talks about cold immersion in the mornings which aside from health benefits brings an increased alertness and higher levels of dopamine that carry on for hours after the event. The last thing he speaks about is exercise of some kind. I like to workout in the morning. I feel better after I do and it eliminates the excuse that I don’t have time.

Creative Hours

The morning is optimal for creators and their creative process. Starting your morning by reading, writing, journaling, drawing, or planning can be beneficial to free your creative side. Waking up with a fresh set of thoughts can lead to some of your best writing. The peace and quiet is prime for reading. The solidity is good for planning.

The morning also offers all recreational outdoor sports enthusiasts a connection with nature without being on a real time constraint. Surfing, snowboarding, running, sailing, and mountain biking are all great examples of this depending on where you live.

My Morning Routine

Getting into a morning rhythm has eliminated a lot of excess thinking out of my life and allowed me to focus my energy on what matters. While sometimes there are exceptions to the “daily” routine such as surfing or snowboarding, more often than not it looks like this:

• Wake up at 6:05 AM, no phone time

• Make my bed

• Read for 30 minutes while I drink some kind of caffeine

• Think of some content to post on Twitter

• View sunlight for a few minutes (sometimes earlier depending on the season)

• Workout for around an hour and a half

• Eat breakfast and go to work

At this point it is like clockwork. I went from dreading the morning to enjoying it more than any other part of the day. A good day starts with a good morning. What that means for you might be different than me, but don’t waste it.

Weekly Book/Podcast Recommendations:

• The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

Twitter thread full of Podcast Recommendations from this week:

Share your morning routine down below:

If you like this content, be sure to subscribe for more of it weekly: