What is a morning routine?
If you’re a twenty-something like me you may have heard the morning routine buzz word around lately through social media or friends. In the beginning I thought this was something brand new being created but in reality your morning routine already exists. This is what you do every day (or maybe just during the week or on weekends), and the habits that you’ve established. The key here is to improve your morning routine and the habits surrounding it to make for a better you and a better day.
Having a morning routine doesn’t need to be complicated and doesn’t necessarily require you to wake up at 4 am. If you’re someone who has been following someone’s morning routine and it hasn’t been sticking, it’s probably because it just isn’t made for you or your lifestyle and you may need to make some tweaks.
How to upgrade your morning routine
Before you update your checklist or create one from scratch, take note of what you already do on a typical morning both during the week and on the weekend. Are you active? A slow waker? Doing the bare minimum before crawling to your desk to work from home? If you’re looking to take better charge of your mornings to set yourself up for a more productive day then creating a morning routine checklist can help to do so. Most morning routines should be made up of the same key topics just adapted to your needs and lifestyle. It might even vary by the day but all that matters is that it includes the options for you to have a great start to your day.
Once you’ve written down your habits and your usual schedule, circle the areas that you want to improve. Maybe you want to be more active in the morning because you don’t have time after work. Or you just want to be more productive so that your day is less chaotic. Even if you just want a simple 3 step routine, these are all things you can improve within your morning.
Each of the areas you circled for improvement or the habits that might be missing fall into a category that you can build into a checklist for following your routine. The way I think of it, your routine can include these key areas depending on the day, and the habits you want to build:
- Health and Wellness
- Organization and Cleaning
- Productivity
- Learning
- Helping Others
- Planning and Reflection
When developing a morning routine, even a simple one, you’ll want to include items that will make your day easier or that will help you feel more positive.
What are the morning routine checklist categories?
Health and Wellness: Every morning routine focused on self-improvement should include a habit related to Heath and Wellness. Health and Wellness by definition of Stanford Health are actually two different states. Health refers to the state of your physical body, and Wellness being the state of life balance between physical health, social, emotional, spiritual, and overall well-being. Making good habits for Health and Wellness a part of your daily routine, not just your morning one, are essential for feeling good and living long. This could be taking a workout class or immediately getting up to go for a short walk to get your body moving. Maybe you don’t like exercise, but it’s still important for your general health to move your body. Try a few short yoga poses or breathing exercises to get prepared for your day and stay focused.
Organizing and Cleaning: Are there ever days where it seems like everything around the house is piling up? Or that there’s never enough time to keep your place organized? Incorporating habits that don’t take much time in the morning may assist with organizing your home, life and keeping things clean.
If your goal is to stay more organized and clean in the morning you’ll want to make sure to add a few items from this category. Some non-negotiables in my opinion are cleaning your body and teeth. If you don’t have the time, you don’t necessarily need to do a 10 step shower routine, but even just taking a hot or cold shower can wake you up and get you ready for the day. If you want the space around you to feel clean or you want to build productive habits, try pushing to make your bed each morning or cleaning off your nightstand from the night before. This can make it so that you feel accomplished to start the day and make it for an easier night with less to clean up when you get back to your room
Productivity: Productivity is a big part of self-improvement. Don’t get me wrong, every day doesn’t need to be the most productive and people are not machines, but if you have goals at work or even personally, sometimes you’ve just got to get things done. 5-10 minutes of setting yourself up for the day can make you more prepared to take on your day by putting yourself in the right set of mind.
Learning: Ditch the socials in the morning, it’s time to learn something new. Learning within a morning routine is all about taking in positive, new information as a part of your self-improvement goals. This can be anything from learning a new subject, reading an article to keep you aware of what’s going on in the world, or something that’s a part of your personal goals. There isn’t a single downfall to becoming smarter in something every day.
Self improvement is all about getting better and becoming the best version of yourself. Being productive and learning can push that self improvement to the next level. More than 55%of people get on social media during the first 5 minutes of their wake up time, meaning they are bringing in other people’s problems, traumas, and mundane or bad news into their bodies to start off the day which can be either a positive or negative effect. Instead, try spending 5 minutes learning something new that can positively impact your life. Imagine what 5 minutes a day of learning about personal finance for example can do for you after 6 months? You’ll know more than the person who knows nothing and only scrolls twitter that’s for sure!
Helping Others: Acts of kindness can kick your day off to a great start. There’s already so much negative energy in the world, why not give your dopamine a boost by giving a helping hand to someone else or even just spreading positive vibes.
Planning and Reflection: Almost nothing is worse than wanting to have a great day then the next thing you know it’s 9PM and nothing has gotten done. You only need a few minutes in the morning to set yourself up to get things done making planning key for any morning routine with an emphasis on productivity. While planning is great, it’s also great to reflect on gratitudes for the day, and what you want to improve from the day before. Habits from both combined, can make for a great morning routine.
Ready to upgrade your morning routine checklist? Check out these ideas for each sub-category, or read on to learn more about the connection between a great morning routine and self-improvement.
- Morning Routine Ideas for Health and Wellness
- At home workout (yoga, Pilates, online strength training class, etc.)
- Gym work out
- Morning run/jog/walk
- Make breakfast
- Eat breakfast
- Drink glass of water
- 1-5 minute meditation
- Prayer
- Stretches
- Write out or speak affirmations
- Get 3 mins of sunlight
- Take morning vitamins (that don’t require food)
- Morning Routine Ideas for Organization and Cleaning
- Make your bed
- Pick out clothes for the day (if not apart of night routine)
- Water plants
- Set up office or workspace for the day
- Pick up anything left on the floor
- Open the blinds for natural light
- Pack work or school bag (if leaving the house)
- Shower or Bathe
- Brush teeth
- Complete skin care routine
- Do a 5-10 min face mask
- Get dressed for the day
- Morning Routine Ideas for Productivity and Learning
- Listen to a podcast (something funny, meditation, mindfulness, church, affirmations, etc.)
- Listen to music or a playlist (upbeat songs to get you moving)
- Read 5-10 pages of a book
- Read a news article on an important topic
- Read a blog post or article about an interesting topic you’ve wanted to learn
- Watch a short informative YouTube video
- Catch up on important work or personal emails and mark the important ones to respond to later in the day
- Read motivational quotes
4) Morning Routine Ideas for Helping Others
- Walk the dog
- Feed the dog
- Help someone else in the house with a task
- Text one person a positive good morning message
- Set a reminder to reach out or make plans with a friend or family member
- Check in with a neighbor before leaving for work
- Complete a random act of kindness for someone
5) Morning Routine Ideas for Planning and Reflection
- Write your to-do list for the day
- Write in a gratitude journal
- Write down morning thoughts in a journal
- Set your daily goals
- Review accomplishments from previous day
- Set reminders for post-work activities
- Review work and personal calendar for the day
- Plan expenses for the day
Building a Morning Routine Checklist
Now that you have some habit ideas to include, it’s time to build out a morning routine checklist. First, decide on your wake up time based on what you want to accomplish in the morning and by when. Second, decide on which categories you want to include for a work day, regular week, or weekends. This is based on your goals and purpose for even creating a morning routine. For example, if accomplishing more during the day is big for you, you may need more planning habits to make sure your day runs smoothly. Next, decide on if you want to include time buckets for each habit/task and create a flexible schedule. You’ll do this by figuring out how much time you have available before work, school, or other requirements and work backwards. If routines are already hard for you, skip the time buckets and just focus on creating good habits by following a pattern. Finally, start adding habits/tasks with your time buckets to create or upgrade your morning routine and try it out. If it doesn’t work or feel right at first, make some tweaks until it works for you!
You are one step closer to getting better at navigating your 20 somethings.
