Optimizing your Morning Routine

How a self-care focus can make your mornings more productive

Good Morning!

Hurrah, the sun has risen on another Friday! This culminates my first full week writing Daily Self. If you have feedback on the newsletter, or would like for me to focus on particular topics, I invite you to leave a comment.

And to my new subscribers, thanks for believing me. It means so much.

Here’s what’s inside today’s edition…

1. Morning Microdose: Optimizing your Morning Routine

2. Myth of the Day: There’s not enough time in the day

3. Action Item: Create a new morning timeline

(1) Morning Microdose

Optimizing your Morning Routine

Have you ever read an inspiring book or article by a public figure (CEO, politician, actor, athlete, influencer, etc.) and they describe their morning routine something like this?

I wake up at 4 AM because my body only needs 5 hours of sleep to feel fully rested. My morning routine includes doing yoga on my porch overlooking [insert breathtaking scenery here] or going for an 8-mile run, soothing my muscles in a cold soaking tub, and drinking fresh green juice.

Sounds pretty great, right? Maybe reading that motivated you to try the same routine. Or, perhaps you were jazzed to try waking up early to catch up on all your emails, and then go to the gym like Tim Cook before anyone else in your household has even opened their eyes.

I’ve been inspired many times to follow a morning schedule recommended by someone else and—surprise, surprise—it never sticks!

Why you must make your routine your own

Morning is a great time to get shit done. You’re fresh, hopefully rested, and your mind is not dulled by task fatigue. However, your morning routine must be based on your personal priorities, not someone else’s. You might be inspired or motivated by someone else’s routine, but let’s be real—inspiration and motivation die quickly if you’re not fully committed to your own self-care.

For example, you may be super stoked about waking up at 4 AM and answering all those emails, but after a few days, you find that you’re getting drowsy and irritable in the afternoons. So you toss back an energy drink. That works for a while, but then you add another because now you’re really starting to drag. See what I mean?

Because you adopted someone else’s routine (who possibly is a natural short sleeper), it negates your unique physiology. At this point, the motivation you had to get up early and answer your emails dies; the reason being that your new routine wasn’t based on your personal self-care needs.

How to use your self-care needs to craft your ideal morning routine

Inc. Magazine offers great insights on how to do this effectivity:

1. Create List 1, a list of the tasks you must do every morning to care for yourself (e.g. brush teeth, meditate, make coffee, drink coffee, read this newsletter, etc.). Now add required tasks that you must do to care for others (feed dog, make kid lunches, etc.).

2. Create List 2, a list of the tasks you’d like to do every morning to care for yourself, but aren’t requirements (e.g. answer emails, run 8 miles, hit the gym, cold soak, make green juice, etc.).

3. Create a timeline with YOUR tasks from List 1, including estimated time it takes to complete each one. Your timeline starts when you wake up, and ends when you have an obligation (like work) that limits how flexible you can be with your time. Now, add the tasks you do for OTHERS: can you delegate those tasks OR do them the night before?

4. Complete your timeline by adding tasks from List 2. Remember, be realistically optimistic (e.g. if you need 8 hours of sleep to feel fully rested, add that as a constraint).

5. Try out your timeline for a few days. Does it need any adjustments? Can you move some of the List 2 items to a different time of day or shorten them and still feel productive?

6. Perform a self-care check. How are things going? Then, iterate and optimize.

That’s it! And if you happen to have a cold-soaking tub and 10 minutes to fill on your morning timeline… well, you know what to do 🥶

(2) Myth of the Day

Sorry to break it to you, but this is a constraint that isn’t changing unless something seriously disaster movie-style happens with the sun or the earth’s rotation.

Since time is constrained, YOU have to be flexible. That doesn’t mean giving up on things you want to do in life. It means considering and weighing your options. As we get older, time becomes more and more valuable because it’s irreplaceable. Time is a bank account that only has debits. You must learn to manage yourself so that you maximize the time you have in a day. Schedule your self-care needs and make a commitment to follow that schedule.

Own your routine.

(3) Action Item

It’s Friday, so this weekend is a great opportunity to complete Steps 1-4. Then on Monday morning, give your new timeline a go!

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