A good morning routine will help you get your day started on the right foot. Follow these tips and you’ll be a morning person in no time.
Why Make a Morning Routine?
Don’t you wish you could wake up each morning, ready to go and feeling rested? I’ve talked about the importance of sleep and how to get it in this post, but sleep is only part of the equation. You have to actually get out of bed the next morning.
Having a morning routine will make waking up easier, and you’ll feel more fulfilled when you complete your tasks to prep for your day. Knowing you’ve already completed a few tasks will get you going, and you can capitalize on that momentum for the rest of the day.
How To Get Up In The Morning
First things first, you have to start with sleep. I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face, but without a good night’s sleep you won’t meet your goals for the next day. Once you have the sleep part down, there’s just a few steps that will help you wake up when you want to.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and waking up consistently won’t happen overnight. Give yourself time to adjust, and be realistic about your goals.
Follow these steps and you’ll get there soon enough, just be patient.
Set Your Intentions The Night Before
This sounds cheesy, but I have found it to be immensely helpful for waking up in the morning. Set your intention the night before. Your mind is a powerful tool. That might sound a bit woo woo, but it’s true!
Have you ever had to wake up for an early flight? You know that if you don’t get up by X time, you’ll be running late and possibly miss your flight. Going to bed, you run over everything you’ve packed, what time you need to leave your house, etc. Then the next morning you spring out of bed right on time. It’s strange how that works!
Most of the time that scenario is driven by anxiety, but I promise you can harness the same process for your daily routine. Even if you don’t believe me, just give it a shot.
Tonight, as you’re lying in bed, close your eyes, and say, “Tomorrow I’m going to wake up at 6:00 am, when my alarm goes off, I’m going to feel rested, and I’m going to get out of bed and get going.” You’ll be surprised at how well it works.
Don’t Snooze Your Alarm
This one is tough to get used to at first: Don’t snooze your alarm. You do not get any meaningful sleep in the 9 minutes between your alarm and snoozing. You might think you do, but you really don’t. Tell yourself that it’s time to get up, and do it.
The key here is actually getting out of bed. If you decide not to snooze, but you lay in bed and think “5 more minutes”, you’ll quickly go back to sleep. Now you don’t have any alarm, so you’ll oversleep and be late to work.
How To Set Your Alarm
Now that you can’t snooze, it’s important to set your alarm the right way. You might be thinking “I just pick a time on my phone, right? How complicated is that?” It’s not complicated, but it does require a bit more thought.
Pick your time thoughtfully.
When you’re wanting to start a new morning routine it can be tempting to go all out and try to get up at 5 am. Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you typically wake up at 7 am, 5 am isn’t going to happen.
Pick a time that’s realistic for you, but still pushing yourself a bit. Let’s say you do get up at 7 am but you want more time in the morning. Try 6:45 am for the first couple of days, then when that gets easy try 6:30 am. Keep gradually waking up earlier, and soon enough you’ll be waking up at 5 am like you want.
Make sure you’re going to bed with enough time to get your sleep in. Waking up earlier is going to be incredibly difficult if you didn’t go to bed at a good time. I made this post that explains why you need sleep and how to get it.
You’ve picked your time, now pick your alarm.
I like to wake up to music, and in particular I like something that starts with a bang. I Love It by Icona Pop was my go-to wakeup song for a long time. It starts LOUD and has a great energy to it.
If you don’t like waking up to music, you can always pick a preset from your phone. I would advise going with something louder rather than soft. I don’t know about you, but windchimes won’t wake me up in the morning.
There’s also a multitude of apps that you can use to wake yourself up. Some make you do puzzles or math problems before dismissing them. This would be a good option if you know you’re just going to dismiss it and roll over.
There’s also the good ole standby, an alarm clock. Some people prefer setting their alarm clock (or phone) across the room from where they sleep. That way they have to get up to turn it off.
Try a few different methods and find what works for you.
Get Out of Bed
Next step: get out of bed. Seems easy enough, but this is the hardest step of them all. When you feel snug as a bug in a rug, sleepy, and warm, you don’t want to get out of bed! Cue Veruca Salt stomping her foot.
Well you have to. This goes back to setting your intentions, but once that alarm goes off you’ve got to will yourself to get up.
There’s not a lot I can say on this one, because it’s all up to you. It’s straight willpower and determination. Picture Shia LeBeouf yelling “JUST DO IT” at you. Then do it, of course.
Pick Your Habits, Start Small
So now you’re up. You may not be happy about it, but you’re up. What’s next?
This part is up to you to decide. Why did you want to get up early in the first place? What habits are you wanting to form?
I would suggest picking 2-5 habits you want to do every day (or almost every day). Start small. Don’t have a whole checklist of 20 items you must do before you eat breakfast.
My routine looks like this:
- Bathroom time (Wash my face, brush my teeth, etc.)
- Quick stretch session
- Get dressed
- Take my meds
- Make my coffee
- Write in my planner
Pretty simple right? It’s what I’ve found works for me on an every day basis. I’m prepared for my day, and ready to get to it. After all that it’s time for me to wake up my kids, then the day really begins.
Some other ideas for your routine might include:
- Exercising
- Meditating
- Doing a daily devotional
- Journaling
- Clearing your inbox
You probably have several of your own that you’re wanting to try, so start there and move forward.
Be Prepared For Your Morning Routine
If you’re planning on exercising in the morning, it’s important to put everything you need out the night before. This means having your shoes ready to go, your TV set up for the exercise video, or whatever else you might need.
Same with meditation or a devotional. Put whatever you’ll use out where you can easily get started without a lot of setup at the last minute.
Get Going
As a final note, make sure you aren’t putting too many items in your routine. Especially in the beginning. Start with one or two new ones, and go from there. As you wake up earlier, you’ll have more time, and therefore be able to do more of what you want.
Now you have several tips to help you wake up for your morning routine. It can be hard to start at first, and you’ll probably have to play around with what works for you, but it’ll be rewarding once you get the habit down.
