Designing a reliable morning routine

Every January as we consider our New Year’s Intentions, there’s a spike in global search traffic for “morning routine”, and like clockwork, our motivation and interest dwindles over the following months. That’s also been my experience over the past decade, as I’ve been trying (and failing) to build a good morning routine.

Mornings are a great opportunity to build habits that will improve your life, like meditation, exercise, drinking plenty of water, and eating a healthy breakfast. Once the workday’s started, it’s hard to carve out the time to look after yourself, but the morning provides a few sacred hours that are yours to design.

Every morning routine I’ve designed until now worked while my willpower was strong and conditions were perfect. But willpower is a tenuous thing, and life is all about surprises. At some point, I’d wake up late, or open my phone and doom scroll for a few hours, or feel too tired to follow the routine. I’d tell myself that I just couldn’t hack mornings — ”I’m not a morning person!” — and I’d throw the routine out the window.

When I designed a morning routine, I’d spend an hour thinking it through and writing it down, then I’d hope that it would work for every morning thereafter. If I failed to follow the routine on a given morning, I wouldn’t know if it was due to me being lazy and disorganised, or if the routine itself wasn’t suitable. The routine was static, and I hadn’t set myself up for rapid iteration and improvement. If my sleep schedule changed, or I had new commitments in the morning, or if anything else changed from the ideal conditions I imagined when designing the morning routine, I expected my cognitively impaired morning self to improvise and design a new routine on the fly. As expected, I would fail, and I’d feel rubbish and angry with myself.

This all changed last month, due to A6 ruled index cards and a pen.

How did I design an improving-and-robust-by-default morning routine?

I know that I will sometimes fail to follow my morning routine. I also know that every morning is different, and there isn’t a one-sized-fits-all morning routine. I needed a system that helps me adapt to changing circumstances, and has something simple and reliable at its core that is easy for me to pick back up if things don’t work out on a given day.

Solve tomorrow morning first

Instead of asking myself “what morning routine do I want to follow over the next year?”, I now ask myself “what do I want to do tomorrow morning?”, and I make a simple checklist on a single A6 ruled index card.

Imagine the morning: I open my eyes, feeling groggy and tired. My alarms are blaring at me, so I get up and turn them off. I walk over to the table and see a piece of paper. I read it, and it has simple instructions to follow. My brain isn’t working yet, so it’s nice to be told what to do. These are simple tasks, I can do this. I’ll drink some water from the full water bottle that some nice gentleman has left for me on the table, then I’ll brush my teeth. Two ticks. Meditate? Hmm, I’m not sure I can be bothered to do that. But if I don’t, I can’t tick this box. I want to tick all the boxes, so I guess I will meditate. I’m now being told to put on some running clothes, and leave the house to go running. I feel energised to run after the meditation, and my running clothes have appeared like magic next to the piece of paper, so off I go!

Instead of trying to solve a big scary problem like “what’s the best morning routine?”, I’m now focused on answering every day the simple question of “what do I want to do tomorrow morning, and how can I make my morning self’s life as easy as possible?”.

Make improvements every day

My previous morning routines were designed by the most intentional and ambitious version of me, when I felt most excited about improving my wellbeing and life outcomes. After creating the routine, I’d cross my fingers and hope that lethargic morning me would follow it. This didn’t work. These two versions of me weren’t talking to each other. My morning self was frustrated that the routine didn’t factor in X or Y new circumstances, and my intentional self was angry that my morning self was too lazy or disorganised to do what I wanted. They hadn’t been to couples counselling yet, so nobody had prompted them to talk to each other about their feelings.

My new system is reinvented every day, and my intentional self is in an ongoing conversation with my morning self. Every evening, I review the card from that morning. This is an opportunity to identify weaknesses or flaws in my plan. For example, perhaps my checklist said “go running” and then “meditate”, but after running, I wanted to jump in the shower and head straight to work. I didn’t want to pause for a meditation, so I didn’t meditate. I note this down on the card. In the evening, I think to myself: “what about meditating before running? I’ll try that tomorrow!”. I’m refining and improving the plan every day, learning what works and what doesn’t, enjoying this new playground for experimentation.

Every morning is different too. On some mornings, I run. On some mornings, I workout. On some mornings, I commute to work. Every time I create a checklist for the next morning, I factor this into the plan. I try to set myself up for success, given the conditions I will find myself in.

Morning routines start the night before

At 10:40pm every evening, my phone starts buzzing telling me to set intentions for the next morning. At the same time, my bedroom lights go red, and sleep music starts playing from my speakers. I walk to my table and create a checklist for the morning.

In order to succeed at my morning routine, I must first succeed at my evening routine. I know that my energy levels are high in the evenings, so it’s been quite easy for me to establish the habit of setting morning intentions. It’s easy, fun, and only takes a few minutes. Even if I fail to follow my morning routine on a given day, my evening routine still stands strong, and I’m able to give it another go the next day. I think this could apply to any solid routine someone has, e.g. having it be the default action you take after brushing your teeth in the evening, or something you do before having lunch, or whenever you’re confident you can set your morning intentions reliably.

However, if I don’t get enough sleep, or if my sleep schedule is all over the place, even the best intentions won’t be enough to convince morning me to follow my instructions. I try to sleep at the same time each day (even on weekends), and every time I have a bad night’s sleep, I diagnose why, and I prioritise fixing it. Common reasons for me not sleeping well include light coming in to my room hours before my intended wake up time (resolved by installing blackout blinds), birds or other city noises waking me up (resolved by getting custom ear plugs), my room being too hot (resolved by using an Eight Sleep mattress topper and an A/C unit), or my usage of digital devices late into the night (resolved by blocking my laptop and phone after a certain hour using Cold Turkey and AppBlock).

Could this work for you?

I think the the main “innovation” that’s made this work for me is setting morning intentions every night, and doing so on a simple piece of paper. In this blog post, I haven’t made any suggestions about what you should do during your routine — there are plenty of other blog posts written telling you what you “should” and “shouldn’t” do in the morning, and I’m not interested in adding to that chorus. What I hope this blog post does is to empower you to design your own morning routine, to make improvements to it on an ongoing basis as you see what does and doesn’t work, and to feel in control of how you spend the first few hours of each day for the rest of your life.

If you try this out, I don’t know if it’ll work for you. This method might be very particular to my challenges with mornings, and the way I think and operate. However, if you do give it a go, I would love to learn what worked and what didn’t work for you! Please consider reaching out, or perhaps leave a comment on this blog. And finally, a huge best of luck! :)