In my mind, my day begins the night before. I normally work in the evenings, aiming to finish about 21:30. I then complete the Evening Journal section of Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Planner which supports my reflections on each day and gets me thinking about how to improve tomorrow.
A quirk of our house is that it is very creaky (it’s older than America) and our Son sleeps very lightly in the early hours so I need to have things as prepared as possible to avoid the possibility that he will be join me for my morning routine, which has happened more than once. So I prep a pint of water, a flask of green tea and put my phone on charge in the living room.
Then it’s off to bed, making a quick note of the time I get into bed (see 2021SWAN#2 Goals) and aim to read 10 pages of whatever book I’m reading at that time.
Alarms go off at 06:00 and 06:02. I go with the vibration alert only on my Garmin Forerunner 735XT and set both alarms as have found that I can cancel the first one without even realising, whereas with the second I will at least be raised into conscious thought.
I slip out of the room and downstairs and straight into my early morning routine as follows:
- Headspace, normally preferring one of the courses on productivity or focus. 10-15 mins
- Plank/Push-ups/Squats as per my annual challenge (separate post to follow). 6-7 mins.
- Morning Journal. 5 mins.
- I then aim to knock off the most substantial thing I can for my goals. This is open ended as I have no idea when my Son will wake up so I have to remain flexible during this as the time with him in the mornings is the priority.
If I can complete these 4 steps, I have found that I am very likely to be going into the day ready to crush whatever lies in front of me. It is so empowering to have established the best mindset right at the start of the day and I feel launched into my morning then ready for whatever comes. I notice significant differences in my mood between doing vs not doing these 4 steps and feel like the investment of my time and a little bit of energy is repaid many times over.
So do you have a morning routine? Would you recommend I try anything extra, or instead of, my current routine? Please let me know – it’d be great to hear how you optimise for success with a great start to your day.
Make sure you have deodorant downstairs. Always needed pre workout!