How to ACTUALLY Build Your Productive Morning Routine

Even if you are not a morning person.

Having a morning routine changed my life. It helped me have time for myself regardless of how busy the day would be and helped me stay consistent with my healthy habits.

This blog post is all about how to build your morning routine. You will learn of the key components to building a morning routine that can contribute to your health, personal development, and productivity.

Even if you are not a morning person, having a routine first thing in your day will still benefit you… so yes, having a morning routine is beneficial regardless of what time you wake up.

Let’s dive in.

Why is having a MORNING ROUTINE important?

• The way you start your day sets the tone for everything that follows. Your morning routine would include activities that nourish your mind and body, such as exercise, journalling, reading, or having a healthy breakfast.

• It gives you time for yourself before proceeding with what you do for the rest of the day. We know that as much as we can plan our day, it can still be unpredictable.

• It’s important to have a good morning where you get to recharge your mind and have time for yourself before your day starts.

STEP 1: Create a list of activities that you will look forward to doing in the morning

Think of activities you enjoy doing and try to see if you can incorporate them into your morning routine. Examples of activities can include:

• Reading
• Journal
• Drinking coffee/tea
• Listening to music

By having at least one activity you’ll look forward to doing in the morning, it’ll motivate you to wake up and proceed with the rest of your morning. For example, an activity I look forward to doing in the morning is reading my book. I love to read, I find it enjoyable, and I feel productive when I do it. When I wake up, I look forward to reading (and sometimes even with a bonus coffee!).

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RELATED: 9 Ways to Practice Self-Care Daily

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Step 2: Make a list of healthy habits you want to do in the morning

Ideally, your morning routine will have a few healthy habits that will benefit your lifestyle. Some of the activities that you look forward to may also be your healthy habits! Either way, you want your morning routine to have healthy habits as opposed to the poor ones.

Think of some healthy habits that you want to build, and think about why you want to add them to your morning routine. Is it because it will help you feel happier in the mornings? You will feel more productive? Gives you a win for the day?

Examples may look like this (my morning routine):

• Doing skincare while saying affirmations: More self-love in the morning + contribute to nice skin 🙂
• Drinking water first thing: Feeling hydrated, feeling healthier.
• Reading: Feeling productive
• Gratitude: Feeling happy
• Making the bed: Feeling good about myself

The formula is this: Healthy Habit -> Why?

By listing both the healthy habit and why you want it in your morning routine, you begin to understand how your morning routine can fall into place and benefit you for the day. It’s one of the little but effective ways when building your habits.

Step 3: List any bad habits, and find a replacement

Now, it’s the opposite end. Think of habits you currently do in the morning that are not bringing you benefit at all. Examples may include:

• Going on your phone
• Scrolling on social media
• Snoozing your alarm

Since we want to bring more healthy habits into our morning routine, instead of getting rid of it completely and being left with nothing, you’re just going to replace it instead.

For instance, using the same examples above:

• Write three things you’re grateful for instead of going on your phone.
• Reading a book, listening to a podcast, or journalling instead of scrolling social media.
• Drinking water, doing your skincare, making a cup of coffee instead of snoozing your alarm.

By replacing your bad habits with healthier habits, you feel in that “void” that you would normally get from that bad habit. Sometimes, the reason why getting rid of bad habits is hard is that we do so without filling in that “void”. That “void” refers to the feeling you get from doing a habit (e.g. you get the feeling of entertainment when you scroll on social media. Reading is a good healthy habit that can give you entertainment).

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RELATED: Bad Habits to Break in Your Personal Development Journey

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Step 4: Categorize your habits

Your rule of thumb with the morning routine:

1. It makes you feel happy
2. You feel productive
3. Contributes to your physical/mental health (these can be separate if you’d like).

Hence, the healthy habits you incorporate into your morning routine should fall into at least one of those categories. Note that multiple habits will fall into more than one category.

Using my morning routine, here is a list of my healthy habits in the routine, and the categories it falls under:

• Praying: feel happy.
• Brush teeth: contributes to physical health I guess because dental health counts? Lol.
• Skincare while saying affirmations: feel happy, contributes to mental health.
• Reading: feel productive.
• Gratitude & Journal: feel productive, feel happy, contribute to mental health
• Make the bed: feel productive, feel happy.
• Morning walk: contributes to physical and mental health
• Breakfast: contributes to physical health

You may have noticed that there are a lot of habits that have more than one category. So no stress if you can’t find a separate habit for each category, it counts if they integrate!

Step 5: Create the order

Now, it’s time to put it all together.

It’s all up to you how you want to order the routine. It’s all about what works out logistically for you.

For example, the morning routine I gave in the previous step is what works for me mainly because it feels practical that way. Even if you have the same habits as me, you may do it in a different order, based on the logistics that work for you.

Once you create the order, then it takes doing the routine a few times for it to become automated, and a habit as well.

Just note that there will be days when you feel like doing the routine out of order, and that is okay. There will be days like that.

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RELATED: How to Build Lifechanging Habits

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Reminders:

Some other reminders with your morning routine include:

• Your morning routine is supposed to change once in a while – Whether it’s because of life circumstances or you’re simply sick of it, your morning routine is supposed to change every now and then. It’s not always a big change, it can even just be a new habit you implement or replace.
• Try not to have so many steps – If you’re just starting, it’s important to start small. Start by having a morning routine where it’s just a few steps so it doesn’t feel overwhelming. Once you’re used to it, you can start adding more habits as you go. That happened to me. I started with a few steps, and now I’ve added more habits.
• Don’t fall into the trap of “if I don’t do my morning routine, my day is ruined” – This has happened to me multiple times where if my morning routine doesn’t go as planned, my day is ruined. It’ll just be missing ONE step for the whole morning routine to be ruined. Instead of this, have the mindset that you don’t have to do your morning routine 100% the planned way each time. Have maybe one or two non-negotiable habits, and let the rest be a bonus. Even if you don’t do the non-negotiable habits, don’t let it affect the entire day.

Take a SMALL STEP

Hopefully, the blog post in itself gave you the steps you needed to build your productive morning routine.

To Wrap Up

Hopefully, the five steps to listing favorite activities, listing your healthy and poor habits, categorizing them, and finally ordering them can help you build a productive morning routine.

They are all small steps that you can take to ensure that you build a morning routine that you are happy with. I even wrote a book on small steps called Small Steps to Progression which you can check out here.

In the meantime, hope you bring more meaning to the first hours of your day from this blog post.

-Lauren 🙂

P.S I suggest you read these blog posts next:

• How to Ruin Your Morning Routine
• 6 Favorite Lifestyle Tips that Actually Hlped
• Ultimate Beginner Guide to Routines

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