How to Ruin Your Morning Routine

Since you may already have a morning routine in mind, here’s how to ruin it in an instant.

If we’re sharing some truths here, here’s the truth about a morning routine.

A good morning sets you up for a good day. It’s the perfect time to set up your mindset and your headspace, so that when you go to work, school, or anything else, you’re feeling good about yourself and the day ahead.

A rushed morning that is ruined, is going to set you up for a day that is the opposite of good. Have you ever had a ruined morning that then ruined your day? Exactly.

I found that one of the best ways to improve something (anything!) is to first avoid the things that ruin it. For example, when I wanted to improve my grades, I had to first avoid the things that ruined it.

If I wanted to improve my health, I had to first avoid the things that ruined it. If I wanted to improve my confidence, I had to first avoid the things that ruined it. I think you now get the point.

That’s why, this blog post is going to outline how you can ruin your morning routine. To improve your morning routine, the first good & beneficial step is to avoid the things that ruin it. Here they are:

1. Sleeping Late

This is something that ruins your morning routine before your morning starts!

Here’s something that you may or may not know about your morning routine…

It actually begins, the night before.

It makes sense, if you’re not getting enough sleep the night before, then you’re not going to be feeling your best when you wake up.

Another thing that could happen is that you end up oversleeping, and you don’t get a chance to do your morning routine, or you may even have a rushed morning routine. Think about how that would affect the rest of your day.

Whether we are sleeping late because we’re on our phone (or really anything electronic), it’s not just going to affect our sleep in itself, but also our wake up.

That’s why, instead of sleeping late and giving yourself lack of sleep, actually sleep on time! A good rule of thumb to use is to figure out what time you want to wake up, and then calculate what time you need to go to bed based on the number of hours you need of sleep. For example:

If you want to wake up at 6am and you want 8 hours of sleep, then you need to sleep by 10pm.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there! Once you calculate what time you need to be sleeping, you also need to go even more backwards to include a time to turn off all electronic devices and wind down in general. Continuing on with the same example:

You need to sleep by 10pm, and because you need to start your night routine one hour before, you turn off all electronics by 9pm.

And in that hour before you go to sleep is your unwinding time. It’s your chance to relax so you can have a relaxed sleep. When you have a relaxed sleep, it gives you a higher chance to wake up feeling refreshed in the morning, and allowing you to do your morning routine.

2. Snooze the Alarm

This is another way to ruin your morning routine… the first second it starts.

Has anyone else felt that whenever they snoozed their alarm, they just become more tired?

Whether or not you have slept late, snoozing your alarm isn’t go to be your best friend in your morning routine. It’s really funny with how we will go for that extra five minutes of sleep, like it’s going to make a difference.

While snoozing our alarm in the moment may feel good to get those extra mini doses of sleep, but have you ever noticed that your brain just feels more confused and tired? I mean when you think about it, the more times we snooze, the more times we go in and out of sleep. The more times we go in and out of sleep, the more confused our brain gets.

Honestly, sometimes I question why the snooze alarm was even invented because it seems that it has no benefit whatsoever.

Hence, instead of snoozing several times in the morning, it may be more benefit to just let that one alarm be it, and you just stay awake. Here are some things that help me to stop snoozing my alarm:

1. Put my alarm on the other side of the room – Because honestly, if it’s within arms reach, I guarantee you the alarm will be snoozed. If it is in the other side of the room, I am forced to get up (also because my alarm sound is a really annoying sound). Just by getting up, standing up, and walking to my phone, already gives my body the signal that it’s time to just stay awake.
2. Drink water immediately – I’ve just noticed this from a personal experience, but I realised that the reasons why I sometimes feel tired in the morning, is not always because I’m tired…. but because I’m not hydrated. I mean I did go 8 hours without any food or drink. Let me say that since I drank water as soon as I got off to turn off my alarm, I felt much more better and awake.
3. Actually get enough sleep the night before – Continuing on from that first way to ruin your morning routine. I won’t repeat the reasons that I had mentioned above. Just think about how maybe the reason why we keep snoozing the alarm for more sleep, is because we didn’t get enough sleep the night before.

3. Go On Your Phone First Thing

Here’s the thing about morning routines – it’s supposed to be your most selfish time. It’s the time for you.

Because whether you have a job, you’re studying, or you have side hustles, or running a business, you’re still going to be interacting with people (even if you work from home!).

Even if you don’t do either, you’re still going to be interacting with people. People who live with you, and when you walk out the door and go anywhere, you’re going to be interacting with people… even if you don’t talk to them.

That’s why, when you think about it, when you use your phone first thing in the morning, whether that is to check messages, missed calls, or even go on social media, you take away that chance to have time for yourself.

You may say that you can have time for yourself at any time in the day, and that’s true! But the reason why the morning is the best time to have time for yourself, is that it sets you up to have a clear headspace to start your day. It’s so much easier to set up your mind and prepare yourself for your day ahead, when there is no one around. You don’t have the pressure on yourself to get back to people.

I used to be one to go on my phone first thing in the morning and just check everything. From messages, to emails, and even playing phone games. I’ve noticed that throughout the day how my mood got affected. It made a difference to my mornings and even my days when I used my morning routine for reading and journalling. That set my day up much better than if I checked every message.

Now, what you can do to make sure that you don’t go on your phone first thing in the morning? Create a morning routine! If you’ve read my blog post on essential routines for personal growth, and go to the first routine which is the morning routine, it will outline the expansion of these steps:

1. Reflect on how you start your mornings currently – from what you do once you wake up, until you start work. Becoming aware of what you’re already doing is the first step to switching up the morning routine!

2. Make a replacement of your bad habits – I’ve got tons of blog posts about habits in this blog. Replace those bad habits with good habits that benefit you in the morning more. For example, if you used to go on social media because you liked the feeling of having something to read, you can replace it with gratitude and reading.

3. Simplify your morning routine – Try not to have too many steps in your morning routine. Keep it simple instead. Have a morning routine that you look forward to as you go to sleep the night before!

It is important to build strong digital habits, especially during your evenings before bed, and the mornings once you wake up. You can read the blog post on digital habits to build for growth and happiness.

4. Not Drink Water First Thing

If you remembered the slight comment I made from the second way to ruin your morning routine (snoozing your alarm), I mentioned that one way to stop yourself from snoozing is to drink water immediately.

Because think about how many hours you had went without drinking any water. Whether you slept for 8 hours or 6 hours, you went a long time without drinking anything!

Picture this – say for example, someone had a 9 to 5 job, which is of course 8 hours (the same amount of hours as an average amount of sleep). Imagine that person did not eat or drink ANYTHING during that time.

You can imagine that it’s pretty extreme, and that the person is definitely going to feel dehydrated and hungry by the end of the day.

And it doesn’t stop there, this person still doesn’t eat or drink anything for the next few hours.

BUT that’s exactly what you’re doing to yourself first thing in the morning if you do this habit. You have gone a lot of hours without drinking anything, and you still don’t put water in your system.

The best way to make sure that you drink water immediately after you have got out of bed and woken up, is to put a bottle or a glass of water NEXT to your alarm. This is so that you can see it immediately, and it’s easy to just grab it and drink from it. If a bottle or glass of water is no where to be found, then it’s easy to neglect it. You want to make life easy for yourself as much as possible!

5. Not Do Anything Sort of Physical Movement

We’re going to mention our friend here who didn’t even eat or drink anything ALL DAY during their 9 to 5 job. Imagine that this person also didn’t move around AT ALL.

Yes, they did 8 hours of not moving around at all, not even get up from their seat. They just sat in their office.

But guess what, that’s what we’re doing in our sleep. No matter how many hours we have slept, we spent A LOT of hours not moving around at all.

You can imagine how that if we just stayed in bed for the whole morning, not only do we feel unmotivated, our bodies feel unmotivated as well… because it’s not moving around.

You don’t have to do a high-cardio exercise once you wake up, but even just getting out of bed (such as to stop your alarm), walking to your bathroom to use the toilet (because we also went several hours without peeing as well), or even just doing a couple of stresses, it counts as physical movement. As long as your body is moving.

6. Not having any little wins

I think we’ve established so far that having a good morning sets you up for having a good day. That’s why, the morning is the best time to have little wins.

You may have two questions about this: How little? and why do we need to have little wins?

To answer your question of how little?, it’s just simple wins such as making your bed, cleaning up your spaces just a bit, or even just doing little habits that you can tick off like reading, journalling, or even doing gratitude.

To answer your question on why we need little wins in the morning?, it’s because those little wins build you up for a good mindset, and more motivation and drive for your day. Those little ticks of little wins gives you that drive to do more wins during your day. If you were to sleep late, snooze your alarm, and just go your phone and not move around at all, it’s going to be hard to have those little wins.

So you don’t want to skip those opportunities to have those little wins. While they are small, they do make you feel ready to tackle the day. Especially when you face mini setbacks during your day, you would want to already have those small wins to motivate you.

To make sure that you set yourself up for little wins in the morning, is to have a good morning routine (like what was mentioned in number 3; ruin your morning routine by going on your phone first thing) and to avoid the bad habits that ruin your morning (pretty much everything on this list)

7. Rush Through the Morning

I’m not kidding here, but I’ve never met anyone who liked the feeling of realising that they had woken up late and completely rushed through their morning.

You can agree or disagree with me on this, but this is ultimate guaranteed way to ruin not just your morning routine, but your day.

That’s why, we discussed all of these things on this list on how you can ruin your morning routine. We wanted to make sure that we replaced all of those things to give us a better morning routine.

You’re guaranteed to rush in the morning, if you slept late, snoozed the alarm, and just went on your phone. To add onto that, because you woke up late, you probably forgot to hydrate, don’t have those little wins, and you don’t move your body around.

Rushing through the morning just skips those opportunities to have those little wins like we mentioned earlier. We don’t give ourselves the chance to have a clearer headspace and mindset before we walk into work, or studies.

That’s why it’s crucial to have a good morning routine that allows you to take your time and set yourself up for a good day. it’s also just as important to not sleep late and have a good night routine, for good sleep during the night. The last thing that we want is to waste several hours in the day feeling frustrated about what happened in the morning. Those several hours could be put to better use of focus for something more important.

Your Morning Routine is Either Going to Make or Break Your Day

You may have found countless of morning routines out there on YouTube. However, it doesn’t matter how many morning routines there are, having a morning routine is NOT overrated. It is an essential and important routine that is either going to make or break your day.

So if you want to set yourself up for a good day as much as possible, you want to make sure that you have a good morning. A good first step towards a good morning routine is to avoid doing the things that ruin your morning routine.

Make the most of your mornings, even if you’re not a morning person. You deserve to give that to yourself!

-Lauren 😊

Share This Blog Post Here:

Related Articles:

Similar Articles You’ll Also Enjoy:

Here are some articles to continue to accelerate your self-improvement!

Other Essential Routines to Build for Personal Growth

Digital Habits for Growth and Happiness

Bad Habits to Break in Personal Development

Essential Habits for Personal Development

The Ultimate Personal Development Checklist

---

---

CONNECT with ME!! 🗯

Instagram:

@laurenlbarri (blog Instagram)

---

---