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In the month of September, we are going to be taking a deep dive into habits. Check out A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast as we review the value of habits, how to create them, and the best habits for spiritual formation. On the blog, we will be talking about some bonus habits that I’d recommend for a more productive and beautiful life. You will also find a morning routine checklist here! These are habits that I’ve been incorporating into my life that have really changed my life and helped me grow. First, we are going to focus on our morning routine.
Here are some of the habits we are going to focus on over the next few weeks:
- A Morning Routine
- Morning Pages
- An Evening Routine
- A Daily Walk
- Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Reviews
We’ll break down each of the above habits and focus on how to incorporate these habits, rhythms, and routines into our daily lives.
Starting How You Wish to End Up
In our last post, we discussed how to create habits that stick. The first step is to determine who you want to be. Then, you figure out what goals you need to achieve to get to be more like that ideal person. Then, we figure out our habits, the repeated daily actions, that will help us to reach those goals.
Today, we are going to focus on our morning routine. We are going to figure out how to create a morning routine that works for us and that helps us to achieve our goals and our aspirations.
First, we need to figure out what our morning looks like now. What would be your answer to the following questions?
- How early do you currently wake up?
- When does your first mandatory event or task of the day (think: work or kids getting up) usually start?
- How much time do you have between your wake-up time and your first activity of the day?
- List some things that fill that time.
You may notice that you have no set structure or list of tasks that fill your first hours, or you may notice that you have been perfecting your morning routine and are pleased with what you’ve come up with. Either way, I hope you read on to learn more about why a consistent morning routine is important and get some ideas for habits that you can include in your morning routine.
Why is this important? A meaningful and purposeful morning routine can genuinely change your life. By choosing to be intentional about those first few hours of the day, you can create a series of habits that will get you closer to all of your goals. And, you will be more productive in the first few hours of the day than most people are by the time they go back to bed.
What’s so great about the morning?
Some of you might be rolling your eyes now and saying, “Morning? Really? I hate mornings! I’m up working till midnight anyway so I need my sleep.” My answer to you is yes, you do need sleep. Experts say 7-9 hours of sleep is needed for everyone. If you are sleeping less (or more than that), there’s an issue, and you should change your schedule accordingly. But, when you sleep is essential, and generally, it comes down to routine, not genetics or personality type.
There’s a lot of research about the best time to wake up in the morning. A study done of the most successful CEOs found that 64% wake up at or before 6 a.m., with 9 out of 10 waking up by 7 a.m. Importantly, you need to set a time to wake up and stick to it to feel most refreshed. In fact, they recommend not varying your waking time by more than an hour. If you do, you may feel ‘social jetlag’ because of your wake-up time.
One factor to keep in mind as you establish your wake time is what you want to get done during your morning hours before the first activity of the day. Once you calculate how much time you need in your morning, you can set your wake time and then be consistent with it. I can attest that the more often you wake up at the same time, the easier it will be to keep waking up at that time. Habits operate in the same way as the laws of motion – it’s easier to keep something going once it is going, rather than stopping it and starting it along the way.
Morning Routines are life-changing because they combine all of the best research on habits found in books like Tiny Habits, Atomic Habits, and The Power of Habit. Generally, a morning routine consists of very small actions that you can build on over time. You then stack those habits on one another as reminders to trigger you into completing the habit. If you develop a good routine, attached to the anchor of getting up which you do every day, you will have created a system that will help you to reach your goals.
What should be in your morning routine? A Morning Routine Checklist
Every person’s answer to this question will vary depending on their situation. Still, I think there are some general guidelines that everyone should have in their morning routine. In society, I think we are too quick to add caveats where in our attempt to be gracious, we end up not standing for anything (you can read my post about that here). If you tell me that you are not doing these things, you would have to tell me why. It may be that you’ve found the perfect place in your day for them, but it very well could be that you are constantly procrastinating and putting off habits that will transform your life.
So, what are these key parts of a good morning routine? The 5 am Club recommends waking up at 5 am and spending the first hour of your day doing the following: You exercise for 20 minutes, reflect or meditate (aka journaling) for 20 minutes, and then learn something (aka reading) for 20 minutes (and you can read one parent’s review of it here – spoiler: it changed their life).
As a Christian looking at this list, I see some areas of my life that need to be in my morning that are glaringly missing. Kat Lee, author of Hello Mornings: How to Build a Grace-filled, Life-giving Morning Routine, recommends the following routine: God Time, Plan Time, and Move Time. She even teaches a free workshop on her site on how to do this routine in 3 minutes or less.
I would also add that your morning routine should add in some self-care and cleaning time to make sure you are taking care of yourself and your home. FlyLady, the self-professed slob turned cleaning guru, recommends small steps every day to help keep a handle on your home. She also recommends getting dressed in your shoes every day, even if you are not leaving the house right away to get you feeling more productive.
So some areas that should be in your morning routine include the following:
- Devotional Time
- Reflection
- Reading and Learning
- Planning
- Self-care
- Home care
- Exercise
I think all of these areas are essential for growing and developing as a mature believer in Christ. If you have been creating habits based on the areas in The Purpose Planner, you’ll notice that several of the areas of our lives are met if we include what was listed in our morning routine. You’ll also notice that some of these areas are easier for us to add in than others. For some of us, it would be unthinkable if we walked out of the house without a shower. For others, you can’t remember when you took your last shower. Some of you need to run 3 miles in the morning just to feel alive. For some of you, running 3 miles in the morning would just about kill you. We’re all different, and we all need discipline. We just need discipline in different areas.
How to get it done when we don’t have enough time
Here’s the real kicker: We have this list of things that we know we should do every day to keep growing and thriving. But, we have to be at work at 7 am (I know! I’ve been there!) or our kids wake up at 6 am (also been there!). How in the world are we going to get this done?
When I was first married, I was working at a school 30 minutes away from my house. I had to be there at (at least) 8 a.m. every day which meant leaving my house around 7:15 or so. I used this early start time as an excuse to not get the things done I wanted to. My time with God was non-existent; I would have Saturday morning cram sessions to catch up on the bible reading plan I was doing. I never exercised. I never planned. I never read. Instead, I woke up between 6:50 a.m. and 7 a.m. to quickly get dressed, throw on some makeup, and grab a cup of coffee before I walked out the door. Why was this my routine? Because I lacked the discipline, direction, and intentionality to make something more life-giving happen in my morning routine. I was just surviving.
My morning routine didn’t really change until I had my son. Gone were the days of rolling out of bed and leaving the house. I had to change him, nurse him, pack the bottles, then get ready and drop him off before getting to work. You would think with all of those extra steps, I would be doing less for myself in the mornings. But, I found I was actually doing more. I started making a point to wake up before my son did so that I would have time to get ready and have my coffee. Then I thought if I am having my coffee, I might as well do my bible reading now. Soon, I was adding more elements to my morning routine, and it truly was life-giving and life-changing.
My Current Morning Routine
Currently, my morning routine looks like this. Of course (here’s that caveat that I hate), this doesn’t always happen. Today is Labor Day and college football opening weekend which means late nights and lazy days. I slept till 7 a.m. this morning and didn’t go to the gym. If you have sick kids, if it’s Christmas, if you had to stay up till midnight for a friend’s going away party, you probably won’t get to this morning routine. What’s important is that consistency wins out more often than not. That’s when the gains happen.
I’ve developed the following routine:
- Wake up at 5 am
- Start my coffee and unload the dishwasher
- Feed my Animals
- Start a Load of Laundry
- Drink my coffee & do my morning basket which includes my bible reading and prayer time (a post about this will be coming soon!)
- Do my morning pages, a journaling practice (I’m also planning on doing a post about this)
- Read a little in my current book
- Plan my day in The Purpose Planner
- Go to the gym
- And on to the rest of my day!
You can see from this list that I try to include all of the parts of a recommended morning routine. I use my checklist to plan out things I want to add and also figure out areas where I need to use new habits.
- Bible study, prayer, scripture memorization -> My Morning Basket
- Journaling and personal reflection -> Morning Pages
- Reading and Learning -> Reading
- Planning for the day ahead -> Planning
- Self-care -> My Yummy Coffee & Getting Dressed
- Home care -> All of my morning chores
- Exercise -> Gym Time
Time-Blocking and Schedule Looping in your Morning Routine Checklist
However, I will say that I don’t get to all of these things all the time. It was especially tricky while I was working to fit in what I wanted to in the morning. One of the ways that I worked around being limited on time was to time block my mornings so that I would have enough time to get to the most important parts of my routine. If I had to shorten or skip other things, then I knew that I would just get to it the next day.
For instance, when I was working I wanted to be getting dressed and ready by 6:30 am. So, if I woke up at 5, I had an hour and a half to get through my routine. I basically divided my time up into 15-20 minute intervals. At 5:20, I needed to stop doing chores and start doing my morning basket. By 6 a.m., I was starting to read, write in my journal, or exercise. If I woke up late, I would just jump in at whatever time block I was in and skip everything that came before it (though I might do my morning basket instead of reading or exercising). This functions like a loop schedule for my morning routine. Yes, I may not get to all elements of my routine, but I hit most more often than not.
What to Add to Your Morning Routine + Morning Routine Checklist PDF
What a morning routine solves is consistency. Too often, we have goals, but we never add in the daily habits that will get us there. With a morning routine, you are building a system of habits that work you toward the goals you want to achieve. It truly can be life-changing!
How can you create a solid morning routine? Think about some of the goals you want to achieve. Now, start brainstorming a list of habits for each of those goals.
You really want to tailor your routine to the goals that you have, but to get you started, here are some habits that you could add to your morning routine. Use our morning routine checklist to help you get started!
- Bible study, prayer, scripture memorization
- Start a Bible Reading Plan
- Get a Devotional Book to Read
- Start a Prayer Journal
- Begin memorizing a passage in the Bible
- Exercise
- Join a gym
- Download a workout app (I like Downdog for Yoga and HITT workouts or the Couch to 5k for running) or find videos you like on YouTube
- Go for a morning walk
- Journaling and personal reflection
- Morning Pages Practice
- Meditate for 5 minutes
- Keep a Gratitude Log
- Reading and Learning
- Make a reading challenge (I’ve used GoodReads for the past several years and it really does help me to read more)
- Take a course online
- Start learning a Foreign Language
- Listen to a podcast (You can even listen to mine!)
- Planning for the day ahead
- Practice opening your planner every morning to write down your top 3 tasks for the day.
- Plan to do your worst task first after you’ve finished your morning routine
- Create time blocks in your day to prioritize certain tasks
- Self-care
- Drink a glass of water before you have coffee or tea
- Find your favorite food or beverage of choice to make you want to get out of the bed in the morning
- Get dressed and ready for the day before the kids wake up
- Home care
- Unload your dishwasher
- Start a load of laundry
- Prep Dinner for that night
What is your current morning routine? What elements do you want to add to your morning routine? Comment below or join the conversation on Facebook or Instagram! Don’t forget to download our morning routine checklist!
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