Last week I told you all about my new obsession with MyMorningRoutine.com, a website that combines my love of learning how other people spend their time with my love for hacking your morning routine to make yourself more productive all day (and all year) long. If you haven’t yet added this website to your round-up of must reads, do so STAT. (And if you haven’t by next month, then WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE? #etc.)
So, in the post last week I promised you some more details on my own morning routine. And, since I keep promises sometimes, I’m delivering. I’ll let the title speak for itself to give a glimpse into some of the things I do every morning.
Six Things I Do Every Morning:
- I open the curtains. We live in a super cool home my husband built on a lake and it has a wall of windows in our bedroom. The first thing I do upon waking is take the little remote controller on my side table to open them and look out.
- I open my bedroom door, in hopes that my 1-year-old daughter is somewhere near, and that she will be brought to me like the Queen being served tea in bed I should be. (She and my husband get up about at least an hour before I do.)
- I drink a ~12-16 oz. glass on water with lemon on my nightstand as I look out the windows. If my daughter has arrived, I fight with her to not steal the cup and throw the water everywhere.
- I do all my major iphone checks for about ten minutes: email, Twitter, Instagram, stocks, Jawbone UP sleep stats.
- I put on my running clothes, walk downstairs, and pour myself a cup of coffee.
- I do my morning quiet time. I call this The Present Principle (you can download a free ebook all about it if you want), and most of the 7 steps take place within the first hour of my morning. Exercise, however, usually happens at mid-day (via gamory). It depends on my daughter’s nap, as I go out for about 75 minutes with her on a run, then a walk, then a stop at the swings, each day.)
After all this, I then tackle the rest of my day, which by then is flying at me like a crazy monkey ready to spring. For the most part, I work hard to make sure that the first couple hours of work day is spent on focused work that I need lots of energy for, and NOT email.
I love my routine, but I admit that one of my big annoyances is that I really am not good at all at keeping any semblance of this when I’m on the road. I’ve tried and tried to tweak a “road version” of it, but so far it just hasn’t worked. It’s an in-progress point that hopefully I can make headway on in 2015.
So, if you haven’t answered already on my other post, are there any interesting things you do in your morning routine you can share?
I love this. Morning rituals help me get my day supercharged. Every night before I go to sleep I write down a TO DO list (tasks I need to get done before I head out the door). I’ll get up early, make my bed, read the paper (online), eat breakfast, meditate, and then I’m out the door. The days I sleep in and miss my routines, are the days I feel the most behind. I think everyone should have their own morning rituals.
Hello Claire, your six things to do every morning is interesting and something to learn from it, and is lovely and i like it. But there is something i do every day which i think you should include it in your doings. I always pray immediately i wake up from sleep. I think this is very important aspect.Thank you for your contribution.
hi claire,
loved your morning routine. I wish I could incorporate something like that into mine. what I do is usually pray that I get the strengh to carry onand hope I can do things a bit differently into improving my current life situation and how I can gather the energy to change. I count till 3,jump out of bed, change us both take my son to school and off to work. If I had the will, I would wake up earlier and exercise, have breakfast with him, bathe and have a full start but still have been unable to do this….I think I have to put a little more effort in my morning routine after I read yours. thanks for the inspiration.
I was inspired by the morning routine concept explained below.
Make Your Bed
By Naval Adm. William McRaven, ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, Excerpt from Commencement Address at the University of Texas at Austin, May 2014
Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Viet Nam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed.
If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack—rack—that’s Navy talk for bed.
It was a simple task—mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened SEALs—but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.
If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.
By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.
If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.
And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.
If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.
(The complete address is titled: Ten Lessons I Learned from Basic SEAL Training )
Thanks for your work.
Andy
Working on massaging my schedule to be more like this, Claire. My only real BAD habit is e-mail, and while I’ve heard some great ideas, I think the only way I can confidently only check it 4 times a day is to hire an assistant I trust to condense it. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
After read your 6 morning routine, I had think about my routine How many things I do every morning;
1. Look out window check time & weather then wake up.
2. Cleaning tooth,shaving, washing face, Shower.
3. Clean up bed & put on clothes.
4. Prepare& eat breafast and drink a cup of water with my madicine.
5. Check my Schedule first, then email, SNS & Waching news on TV.
6. Go out home, move on somewhere according to my Schedule.
In the morning, as a Christian believer, I do a thanksgiving prayer on my knees. It works like a magic.
Stumble out of bed.
Brush my teeth.
Take vitamins and prescriptions.
Dressed.
Coffee.
Work.
(Not a morning person)
My morning routine: Breathe, enjoy the dawning of light and natural world from the many windows of my country home, drink a glass of clean, pure energized water, read / say my affirmations and goals, put on music to stretch, dance, lift weights, do yoga to, listen to Democracy Now, check my iPhone, make a delicious smoothy shake, and……