Master Your Morning: 25 Strategies To Launch Your Perfect Day
Unlock True Peak Performance By Starting Strong
Sorry, night owls—research has revealed that the early bird really does get the worm. In a survey of nearly 400 university students, biologist Christoph Randler discovered higher levels of proactivity among those who identified as morning people. This group of early-rising respondents identified with statements such as “I spend time identifying long-range goals for myself” and “I feel in charge of making things happen.” Defending his research to Harvard Business Review, Randler made the compelling case that people whose performance peaks in the morning are better positioned for career success.
If you know me, then you know that I’m a die-hard morning person. But I wasn’t always this way. There was a time, early in my career, where my mornings were dreadful. They felt rushed, stressful, and disorienting. Those years of anxiety-filled mornings made me miserable and most certainly contributed to my multiple episodes of occupational burnout. Frantically waking up at erratic times, sometimes with just a handful minutes to get to work, I perceived for a while that time (and my life) was passing by too quickly.
Until I made one small change—I started waking up at the same time every morning: 5:00 AM. I quickly learned, however, that waking up early was just the beginning. That so much more needed to happen between the “golden hours” until 9:00 AM. And so I began to experiment with various strategies to optimize my time, energy, and attention within that prime four-hour window.
If you’ve ever needed a good reason to switch up your morning routine, here’s a list of tried-and-tested, research-backed practices that I’ve mastered over the years. None of this is new or revolutionary, by any means. At the very best, they’ll help you reconfigure your routine. At the very least, they’ll validate what you’re already doing.
So without further a do, this is what my perfect morning looks like:
Stage 1: The Night Before
Mastering your morning has a lot to do with how you spend the night before.
1. Get the right amount of sleep.
I can’t stress this enough: there’s no substitute for sleep. A study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Medical School found that regularly sleeping six hours or less every night negatively impacts cognitive performance as much as staying awake for as many as two nights in a row. Michael Breus, a sleep specialist and the author of The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan, makes it clear how a lack of sleep will hurt you: “You’re going to lose the ability to focus; you have a greater likelihood of making mistakes; and you’ll have greater risk-taking behaviour.” Your ability to own the day begins before you wake up, with your one true competitive advantage: a good night’s sleep.
2. Regulate your liquid intake.
Avoid drinking water or any other fluids (especially alcohol) at least two hours before sleeping to prevent waking up at night. In fact, the National Sleep Foundation suggests avoiding alcohol in the evening altogether as a way to improve your sleep. At the very least, be careful about when you drink your last cup of coffee; according to research from Michigan’s Henry Ford Hospital’s Sleep Disorders & Research Center and Wayne State College of Medicine, caffeine can diminish your sleep quality and quantity,
3. Avoid blue light at all costs.
Make this your rule: no electronics in bed. The light from these electronics can disrupt your body’s level of the hormone melatonin. Psychologist Dr. Nikki Martinez says, “Electronics stimulate the mind and keep us awake….we watch TV, we read articles, or play games on our phone thinking that we are going to do this until we sleep. However, we are actually keeping ourselves awake.”
4. Pack every thing you need the night before.
Each workday you’re confronted with roughly 35,000 micro and macro decisions. And with every decision you make, you’re using up the finite supply of mental energy allocated to you each day. According to Roy F. Baumeister, the co-author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, the act of making decisions for work uses the very same willpower that you use to say no to doughnuts, or even things like drugs or illicit sex. The night before, stock your grab-and-go system with the following day’s required food, clothes, and belongings to help you get out of the door while expending the least amount of willpower.
Stage 2: Waking Up (5:00 AM)
When and how you wake up will set the tone for the rest of your day.
5. Wake up early, and at the same time, every day.
The list of wildly successful people on the morning runway to high-performance days is long: Apple CEO Tim Cook wakes up at 3:45 AM. PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi wakes at 4:00 AM and is in the office no later than 7:00 AM. Vogue’s Anna Wintour and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey have alarms that go off before 6:00 AM. Laura Vanderkam, the author of What Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast polled several executives. 90 percent said they wake up before 6:00 AM. Waking up early gives you the space to turbocharge your day, and waking up at the same time trains your body to fall asleep (and wake up) consistently and naturally.
6. Replace your alarm with music.
Sleep expert Dr. Michael J. Decker recommends replacing the obnoxious alarm on your phone. He personally rises to Elvis Presley’s “Follow That Dream.” “It’s the first thing I hear, and it reminds me to get up and look forward to the day,” he says. “I find myself much more positive when I hear that, versus other songs or tones I’ve experimented with.”
7. Don’t wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle.
Research published in a medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology has revealed that one in seven people have a sleep disorder called “sleep drunkenness”. This happens, according to the National Institutes of Health, when someone is awakened during non-rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is a deeper sleep period. And they’re usually triggered by a forced awakening, like an alarm or phone call. So plan the optimal time to fall asleep and wake up around these REM cycles. So stop hitting the snooze button. You would think that hitting the snooze button would make you feel less tired since you are getting more sleep, but it actually does the opposite. When you fall back asleep for such a short amount of time, your alarm wakes you up on the wrong sleep cycle, which can leave you feeling more tired than you began.
8. No social media or email first thing in the morning.
In a survey of nearly 2,000 workers in the UK, the London-based Future Work Center found that email notifications are linked to higher feelings of anxiety. Ask yourself: is that really how you want to start your day? Ego depletion refers to the idea that self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up. When the energy for mental activity is low, self-control is typically impaired, which would be considered a state of ego depletion. Checking social media and email contribute to decision fatigue, which erodes your willpower. Don’t expend your precious attention on tedium and busy work.
Stage 3: Right After Waking Up (5:00 AM — 5:30 AM)
Revive yourself and immediately get into a productive, purpose-driven mindset.
9. Be still, come alive.
Breath. Meditate. Exist. The American Psychological Association has compiled a list of the empirically supported benefits of mindfulness. They included reduced rumination, stress reduction, boosts to working memory, focus, and more. I personally enjoy the free Headspace app to guide me through seven minutes of meditation, but you can just as easily sit in a quiet, softly lit room and practice breathing in and out.
10. Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate!
Drinking water in the morning helps you feel more alert, rehydrates your body, and kick-starts your metabolism, says Rania Batayneh, MPH, a nutritionist and the author of The One One One Diet. Replenish those liquids.
11. Your first task of the day: make your bed.
In a 2014 commencement speech at University of Texas at Austin, Admiral William H. McRaven shared these motivational words:
“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.” This habit takes less than a minute habit can make you happier and more productive all day long.
12. Set an intention for the day.
In an article for the Harvard Business Review, Maura Thomas, the author of Personal Productivity Secrets, stresses the importance of being protective of our attention. “Your attention determines the experiences you have, and the experiences you have determine the life you live” she says. “Or said another way: you must control your attention to control your life.” As such, you have to be deliberate about setting an intention for the day.
Stage 4: Soon After Waking Up (5:30 AM— 6:30 AM)
Quietly and carefully nourish your body, mind, and soul.
13. Eat a small and healthy snack.
This is critical for the next strategy, working out. If you don’t get a snack, you’ll experience several adverse effects on your mind and body. Get in something small, light, and high in protein and complex carbs.
14. Review the day’s priorities.
Get a quick overview of what you have to do and where you have to be. In The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz describe a study in which a group of women agreed to do a breast self-exam during a period of 30 days. 100% of those who said where and when they were going to do it completed the exam. Only 53% of the others did. That which is in your calendar (and to-do list) is that which gets done.
15. Clear your head by writing in your journal.
As neurologist and teacher Judy Willis explains: “The practice of writing can enhance the brain’s intake, processing, retaining, and retrieving of information… it promotes the brain’s attentive focus … boosts long-term memory, illuminates patterns, gives the brain time for reflection, and when well-guided, is a source of conceptual development and stimulus of the brain’s highest cognition.” Reflective writing has also been shown to improve decision making and critical thinking
16. Practice gratitude.
Whether you’re being grateful to yourself, to your friends, or to the universe. Start your day by saying thanks. Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, spends five minutes each morning writing down what he’s grateful for and what he’s looking forward to. “[It] allows me to not only get more done during the day, but to also feel better throughout the entire day,to be a happier person, to be a more content person,” he said.
Stage 5: Into The Light (6:30 AM— 8:00 AM)
Fill up your tank with high-performance natural energy.
17. Release those endorphins.
I don’t enjoy working out, especially first thing in the morning. But I’m grateful that I got my ass out of bed and got into the gym. In the words of Muhammad Ali:
“Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”
A regular workout routine has tons of benefits, including more overall energy. Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary gets up at 5:45 AM and jumps on the elliptical or exercise bike, and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk starts every day with an hour-long workout with his trainer. Get those endorphins going. And if possible, get some sun in the process…
18. Get natural light.
According to the UCLA Sleep Center, letting in light helps to regulate your body’s natural circadian rhythms, which can have you feeling more awake and energetic.
19. Eat a good breakfast.
What you eat affects your productivity. Dr. Ron Friedman, the author of The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace, says that just about everything we eat is converted by our body into glucose, which provides the energy our brains need to stay alert. “When we’re running low on glucose,” he writes, “we have a tough time staying focused and our attention drifts. This explains why it’s hard to concentrate on an empty stomach.” Breakfast is proven to be the most important meal of the day. Get it right.
20. Regulate your caffeine intake.
You don’t need coffee first thing in the morning. It’s an artificial high that will over time blunt the energy-boosting benefits of caffeine and lead to an increased tolerance of the stimulant. Research gathered by Steven Miller, a Ph.D. candidate at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, revealed the times of peak cortisol levels in most people are between 8–9 am, 12–1 pm and 5:30–6:30 pm. Therefore, timing your “coffee breaks” (an apt term) between 9:30–11:30 and 1:30 and 5:00 takes advantage of the dips in your cortisol levels when you need a boost the most.
Stage 6: The Starting Line (8:00 AM — 8:30 AM)
Get yourself to the edge of the work day.
21. Get to work early.
Don’t get thrown off by being late. You’ll be preoccupied with thoughts that will erode you willpower: Are my co-workers resentful? Did I miss anything important? Should I have really made that unnecessary stop on the way? Save yourself the unnecessary stress.
22. Review your top 5 tasks.
American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault ends his evenings by writing down three things he wants to accomplish the next day. Planning the evening before is effective because we have a limited amount of willpower and decision-making ability every day. Barbara Corcoran, founder of The Corcoran Group and shark on Shark Tank, shares a similar view:
“At the office, I review the to-do list I made the night before. I figure out my priorities and do those first. The day has a way of running away from you, so this makes sure the most important tasks get done.”
Stage 7: Start The Workday (8:30 AM–9:00 AM)
You’re early, you’re energized, you’re ready to rock.
23. Eat the frog.
Brian Tracy, the author of Eat the Frog, bases his morning philosophy off of a quote from Mark Twain:
“If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.”
The “frog” he is talking about is your most important task or work — the one you’re dreading the most because it’s so big and important that it’s looming over you. Building the habit to do your biggest task first can give you a huge boost of accomplishment first thing.
24. Do your best work.
I learned the The 90–90–1 Rule from Robin Sharma. The underlying idea is to save your time for high cognitive capacity tasks. Sharma explains:
“For the next 90 days, your first 90 minutes at work, make it focused on your single most important project. I’ll repeat that again. For the next 90 days, the first 90 minutes of your workday, focus monomaniacally on your single most valuable project.”
25. No status update meetings until noon.
In their 2011 book, Willpower, Florida State University psychology professor Roy Baumeister and New York Times science journalist John Tierney argue against status update meetings before noon. They don’t require the difficult decision making that demands maximum mental capacity. All they’re doing is contributing to unnecessary ego depletion. Keep the morning for deep work and projects that require focus. You can get an update later on.
Legendary American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker, Jim Rohn famously said, “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” The strategies I’ve shared in this post also apply if you’re working a night shift or unconventional hours. All you have to do is wake up four hours before your targeted start to the workday.
A bad start to your day can bring the rest of your day down with it. And so starting your day on purpose, as opposed to only waking up because you have to be somewhere, will dramatically improve your productivity and performance throughout the day. By waking up early and having a clear routine, you’ll feel more prepared. You’re not going to be rushed like you may be if you wake up just in time to be somewhere.
Remember: consistency over intensity; it’s the little things (done often) that count. Start strong and get ready to go the distance.
Have more time, get more done.
