Why I Started a Morning Routine and How It Improved My Productivity

I was starting to feel like I was in a hamster wheel.

The days were starting to blend together because they were all exactly the same.

Get up, rush to work, come home exhausted, take care of the family, and plop down on the couch to watch stupid shows on television, scroll through garbage on Facebook, or play pointless life wasting games on the phone (I’m looking at you AdVenture Capitalist). All while wishing there was enough energy left over to accomplish all those goals floating around in my head, but I knew tomorrow is just going to be exactly the same.

That’s how I had been living, but my goals for the past 3 years have been trying to get my business off the ground and I had been failing. I was constantly tired, my body always seemed to hurt, and laziness was dominating any free time I had. It’s hard enough to attempt to start a business when you’re working 45–50 hours a week and trying to make time for your family, but when you’re energy is sucked dry, it becomes next to impossible.

I started asking myself, “Why do I constantly feel like this?”.

The logical voice in my head was more than happy to chime in:

-I was overwieght
-I was drinking way too much on a daily basis
-I was sleeping 4–6 hours a day
-I ate like crap, if I even ate at all
-My primary source of fuel were energy drinks

No wonder I always felt like crap.

I wasn’t setting myself up for success. All the things on the list were a direct result of not properly preparing myself for my day.

Luckily, I had been putting some of that time sitting around on the couch to good use. I was reading a lot. I began researching things about sleep, mindset, and maintaining energy throughout my day. Like most people in today’s age, I was secretly looking for a life hack that allowed to me keep living how I was, but have a ton of energy all the time.

Turns out the only things out there like that were cocaine and adderol.

I realized that there wasn’t going to be a quick, easy fix for this problem. It was going to actually take real effort. I could either keep living like a lazy blob and working for someone else, or I could make a valid attempt to get my shit together and see if it made any sort of improvement.

The first step to success is having a plan. I took the ideas that I had been reading about and made a promise that the next day I was going to put them into action.

My new morning routine was born.

Sleep

This part was going to be the game changer. I decided to get 7.5 hours of sleep the night before starting my new routine. I know, it’s a weird number, it’s supposed to be 8, but a lot of the things I had been reading about sleep cycles, and proper adult sleep made me feel like this was the best amount of time for me.

Turns out I was actually right. In the past 2 months I have woken up every day without an issue. There’s no more snooze button. I wake up when I need to and I’m just up. No debate, no desperate plea to hide back under the covers. No waking up hoping a snow storm buried the city and work is canceled.

I just get up, and I feel fine.

Coffee

Just because I get up when I need to doesn’t mean I don’t need a little push to really get my day going! Without the magical powers of coffee I don’t think I could do anything else on the list. I personally prefer 2 cups. The first helps me figure out where I am, and what day it is. The second is used to help me go through the mental list of things I need to get done that day. Any of that boring adult stuff, like paying bills, or going to the store, are prioritized first. I can’t be productive with the dread of urgent matters jumping into my head all day. From there, I prioritize my business projects. Do I need to write? Do I need to draw? What am I going to do to tackle all these long term goals? I set time for work, time for family, and time for rest. I start my day knowing exactly how I’m going to attack.

Exercise

Without a doubt, this is the most important part of my morning. I’ve never enjoyed exercise in my life. In fact, the last time I routinely worked out was in high school. I had a brief period where I ran on a treadmill in a gym until I realized that I hated running, and if I didn’t, I didn’t need a gym pass to do it.
Even though I wasn’t looking forward to getting started on this, I’ve reached a point now where any excuse I can come up with to not do it has been tossed out the window. Within the first 2 days I began feeling a positive impact. I now invest 20–40 minutes a day, 5 days a week. What keeps me going is the mindset that what I’m doing is going to give me what I needed to get through all the other things in my day, and ultimately, give me the drive to do the things I love to do. Besides, 20 minutes is NOTHING when it means you’re going to be able to maximize hours of productivity on the other end.

I don’t have a gym membership. I don’t own any fancy exercise equipment. The only two things I use are a set of dumbbells ($20), and Youtube. I alternate between cardio and lifting routines, that’s it.

Maybe someday down the road I may change my mind on what I’m using and what I need, but for a guy who is as out of shape as I am, those two things alone kick my ass on a daily basis.

Breakfast

I eat after I work out. I can’t do it before. I’m either not hungry, or afraid it’s going to screw up how I feel while I’m working out. Until I started my routine, breakfast was non existent. I don’t think I had regularly eaten in the morning since I was a kid.

Once the workout is over, I make some yogurt with granola, or have some Cheerios or that Special K cereal, and I walk around the house while I eat. I’m afraid if I sit I’m going to kill all the momentum I just built up.

The Cold Shower

When I mention this to people, they all think I’m crazy. However, I cannot encourage doing this enough. I won’t lie to you though, this is the biggest dread of my day. No matter how many times you do it, it never gets easier.

It sucks every single day.

So, why do it?

I’m not complete without it.

There’s days where my workout will kick my ass. Sometimes, I’ll be eating my breakfast just feeling destroyed to the point where I don’t believe I’ll be able to accomplish anything at all.

The cold shower puts me back together. The second I step out, no matter how exhausted I may have been from a workout, I feel absolutely amazing.

It’s these things together that give me the strength I need to fight through a day of work, have enough energy to spend time with my family and work on something that helps build my business.
Maybe these things will work for you, maybe they won’t. There’s nobody saying that if you need to start a morning routine or that these are the things you need to do. This is what works for me. I just hope that if you can relate to any of this, you make an investment in yourself and find something that works for you.

If you’ve had success with a morning routine or plan on starting one, leave a comment, or send me an email! I’d love to hear about it!