Learn how to build a morning routine that works for you and optimizes mental health.

Few things are as easily overlooked and yet essential for health and well-being as a morning routine. 

Routines provide necessary structure to our days. They minimize decision making, which saves brain power and reduces stress. Moreover, waking up at the same time every day and including a few other key elements could be exactly what you need for a better circadian rhythm (i.e. better, more consistent sleep) and therefore improved mood and overall health. 

Even if you know what to include, it can still be hard to be motivated to develop the right morning routine. 

Who would want to leave that nice warm bed, after all? 

Well, you would, if you knew how much doper your life could be. Or if you had something to look forward to. Or if you made it hard not to get out of bed. 

Whatever approach you need, this post is all about having the right morning routine that you’ll actually do. 

1. Build a morning routine that’s interesting.

Routines can be hard to establish because they are complex, or because you just don’t want to do them. 

So why not make whatever routine you’re trying to establish as interesting as possible? Make your morning routine something you want to do every morning. 

That doesn’t mean every part of it has to rock your socks off. Heck, the waking up part itself inherently sucks sometimes. But if you can make it something that makes you think, “hmm… I might actually like to do this,” then you’re halfway there. 

Exactly what you include is up to you, but you have to be realistic. Some things you like in theory but not in practice, like reading or meditating. For me, I love reading, but doing it right away in the morning isn’t that appealing. I’m too groggy and wouldn’t be able to engage my mind the way I want. 

On the other hand, I can get excited for a hot shower or coffee. I suspect many of you will have coffee near the top of your list. 

Whatever it takes, especially at the start of this routine/habit development, make it fun and exciting. 

2. Make it inevitable. 

Even if you have something fun to look forward to in the mornings, the pull of the warm bedsheets and soft pillow is hard to beat. 

Hack #2 is to make the habit inevitable. Make it so that you can’t just stay in bed in the morning; something makes you get up. That way you’re forced to at least get the ball rolling and create that forward momentum. Often, the rest falls into place. 

Strangely enough, I use my phone for this: I set the alarm for the same time every day, and plug it in far enough away from my bed so I can’t just grab it while in bed, or hit it or whatever to stop the alarm. I alter the settings to ensure that I can’t tell it to stop. Basically, I’m forced to either listen to the annoying alarm (which gets louder and louder by the second), or get up and shut it off. 

By the time I’m across the room, my body is in wake-up mode. I’m groggy, but I already have to pee, and I almost instantly do the wake-up stretch. 

Once you’re out of that bed, it’s much easier to stay out and get moving. 

I recommend this to everyone, partly because it works and partly because it keeps your phone away from your bed. You should never be looking at your phone in your bed, and you should probably avoid using your phone in your bedroom at all. But exactly what way you make getting out of bed inevitable is up to you. 

If it’s something like, “brush your teeth”, it can be hardfer to make “inevitable” but you can try to make it more likely by putting it in your way. If you know you’ll shower either way, put the toothbrush and toothpaste by your soap so that it’ll be obvious to you. 

On the note of specifics, let’s make it a little easier for you with Step 3. 

3. Use a template. 

Sometimes figuring out what to do is the hardest part. Why not start with what’s worked for someone else and tweak it to suit your needs? 

Here’s a schedule I’ve used before. Helped me a ton during COVID in particular, when I was home all the time and completely in charge of my own schedule. 

A quick Google search or use of some AI could get you a basic template to build off of. 

Next, we adapt it. 

4. Make it your own. 

The purpose of a template is to help get you started and reduce the amount of mental work you have to do in creating or developing a routine structure. But it’s important to make whatever routine you establish your own.

Everyone’s different, and that means we all have different needs or preferences. Remember, this routine you’re working towards is your routine, your tool… you are the master, not the routine. You’re the boss; do what you want with it, make it serve you and not the other way around.

This might seem like semantics, but it’s more than that. The mindset you have around a schedule could be the difference between you doing it joyfully and with minimal stress or it feeling like drudgery. Believe it or not, it’s much harder to stick with something when it feels like it sucks. 

“Your own” could mean a few things: 

Simpler. 

Minimal. 

Detailed.

Ritualistic (e.g. an involved coffee routine).

Spiritual.

Slow. 

Early. 

Last minute. 

Flexible. 

Rigid. 

5. Make it consistent. 

Whatever you do, there has to be some consistency for it to be effective. Mostly I say this from a mental health and circadian rhythm perspective: you should be waking up the same time every day. The rest is much less important, but consistency is still your friend. 

When you get up at varying times or you lay awake in bed after an alarm, you throw off your circadian rhythm; you confuse your body about when and where sleep should be happening. 

Take this to the bank: laying awake is one of the secret sins of bad sleep behaviour. 

Don’t mess with your sleep associations. When it’s time to get up, get up, and do whatever it takes to keep it consistent, even on days off. 

If you’re having trouble with this, I recommend that on days where you don’t have to get up or still want some added snooze time, get out of bed and go lay on the couch or somewhere else comfy. Don’t stay in bed; it’s not worth it. 

6. Be chill. 

Two things to watch for: negative reinforcement, desperation, or any kind of “forcing”. 

Turns out (go figure) that these add to stress, and stress takes away one’s willpower reserves. It tires the brain out, making any kind of behaviour change that requires discipline more difficult. 

So when you want to produce a change of behaviour, particularly when trying to stop laziness, you want to resist anything that says, “I have to” or “I need to” or really anything that takes the behaviour change so seriously that leads to excess stress or negative self-image. 

Instead, give yourself some grace as you slowly adjust to the new routines. 

“50% today – not bad considering we slept poorly. Let’s try for 75% tomorrow.”

Make changes small and reasonable, and don’t beat yourself up if things don’t go according to plan right away or all the time. 

Eventually, parts of your routine will be so automatic that they take less brain power than if you didn’t do them. Then you can use the freed-up “mental ram” to add the next piece. 

Keep working, friends. You’ll get there.