After listening to a lot of people speak and from my own experience, I have found that if I ‘win the morning’ the rest of the day is so much easier/better.

For me, winning the morning means that I get the most important things done early and I set up my mindset for a successful day.

How could you win the morning? Well, what is important to you to get done and what makes you feel good about yourself? What will set you up for a highly productive day?

This is what I have been working on. I don’t get it right every day and it will continue to be work in progress. Note: A positive from lockdown is that I am now able to to structure my morning this way as previously it has been too hard having to get places and do more in the mornings. The true next challenge will be post lockdown and how do I carry parts of it through.

My current routine I have adopted to get the most from the morning and in turn the day.

Alarm goes off at 6:10am (I am in no way a natural early riser and could easily sleep well past this time). I doze for a little but start to get my brain going and think about my day and what I want to achieve. This works for me is that although I’m not a natural early riser my brain kicks into gear really fast in the mornings whereas if it is evening I am no use to anybody. I have a lot of trouble doing anything creatively productive in the evening. I only point this out to show people are different and some would find that hard.

If you read a prior post, you will know that I like to have 2 or 3 tasks planned that I want to achieve for that day already written down the night before. What I am now trying to do is lie there for a bit (part of the doze) and visualise the day and exactly what I am going to do. I visualise the routine I am about to list below and step through best I can. I’m not very good at visualisation, but is something that dates back about 20 years ago when I was heavily into sports. If I can see myself going through each part of my morning, I am clear about what I am going to do and it removes those dead patches where you are slightly lost with what task to do next as you have already seen yourself doing them. I’m not visualising the entire day, I wish I could, but I lose some focus and direction by lunchtime. But, by that point I’ve ticked the majority of the big boxes and the afternoon is more about responding to things happening for that day.

Morning Routine:

Alarm at 6:10am
Doze and visualise day and clarify what I want to get done
Up before 6:30 and drink a decent size glass of water (roughly 300ml)
Out the door for morning walk whilst listening to an audiobook. I am currently really enjoying listening to these books and that is part of what makes going for a walk more enjoyable. Side note: Pair enjoyable tasks with something that you might find otherwise challenging.
Home by 7:15 and put on the jug to make my wife and I my specialty plunger coffee (prob not special at all, but my wife has played the game beautifully to say that only I make the best coffee’s and has strategically positioned herself to not have to make coffee…….)
Another glass of water
Whilst coffee brews I have now started to make a conscious effort to spend 10mins playing with the kids and making them laugh. Sounds silly but this is special as my kids generally wake up in great moods and it’s a cool part of the day to have some early fun and laughter. Once again, post lockdown and time pressures this may not happen as I’m gone before they get up.
7:30am Couple emails and morning work tasks
8am-9:45am start Zoom sessions and kick into knocking off the tasks I had out on my list.

9:45am Breakfast and make some food for the kids

Post this point, it does change day to day, but by now I have set myself up for a really good day. Here is what I have ticked off:

– Mentally prepped for what I want to achieve
– Feel great that I have got up early and not wasted part of the day (as hard for me as it is in that moment to not continue sleeping)
– Got moving
– Personal Development via audio book
– Done a nice thing for my wife in making an outstandingly delicious coffee as rated by completely unbiased (possibly strategical) recipient
– Laughed with my kids
– Ticked off 1 big task for the day (or close to it)
– Healthy breakfast

– Got ahead of the game on my water intake as likely close to 1L by this point.

How I made it easier for myself to get up and get out the door for a morning walk:
– I have my clothes out and ready
– I am looking forward to listening to my audio book

– I literally get up, put warm clothes on, put headphones on and walk out the door. I don’t have to think about it, I just do it. If it is raining, I have a jacket by the door.

Have a think about how you would like your morning to look. How can you win your morning to make the rest of the day easy……?