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Now that we have gotten the benefits of a morning routine out of the way, we can jump right into crafting the perfect routine. Crafting the perfect morning routine starts by looking at what you do already. It is impossible to know what to improve or change if you do not observe your current habits first.
Of all the steps, this one will likely be the easiest. You do not have to change a single thing. The only thing you need to do is roll out of bed like you normally would and reflect on what you do and how you feel after you wake up. It really is as simple as that. In this chapter, we are going to look at how to observe your current morning routine to create your new and improved one.
Keep A Morning Journal
The only thing you should be doing differently at this stage is keeping a morning journal to log your experiences and feelings in the morning. This journal aims to connect how you feel in the morning and the rest of the day to how you approach waking up. Your morning journal does not have to be extensive, thorough, or take up a lot of your time. You can simply keep it in the notes section of your phone or dedicate an actual journal to it. Just keep all of the thoughts in an organized place so that you can find them later on.
It is important to log your feelings and emotions right after you get started in the day. This will help you better reflect on how your current morning routine affects your self, body, and stress. In addition, track your energy and productivity for the rest of the day. You want to see how your current morning affects how you live your life too. Although you can personalize how long you track your current morning routine, it is best to do this step for about one to two weeks. Repeating this process over a series of days will give you a better idea of how your morning routine impacts your life as a whole. If you only reflect on one morning, you might not be getting the whole picture. After all, some mornings are busier than others.
Make sure you get busy mornings, slow mornings, and unforeseen mornings in your journal to have a complete picture of how your morning affects your day. It is important to note that you should keep a physical journal instead of simply noting situations in your mind. By the time the week is up, you are likely going to forget many of the emotions and facts of your days. Keeping a physical journal, whether it be in a notebook or phone, will help remind you during the reflection stage. What Do Your Mornings Look Like? Now that you have your journal, try to predict or imagine what you think your morning routine is already like. Do you perceive your mornings as being rushed or stressed? Or do you view them as being relaxing and a good stage for the day?
Thinking about how you perceive your mornings will tell you a whole lot about them. In many ways, perception matters more than reality. If you view mornings in a negative light, you will often respond very poorly to them. Take note of what you think your mornings are currently like so that you can compare them to reality. It is important to physically write down (or type) what you think your mornings look like in your morning journal. After the observation period is up, compare how your perception matches or differs from reality. If you do not write down your perceptions, it will be hard to know what you initially thought about your morning routine.
Your Usual Morning
As it has already said, this step will be really easy. Go about your morning routine as usual. Press the snooze button as many times as you want, do as few productive activities as possible, and do not change a thing. Do not even feel pressure to improve in the slightest. If you are dishonest about your current morning routine, you will not be able to create a better routine. In other words, do not even slightly act better than usual in the mornings during this step. Just go about your morning as usual.
Reflect on the Journal
After the observation period is up, you need to pull out your journal and reflect on it. Look at your emotions, productivity, energy, happiness, or anything else that you tracked throughout the week. Do you see any trends? Are they good trends or bad trends? While you are reflecting on your journal, you might want to write more about anything you learned. Write about anything that surprises you or does not surprise you. Although this step may sound pointless, it will be beneficial when creating your morning routine’s specifics. As you are reflecting on your journal, do you notice any brainstorming happening without you trying? If so, make sure to note them so that you can easily access these ideas at a later point.
Recap
Getting started with the morning routine starts by looking at your current mornings. Keep a morning journal so that you can compare perceptions to reality, track how your mornings affect your day, and begin brainstorming for your future routine. It is important to be diligent in this step so that you can create the best morning routine for your needs.