Designing a Morning Routine
Published
I learned this lesson the hard way.
For years I started my mornings the same way many people do:
Alarm clock. Phone. Email. Messages. News.
Within minutes I was reacting to the outside world.
Eventually I experimented with designing a simple morning routine.
Today it looks something like this:
Wake up.
Take a cold shower.
Brush teeth in the shower.
Get dressed.
Drink a glass of water.
Start coffee.
Write a few lines in a journal.
Only then do I check my phone.
The routine itself isn’t magical.
The insight came from something else.
What happens the night before.
The phone stays outside the bedroom.
The toothbrush sits in the shower.
The journal rests on the table.
These environmental cues remove friction.
Instead of relying on willpower, the routine runs automatically.
(We explore this more deeply in “Designing a Morning Routine That Actually Works.”)