Have you ever considered what a morning routine does to improve your productivity? Productivity is something I have struggled with since my kids transitioned from the baby/toddler stage to the preschooler/school-aged stage. Somewhere between going from being at a baby/toddler’s every call to suddenly having lots of free time I lost my ability to be consistently productive.
Last year, one of my goals was to get back to being productive. Especially since I finally have all kids in school and now can do my tasks uninterrupted.
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Increasing Productivity with a good morning routine
I read lots of books and articles about how we start our day makes a huge difference to our day. Something as simple as making your bed to a more complex morning routine.
At one point, I was following Hal Elrod’s 6 habits from his book The Miracle Morning. While this was a great way for me to begin incorporating a morning routine into my life, the truth is, it wasn’t sustainable. First of all, I am not a morning person. Second, not all of the habits served me the way I wanted.
So with the basics from his book in mind, I created my own routine that worked better for me. I started incorporating it in the last half of 2021 and I have been so much more productive.
How I start my day
And now, my morning routine.
- Eat breakfast and take vitamins – This was always the hardest part of my routine. I hate most breakfast foods and have always had a hard time remembering to take my vitamins. I finally found foods that work for me and vitamins that I like taking and this had made such a great difference in fueling me for my day. Who knew?!
- Read Scriptures and Pray – This is another thing I have always had a hard time incorporating into my day. But when I sat down to create my morning routine, I made sure this was a part of it. I have loved doing this at the start of each day. I have so much more clarity of mind each day that I do this part of my routine.
- Make my bed – I rarely get dressed for the day (especially in the winter), but I do make my bed. That helps signal to my brain that it’s time to start the day. Same effect I think as getting dressed. Plus, a made bed is really nice to look at. Especially since my home office is in my bedroom.
- Exercise – I have a love hate relationship with exercise. I hate getting dressed to do it. But I feel amazing after every workout. I have to make sure I do a workout that is right around 30 minutes. Anything more and I absolutely dread it which makes the morning leading up to the workout just awful.
Important things to remember
- I do not do these things consecutively in a row right when I wake up. I am not a morning person and take my time.
- I do use time blocking during the day and I fit most of it into my first block. Breakfast sometimes overlaps into my second block.
- I purposely save exercise for my second block as a break from my work.
This is what works for me. What works for you may be different. What I do think is for everyone is having a morning routine. Give it a try for about 2 months and see if you don’t notice a difference in how productive you are the rest of the day.
