Morning Routine Craze

Everybody is talking about the morning routine. Writing, offering courses about it. Numerous articles, books, podcasts, and videos published.

It’s nice to have routines. They allow us to do things more or less automatically and once established, help us form habits.

Can you really achieve the benefits which are being claimed for a morning routine? Here is an example:

1. Wake up early (6am or earlier)
2. Drink water (500 ml or more)
3. Focus on your agenda for 4 – 10 minutes
4. Exercise (can be a simple stretch to 20-60 min Qigong or another workout)
5. Cold shower (seems to have many benefits but will come to it later)
6. Meditate, Pray, Gratitude
7. Visualise your goals, write them down
8. Breakfast
9. Write a Journal

This is not specific or definite list or required order but more or less everybody talks about the same or similar things.I challenge anybody to try half of this list for a few weeks. It would take a minimum 2-3 hours to complete the whole list. Unless you are merely going through the motions.

Most of us have routines be it morning, evening, work, sports etc. We establish them to perform better, do things without thinking too much, wasting time thinking about what to do.

My morning routine

With this recent morning routine craze growing bigger and bigger, I put it to the test.

My morning routine in order:

1. Wake up 6am
2. Drink 800ml water with a lemon juice in it (I suggest this to everyone, it keeps up your immunity to flue)
3. Morning prayer, gratitude
4. Qigong practice with warm up and stretching (it does make you sweat)
5. Shower (I am afraid I hate cold showers, I like warm water)
6. Breakfast
7. Meditate for 20 minutes (I developed my own method which I call Deep Thinking, it’s between contemplation and consciously resting your mind)
8. Writing my Journal

I did this a month and the outcome was good. I lost some weight, felt good, planned better, focused better and followed my agenda (to do list) without much stress.

Morning routine conclusions

The only issue was that my morning routine started to become like another job taking up most of my morning. It was taking between 2-3 hours. Although some argue that morning journaling is good because your head is clear after night’s sleep and rest, I don’t particularly like writing in the morning, I prefer evenings or just before bedtime.

I also felt pressured to complete all the items on my list. If I collected all the morning routine ideas and made up my list, it could take half a day to complete it.

The lesson is perhaps that you don’t have to follow the craze just because every self-development “guru” is talking about it. You don’t need to have a morning routine, or you can have a really simple one.

Your environment is a key factor in doing a routine. I have plenty of land and space in my country house and can do many different items in the mornings if I wish but not so in my townhouse. Adaptability, your needs, and flexibility are the keys. You can have a short, long or medium routine depending on your environment.

Keep training and keep strong.