This is Why You Find Your Morning Routine Difficult

8 things you need to stop doing if you want your morning routine to work.

Over the quarantine, I made it my mission to establish a solid morning ritual after months of being stuck in a rut. I had just gotten out of a rotten place and it was high time I get my shit together.

Yeah, world, I know you’re falling apart. But I’m way ahead of you.

Enter my self-care journey. My soul was reawakened to see the joy in the little things, with the biggest little thing as waking up early.

After months of reading tips, understanding habits, experimenting on these strategies, and embedding them into my daily life, allow me to humbly brag this kick-ass morning routine:

5:00–5:10 Wake up & do a 10-min stretch

5:10–5:20 Open the curtains, drink 250ml water, and make my bed

5:20–5:50 Write in my journal

5:50–6:00 Wash my face

6:00–6:15 Duolingo

6:15–7:00 Breakfast, read news & Medium

There’s a lot of material out there that sing praises to the morning routine — the benefits, what habits work best, and how successful people do it.

Yet most people think it’s just too difficult to put structure so early into the day. Some falsely equate a well-crafted routine with uncomfortable rigidity. Some see it as some kind of complete overhaul that would demand too much adjustment (4:30 am club? Thanks, but no thanks). Some, with the most honorable intention to improve their lives, struggled to make the new habits stick, leaving them feeling dejected and weak.

Throughout my morning routine journey, I’ve realized that it’s really not that hard once you get over certain assumptions or dispositions.

Here’s the basic truth: There is no one way to start your day.

So, instead of another article that tells people what to do with their morning routines, here are 8 things you shouldn’t do to increase your chances of nailing it.

1. Don’t blindly adopt habits

It’s useful to research strategies, ideas, and tips, but think of them more as guidelines. 10 articles might tell you to go for an early morning run, another 10 will tell you to do some breathing exercise. You might want to adopt Michelle Obama’s or Richard Branson’s routines because they’re cool and successful and you admire them.

But don’t make the mistake of assuming that they will fit you or your lifestyle.

A better, more productive way to go about it is to have a basic understanding of why these common morning habits work. Taking this approach has largely helped me in two ways: (1) I’ve become more confident in the efficacy of the habit and (2) It’s allowed myself to customize the habits in a way that still harnesses the same effects.

It’s similar to the saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Rather than handpicking habits and hope that they energize you, understand how they work so you can use that knowledge in a way that serves your lifestyle.

2. Don’t expect to have it all figured out from day one

Have you ever tried laying down a whole game plan to improve your life?

I have. Multiple times.

I’d list down steps 1 through 10 of my routine and envision myself breezing through the morning. I felt like a master strategist with the ultimate morning routine within arm’s length.

I realized that taking this approach is trying to reinvent the wheel. All at once. Overnight.

The truth is that you don’t conjure up the perfect morning ritual in your head. Thorough planning is great, but the execution is, as always, a bitch. And adjustment is even bitchier.

Maybe you’ll succeed on day 1. Or perhaps 3 out of 7 days of the week. But I know from experience that this pressure to adjust only brings about frustration and self-resentment. Forcing yourself to make such drastic changes won’t get you to your goal any faster.

3. Don’t try to embed multiple habits all at once

We already have morning routines, we just don’t realize it. That’s because we do things on autopilot — wake up, reach for our phones, and lounge in the bed while mindlessly scrolling through our feeds.

We’re not creating new habits. We are simply replacing old ones.

And breaking a bad habit is never easy. Imagine trying to break multiple bad habits at a time.

Start small. Start with the basics. Start with one thing.

For the first week, commit to drinking a glass of water upon waking. Make it easy for you by putting a water bottle on your side table. Now, you are reaching for something first thing in the morning that is not your phone.

Do this until it becomes muscle memory.

Once you’ve eased into this habit, you can think about your next step. How do you want to spend the time after hydrating? What things would you like to do instead of scrolling through your feed?

4. Don’t force the habit

Consider my last question: What is it that you would like to do?

There was a time I decided to go on a 30-min run every morning because I was inspired by my colleague who was a real fitness buff. He’d wake up at 4:30 am to go on a 7-km run every day. So, I thought, why not? I’d sometimes go on a run after work anyway. I just have to do it earlier in the day, like, before the sun comes up.

After doing it a couple of times, I started to dread running at such an ungodly hour. While I mustered up the energy to do it, I didn’t find it revitalizing or mood-lifting.

I didn’t want to keep doing it just for the sake of it. So, after a few weeks, I admitted to myself that it wasn’t my thing and tried something else.

5. Don’t complicate it

Nowhere in my comprehensive research did I read that the more things you do, the more effective your morning routine will be. It bears repeating: less is more.

Moreover, the rest of your day is bound to give you more headaches. Plus you’re already living in constant paranoia and anxiety thanks to the pandemic. You don’t need any more complexities in your life.

Simplify your routine. Adjust it to your daily needs and priorities. If you only have time or patience for a 30-min routine, then that’s all you need to figure out. Cut it down to the top few things that you look forward to waking up to and are sure to benefit your mind and body.

Remember: Your morning ritual is supposed to support you, not burden you.

6. Don’t be afraid to do weird stuff

I start my day with a 10-min stretch. I guess it’s similar to yoga, but I can’t be too sure because I’m not a yogi. But I can tell you why it’s better than yoga.

As a former cheerleader, I understand that proper stretching exercises loosen up our muscles, maximize our range of motion, and allow our bodies to handle impact without getting injured. It’s the only way for us to nail a 4-min routine which requires a burst of maximum energy & performance where you extend your limbs as far as possible, hit the moves as strong as possible, and jump as high as possible.

Without a proper warmup, muscles feel tight, mobility limited, and strength sub-optimal. The only way to go full force is to have a warm, stretched body.

So, I adopted this thinking: By starting my day with a proper stretch, I am priming myself to perform at my peak for the rest of the day. I am easing into the day in the same way that I warmed up for an important performance.

This 10-min daily stretch is the exact warm-up we used to do in cheerleading training. While at it, I play the same 3 songs in the same sequence to mimic the dedicated warmup mix we used to have.

Ritualizing something does wonders. It’s why athletes and performers lean into them before stepping on the court or the big stage.

Don’t be afraid if it feels weird. That only means it’s unique and impactful to you. As Harvard Professor Mike Norton points out, “Sometimes the best rituals are the idiosyncratic ones like that that are personal to us.”

7. Don’t be half-assed about it

If you want to start your morning by listening to your favorite podcast, lip-syncing to Party in the USA, or weighing yourself like the girl in the stock photo above, just do it. However crazy that ritual is, make it stick.

Decide that you want to start your day right. To be more mindful of your waking hours. To claim your morning, and thus claim your day.

Make that decision for yourself and commit.

8. Don’t forget your WHY

Whether you’re an early bird or a night owl, or if you’ve established a morning ritual or not, we all have those days — the ones where it’s that much harder to get out of bed.

A morning routine is about habituating and ritualizing. But the morning itself is not just a particular time of the day that needs to be provided structure. The morning is a sign of a new day. It’s another chance to embrace what gives life meaning — a cause bigger than ourselves that’s worth getting out of bed for.

The structure provides the system. Purpose ignites the engine.

Pin down your driving force. Take a hard look within because no habit, routine, or article can give that to you.

Why do you wake up?

Why keep going?

Creating a morning routine isn’t a walk in the park. But it shouldn’t be that hard either. You can and should make your routine effective and engaging for you.

The perfect morning routine is unique to you. Keep that in mind and you’ll find that creating it could be one the most rewarding things you can do for yourself.