Morning Routine: Benefits & Tips For Creating an Energizing Daily Ritual

So you want to find the perfect morning routine, but you’re not sure where to start. ?

Maybe you’re not a “morning person” (yet), but want to explore what that may look like for you.

Or perhaps you feel like your morning routine is chaotic and disorganized, and want to seek ways to regain order at the start of your day.

Whatever your reason for wanting to set a morning routine, creating one that fits your lifestyle will be the key to finding and maintaining a solid morning routine—and one you actually enjoy having!

Wouldn’t be nice to start your days feeling refreshed and energized to take on the challenges ahead?

In this blog post, we will explore various ways to build the perfect morning routine that works for your lifestyle. We’ll also talk about how changing up your morning routine can help reduce anxiety and increase productivity!

Quick Poll: Which Type of Person Are You in the Morning?

Let’s play a quick game, shall we?

Which of these gifs best represent you in the morning? ?

A.) The Early (and Super Happy) Riser

B.) The “Always Late” Person

C.) The “Coffee First” Person

D.) The Night Owl (who tends to oversleep)

E.) The Snoozer ?

F.) The “Not a Morning Person at All” Person

Thanks for playing! Hopefully, that helped you identify what kind of morning person you are. ?

The more aware you are of your current morning habits, the more you’ll understand what areas of your morning need attention—that say, you can make the necessary adjustments to use your morning hours more effectively!

Now, let’s get into how we can help turn your mornings more enjoyable, energizing, and have them work for you! ?

Benefits of a Solid Morning Routine

Having a daily morning routine isn’t about adding more to your to-do list for the day.

It’s about filling in your mornings with activities (or stillness) that you need to help you rejuvenate, reset, and refocus for the day ahead. ? ?

Here are some of the top benefits of a morning ritual:

? Improved mental health and overall wellbeing

• Reduces stress and anxiety
• Improves focus and drive
• Less thinking power needed in the morning
• Helps you feel more grounded, connected, and confident

? Provides structure to your day

• Gives you the power to take control of your day/schedule
• Sets you up for success

? Promotes better time management

• Improves productivity
• Improves quality of work

A solid morning routine will brighten your mood and give you more energy during the day, reduce anxiety, boost your productivity levels, and make you feel better overall!

And when you take time to fill up your cup before the demands of the day get in the way, you’re more likely to have the mental, emotional, and physical capacity to tackle those challenges. ? ?

Calming your Morning Anxiety

Morning anxiety is not uncommon.

In fact, many of us experience morning anxiety because of stress from work, school, relationships issues, and so on.

Sometimes, anxiety can be caused by having too many obligations during the day, and other times it may be due to having poor planning and time management or lack of boundaries.

Either way, the feeling absolutely sucks! ?

While anxiety can occur at any time of the day, most people tend to feel it the most in the morning and there’s scientific reasoning as to why that is.

For most people, cortisol, which is the stress hormone in our body, is at its highest level during the early morning hours.

Because our cortisol levels are higher in the morning, we’re more likely to feel anxious, which in turn causes us to feel less focused and productive throughout the day.

This is where a morning routine that fits your lifestyle can help alleviate morning anxiety! ✨

Designing a healthy morning routine can help reduce morning anxiety by:

? Protecting your peace by time blocking and setting boundaries

? Promoting self-care (showing up for yourself)

? Improving mindset and mental clarity

? Helping avoid potential distractions or sources of stressors (ie. phone/ computer)

Tips for Creating a Solid Morning Routine ☀️

Now, let’s get you into some of the activities you can start implementing in your morning to help you become your most productive, creative, and take control of your days!

1. Set up a wake-up time and don’t hit snooze! ?

Yeah, we’ve all been guilty of snoozing our alarms in the morning just to get five more minutes of sleep (so we think). The next thing you know, you’ve slept through all your alarms and you’re late and in a major rush…again.

Whoops. ?

While we think sleeping in just a little longer is helping us get more rest, it’s actually doing the exact opposite.

Sleep experts explain that snoozing your alarm messes with your sleep cycles and causes you to feel more tired and foggy because it disrupts your REM sleep—the stage of sleep when your brain is stimulated to help learning and memory.

The secret to starting your morning off right is to get upright when the first alarm goes off.

A little trick you can try is by counting down from five after being woken up by the first alarm.

Simply count down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… then roll out of bed!

This five-second rule, a countdown method advocated by Mel Robbins, can help train your brain to break any bad habit and push you to take action that can change your life.

Check out our guide on healthy work habits! ?

Give it a shot and don’t snooze on it! ? ⏰

2. Eat according to your needs ?

Is breakfast really that important?

This one will require a lot of effort and research on your behalf!

Everyone’s bodies are different and so are their needs. Understanding how your unique body works, what types of food it needs, and how much food (energy) you need to power you through your daily activities is key!

Take some time to understand your health and how the foods you eat affect your mood, energy levels, and mental clarity.

The more you know about nutrition, the more you can make better choices about the foods you eat, especially in the morning! ? ? ☀️

3. Get a sweat sesh in or practice breathwork ?‍♀️

Regular exercise comes with tons of health benefits including boosting energy levels, improving mood, and cognitive performance to name a few. ?‍♀️✨

Implementing movement in your morning routine can help you:

• Gain mental clarity and improve attention span
• Feel a sense of accomplishment, rejuvenated, and recharged after exercising
• Boost your metabolism and energy levels
• And more!

There are several types of exercises that you can do, but the key is, once again, is learning how your body works, what it needs, and knowing what kind of activities you enjoy.

Whether it be running, yoga, CrossFit, Tai Chi, or walking your dogs, the goal is to incorporate movement and breathwork into your mornings to feel good, reduce stress and anxiety, boost energy levels, and improve your productivity.

Take a look at how exercise affects your brain function:

So now that you’ve learned a little bit more about the correlation between exercise and brain function, the next step is to map out your exercise plan! ? ✍️

⭐️ Pro tip: Use the Calendar view in ClickUp to schedule and visualize your exercise plan, and use it as a self-tracking tool. You could even take your Calendar wherever you go when you download ClickUp to your mobile device.

⭐️ Pro tip: Use the Goals and progress percentage feature in ClickUp to set weekly movement goals and keep track of your progress.

However you want to move, make sure that it’s enjoyable for you to help increase your adherence and elicit positive changes in your health and well-being. ??

4. Journal or create a checklist for the day ✍️

Journaling is a great way to untangle your thoughts and put them on paper (or online notepad), clear your head, and tie your thoughts and feelings together. ✨? ?

While you can journal any time of the day, doing it in the morning can have several benefits to your mental health. It helps declutter your brain when you write your thoughts out and allows you to free up space for what’s truly important (like the information you need to remember for your big presentation!) ?‍??

Aside from improved mental clarity, journaling in the morning can also help you connect with yourself and align with your intentions.

When you write your intentions down, you become more aware of what matters to you, which helps bring your focus to those goals.

⭐️ Pro tip: Use the Docs in ClickUp as a journaling tool. Express yourself in writing and use the rich text editing to format and color your Doc pages. Best of all, Docs automatically saves what you’ve typed on the page—no need to worry about forgetting to manually save your notes. ?

5. Invest time for learning ? ?

At ClickUp, we value the importance of learning and growing 1% every day.

In fact, it’s one of the core values at work that keeps us grounded, focused, and motivated to learn something new and get better every day. So it’s only fitting that we include this top tip in here! ?

Starting the day with learning can help bring a new perspective to many different aspects of your life and inspire you to think more creatively, especially at work.

Read a book, listen to a podcast, watch a YouTube video, practice your drawing skills, or fine-tune your guitar skills (as long as you aren’t waking your neighbors up with it).?

No matter how busy you are, we guarantee you that investing even ten minutes for learning every day will help improve your personal and professional growth.

Growing every day is one of the most powerful and impactful thing you can do for yourself.

It’s a huge key to happiness and success—not just in business but in all of life.

I grow by dedicating 10 minutes to learning and reading every single day.

What are some ways you ensure you’re growing?

Check out Zeb’s video post to hear him speak more about why learning is a huge part of his ethos. ?

6. Spend time with loved ones ?‍?‍?‍?

Humans have the biological need for connection, meaning our brains and bodies are wired to connect with others.

Not only is connection one of our biological needs, but it also has the power to create positive changes in the brain. ?✨

Take a few moments of your time in the morning to connect with your family, friends, loved ones, and so on. Whether it’s over the phone or in person, the connection will help you feel supported, which in turn will help you feel empowered, determined, inspired, and ready to tackle the day ahead.

7. Prepare the night before ? ?

Ok, now here’s a tip that’s technically not part of a morning routine, but it is key to ensuring your morning routine sticks.

Planning your days the night before can help increase your morning productivity and reduce the amount of thinking power that you’ll need when your day begins. When you plan the night before, you’ll know exactly what you’ll be doing the next day, what you need, how much time you need for each activity, and so on!

What you do the night before will have a domino effect on how your morning will unfold. So if you want to be your most productive self when the day comes, then write three to five of the most important things you want to get done the night before and block off the time you’ll need to knock those out.

⭐️ Pro Tip: Create create a task for each important item of business in ClickUp, add time estimate, task checklists, and priority flags, and view your tasks in Calendar view to ensure your to-dos are easily visible and trackable!

Ready To Design Your Morning Routine? ? ✅

Whether you’re looking to maximize the start of your days, organize your mornings, make time for what’s important, or simply feel more in control of your schedule, creating a solid morning routine that’s designed for your lifestyle will help you get there.

Wake up early (and on time), nourish and move your body, invest time to learn something new or practice to get better at something, spend time with people that matter to you, and plan ahead.

The more you take care of yourself and stay consistent every morning, the better you’ll feel all around and will help you feel your most productive and creative self at work. ?

And if you’re looking for a tool that could help organize and plan both your personal and work life, then try ClickUp—for free! ?

It has tons of features to help you plan your mornings and keep track of everything you need. From Calendar view to checklists, Notepad, Docs, tasks, time tracker, and other customizable features, you’ll always have the right tools you need to save time, set your days up for success, and help you grow 1% every day.

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