I’m just 1 person who depends upon a morning routine. I’m not a morning person. If given the choice, I would sleep through mornings entirely. But I have responsibilities with dictate the need to wake up. A morning routine helps me be automatic for a little while and start my day without needing to think too hard. It also helps me begin my day with intention.

Tips for Creating a Morning Routine

• Start your day with habits that build intention like taking medications, meditating, or making your bed
• Write a list of everything you need to do each morning and how long it takes you to do each
• Write a list of everything you want to do each morning and decide which of these you can fit into your routine comfortably
• Order your tasks so they make sense and don’t cause you extra time moving from room to room
• Be sure to take a few minutes every morning for yourself, whether it’s a journaling practice or just stretching and taking some deep breaths
• Leave yourself enough time to accomplish every task in your routine without rushing
• Don’t be afraid to revisit, modify, and revise your routine after a few days, weeks, or even months

I’ve listed my morning routine below to give you a few ideas. You will note that I do not make my bed. I don’t see the point of moving all my pillows and blankets around after getting them into the right, comfortable spots the night before. And as I am just 1 person and live alone, I don’t need to impress anyone with pillows that are just for display purposes. I know a lot of people who would fight me on this, so if it’s important to you, go ahead and make your bed as part of your routine. 

My Morning Routine

1. Weigh myself: I like to track my weight daily, though my official weigh-in for my bullet journal tracker is on Saturdays. Weighing myself every day helps me have a realistic idea of my normal weight fluctuations and helps me see patterns I might miss if I only look at my weight once a week. 
2. Get dressed, brush hair, and pet cat: One of my cats has claimed morning bathroom time as her own. As I get changed for the day, she rubs against me until I spend a little time petting her. Starting my day with her happy purring always puts me in a good mood.
3. Read a page of G’morning, G’night!: For the past few years, I’ve started every day by reading a page from this book, which is a compilation of some of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s good morning and good night tweets. I have many favorites, and they’re always a great way to take a breath and get ready for my day ahead with some support and reassurance. (Spoiler alert, I read one page as part of my bedtime routine as well.)
4. Pull a tarot card: I’ve discussed previously about the benefits of pulling a tarot card every morning. I find it to be a great way to center myself and sometimes prepare myself for what life has in store for me.
5. Fill up a water bottle: It’s incredible how much more human I feel after having some water. I fill up a water bottle with ice cubes and filtered water from my fridge, adding some flavoring if desired.
6. Medicate myself: I take my morning vitamins (D, Calcium, and C) as soon as I get downstairs to my kitchen.
7. Pick up cat dishes: One of my cats eats wet food during the night and also has an automatic feeder that goes off in the morning before I wake up. So I pick those up, set them in the sink, and put the ice packs in the freezer.
8. Medicate my cat: Sometimes this means searching the house for her. Sometimes this means chasing after her. Sometimes this means ignoring her and waiting for her to come to me. I give her two squirts of allergy serum and then we have to wait 10-15 minutes before I can feed my cats.
9. Open the curtains: There’s something magical about opening the curtains and looking out at the world each morning. Whether it’s sunny or overcast, snowing or raining, suddenly seeing the world beyond my house allows me to take another breath and get ready for my day.
10. Feed the cats: I give them wet food first, sometimes running interference so one of my cats doesn’t eat the other’s food. Then I fill up their treat balls with the day’s supply of dry kibble and stash the balls around the main level of my house. Sometimes the cats push their balls balls into the bathroom or down the stairs and I have to go hunting to find them. But I have two back-up balls if I am pressed for time in the morning and can’t find the ones I put down the day before. If I get distracted by checking email, one of my cats is great about reminding me to feed her by sitting on my desk and giving me a single, soft meow. I also set up my second automatic feeder for the day.
11. Make breakfast: I don’t always feel like eating in the morning, but my stomach does bad things if I don’t put something into it, especially if I’m getting into a car. My breakfast is usually small: a banana, 2 vegetarian sausages, or a cup of yogurt. Occasionally, on a weekend, I will make a larger breakfast with waffles or bagels and eggs.
     
12. Set my goals for the day: On a whiteboard by my desk, I will write down the 5 most important things I want to do during the day. It’s a nice task to go through during breakfast.
13. Check my email: Also during breakfast I skim through my email, deleting and reading as needed. Once in a while, something significant pops up, requiring me to throw the rest of my routine out and focus on putting out a fire. But usually it doesn’t take me too long to get through all the email that came to me overnight.
14. Check in on Habitica: I check in with my productivity and habit tracker to see if there are any events I need to be aware of for the day and so that my tasks from the day before can count toward any quests my party is running.
15. Search on Bing: I do my daily Bing search engine searches to rack up the maximum points for the day. I can usually take care of this by clicking on news stories. It’s a good way to stay up-to-date about the news while earning points toward a gift card I can spend on something fun later.
16. Brush & floss teeth: I brush and floss after breakfast, often times while listening to an audiobook at the same time (multitasking FTW!). 

Do you have a morning routine? What does it look like?

Photo by John-Mark Smith on Unsplash