A Bulletproof Morning Routine to Supercharge Your Day
You don’t have to be a natural morning person.
It took me over 10 years to get the hang of waking up early.
I remember being in college in my early 20’s and on Tuesday/Thursday I had a class to go to that started at 10 am. However, most mornings I ended up sleeping in as I couldn’t bring myself to wake up in time for it.
Looking back on it now as someone who routinely gets up around 5 am (and enjoys it), it makes me laugh a little bit. I guess the point of telling you this is to show you that I am inherently not a morning person. I had to come up with a system that allowed me to get up earlier than I need to and get so much more out of all of my days.
Am I here to say you need to deprive yourself of sleep and wake up at 5 am every day? No.
My objective here is to share with you the system I have built over the past few years from waking up earlier than I need to everyday that has dramatically improved the quality of my life. A lot of people won’t like (or want) to hear this, but I would say that waking up early is likely the biggest reason why I am substantially happier, healthier, and wealthier than I was only a few years ago before I started this practice.
If you just want the quick summary I will put it down at the bottom for you.
It all starts with
the night before, when you go to bed. According to multiple studies, for adults a minimum of 7 hours sleep is a healthy long term requirement. So if you plan on getting up early, you can’t be going to sleep late.
This doesn’t mean you have to go to bed at 8pm and miss out on life, if you go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 5am then that is still 7 solid hours of sleep! I do recognize though that some people will have more trouble falling asleep than others. So here are a few things you can do to optimize your sleep (and get to sleep faster):
- Get your room temperature more or less to 65 degrees, as heat is one of the biggest disruptors of REM sleep.
- Consider using white noise, this will help turn your brain off so you get to sleep faster and don’t lay awake thinking about yesterday, today, or tomorrow.
- Eliminate as much light as possible in your room, this can be done by hanging blackout curtains over windows. Any kind of light can disrupt melatonin production, a very important sleeping hormone.
- Eliminate phone and screen exposure in the same room you sleep in, the blue light will again disrupt your melatonin production.
- Consider getting a smart bulb (not that expensive on amazon) in a lamp in your room where you can change the colors of it. Darker red and amber colored hues tend to stimulate melatonin production and help you wind down.
- Consider using an app such as SleepSpace that utilizes a gentle alarm clock. Instead of the typical obnoxious phone alarm that jolts you awake like you are in the trenches of war, a gradual alarm starts quiet and slowly gets louder over a few minutes so you wake up more naturally.
Now, the moment of truth has arrived
and your alarm is going off at 5am and it is time to get up. It is very important that you have to physically get out of bed in the morning to turn off your alarm! If my alarm is within arms reach when it is going off in the morning my odds of getting up go down substantially.
Once you get out of bed to turn off your alarm, the only thought you need to replay in your head over and over again is “DON’T GO BACK TO BED”. This needs to be said mentally over and over again, otherwise you leave room for thoughts about how you can afford to sleep for a few more minutes, how warm and comfortable the bed is, etc.
After turning off the alarm, get to the bathroom and start your day by splashing water on your face, brushing your teeth, and doing whatever hygiene routine you have upon waking up. At this point your mind will have accepted that you are actually getting up and you can begin to move into your routine. In reality, it only sucks getting up early for about 5–10 minutes, but after that your mind and body accept that you are not going back to bed.
For the first hour, you should do some activity that encompasses one, or multiple, of the following domains:
- Spiritual exercise — meditation, prayer, expressing gratitude
- Physical exercise — break a sweat if you can, but simple bodyweight exercises will suffice
- Mental exercise — reading, working on professional skills
Personally, I will start with some kind of exercise to get the blood flowing. If I don’t go to the gym for a quick 30 minute workout then I’ll just do some pushups or go for a brisk walk/run outside. Then, I will do 10 minutes of meditation and round out the hour with working on some cloud computing skills. Depending on how much of a flow state I can get into with that I may extend this learning time a little bit.
At this point, I am 100% awake
and I feel ready to take on the day with a significantly better mood and much higher energy levels (I’m also caffeinated by now…). What I have also noticed, is that when I fully do my routine stress doesn’t bother me nearly as much when compared to not doing my routine in the morning.
In theory it is simple, but like I said it took me over 10 years to get to this point. It’s going to take you some time to develop, but in reality it only takes about 3 months to establish a new habit. From that point on you can continue to modify your routine based on where you are in life and where you are looking to go.
In summary, here’s how to establish a routine that will supercharge your day:
- Go to bed on time the night before so you get at least 7 hours of sleep
- Put your morning alarm in a place that requires you to physically get out of bed to turn it off
- After turning off your alarm, mentally tell yourself over and over “DON’T GO BACK TO BED” until you get through brushing your teeth and splashing some water on your face.
- Spend the first hour after waking up doing activities that fall under the umbrella of mental, physical, and/or spiritual exercise. Getting your mind and body working and active is the objective here.
I do recognize that everyone’s life and preferences will be different. However, you can use the backbone of this system to establish your own and over time you can gain so many more hours in your day!
Hopefully this is helpful for you, I wish you the best and hope you continue to find happiness and success.
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