How I design my morning routine to achieve my goals

I got in touch with morning routines because of reading the book “The Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod, which was recommended to me by a friend. The idea is to develop a routine that you can do everywhere and that it’s so easy to follow that there can’t be any excuses for not doing it. For me, the great thing is that once I finish my morning routine there is nothing bad that can happen in the day because I already worked on a lot of important factors in my life.

Last summer I started doing the 7-minute workout, but it was limited to my physical health. By reading the book I learned that there are great benefits if I do the same in many other areas that impact my life such as mindfulness, reading, learning, visualizing and journaling.

After implementing a basic structure for my morning routine I read more books about the effect of compounding small steps and how habits help me to get what I want in the long-term. Doing small things frequently to compound value over time is not new and no magic, but the results always surprise me. By doing small, positive things every day I can build up potential over time that is hard to beat by one-off efforts.

I’m not a specialist yet, as I’m “just” doing it since the beginning of the year (53 days), but at least I didn’t miss a single day yet. Here are the exact steps I do in my daily morning routine.

My morning routine

Exercise (10 min)

To start off the day I do the 7-minute workout to get moving. I know the 7-minute workout from an article in The New York Times. It’s a great combination of different exercises to make sure every part of the body gets its share. At the end, I do a bit of stretching and drink a glass of water. Doing it every day gives me 70 minutes of high-intensity interval training per week, which would be tough for me to do in one stretch. Doing a bit every day makes it much easier.

Silence / meditation (10 min)

The second part of my morning routine is all about silence. I use the Headspace app to meditate which guides me through a variety of different lessons and visualizations. It really helps me to calm down and get a clear mind for the day.

Affirmations / visualization (5 min)

Next, affirmations and visualization. It’s all about creating a picture of what I want to achieve and how the future will look like if I achieve my goals. It not only helps me to focus on my short- and long-term goals but also trains my mind that these things are actually achievable. When reading about affirmations and visualization the first time, I thought it’s hocus-pocus, but I tried it and I like the mindset it creates in myself.

To close the day, I also do a quick affirmation session in the evening, which helps me set the tone for the next day and clear off anything that bothers me.

Reading (10 min)

This is my favorite part in my morning routine. Reading for just 10 minutes gives me so much new input and helps me to develop myself further. If I would only be allowed to recommend one thing as a routine, it would be reading. It’s the end of February and I already finished 8 books this year. I really underestimated the positive effects of this, but it’s just amazing. A nice side effect is that the 10 minutes every morning motivate me to read even more, so often I get to 30 minutes per day by reading on my commute or if I have time to spare.

If you are interested in what I’m reading, you can follow my Goodreads account.

Journaling (5 min)

The last part of my morning routine is journaling. At the moment I use the Five Minute Journal which goes through a couple of different questions/statements in the morning and in the evening. The morning questions are:

• I am grateful for… (3 things)
• What will I do to make today great? (3 things)
• Daily affirmations. I am … (1 thing)

In the evening it’s a review with the following questions:

• 3 amazing things that happened today… (3 things)
• How could I have made today even better? (1 thing)

It really helps me to keep a positive mindset and to get things out of my head.

The power of habit tracking

In order to motivate myself every day, I log my habits for the morning routine, but also other habits that have positive effects on my life. This includes things like drinking at least 2.5 liters of water and making at least 10k steps per day. On top of that, I log KPIs like my weight, minutes of reading and what type of food I ate (vegetarian/meat/fish). Having the numbers shows me my progress and therefore links my routines and habits with achieving my goals, which motivates me to push harder.

Results

I’m thrilled with the results of changing my morning routine and building a compounding structure, as it allows me to create much more value from the same time I invest. I’m sure there are a lot of other great use cases in my personal life and at work where I can apply the learnings from this experiment.

What are your experiences with morning routines and the effects they have?