Why You Should Chuck Your Morning Routine
By: Michelle Loucadoux
Tags: Self Improvement, Lifestyle, Productivity, Health, Mental Health

There is a ridiculous amount of information out there in the self-improvement world on how to create the perfect morning routine. According to every guru, if you want to be successful, you should meditate, work out, journal, make a fresh green juice, drink 2 liters of water, stretch, and jump in an ice bath before 6 am.

Morning routines are the hot topic du jour. Tim Ferriss asks all of his guests about them, Robin Sharma says you should wake up at 5 am every day, and Brendon Burchard says you should meditate every morning before doing anything else. Everyone seems to have an opinion on how to spend the hours between waking up and going to work.

So, I decided to do a little morning routine experiment. I would try to do all of the things that people say I need to do in the morning, in varying combinations, and see how the rest of my life fared. Here were my chosen morning activities and why they’re supposed to be good for you:

Gratefulness practice — Research suggests that some kind of gratitude practice is linked to better physical and emotional health.

Cold shower — Just 30 seconds of a cold shower can force you to breathe deeper, improve circulation, and lower blood pressure.

Alkaline water — Okay, it’s not completely proven, but some scientists believe that alkaline water can slow bone loss. For sure, though, overall hydration (tap or bottled) is key to health in general.

Mindfulness/Meditation — Studies have shown that mindfulness can help bring about a moderate improvement in an array of ailments including IBS, psoriasis, anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

Reading — I mean, yeah. Reading is good for you. It makes you smart and I find it relaxing if I don’t do it on an electronic device.

Journaling — Writing down your thoughts can improve your mood, can improve your sense of well-being, and can stave away depression.

Exercise — We all know exercise is good for you. It controls your weight, fights off negative health conditions, improves your mood, boosts your energy . . . and makes your sex life even sexier.

Butter Coffee — Adding butter and coconut oil to your coffee is believed to provide long-lasting energy without a sugar crash. (It’s not as gross as it seems).

Juicing — Juicing is not necessarily better than eating the whole fruit and vegetable, but it’s faster and more efficient. So, if you’re not going to eat healthy things the rest of the day, bust a move with your juicer.

In short, I have spent the past month trying out different combinations of these suggestions. In one month, I tried out three different morning routines (10 days for each routine).

And after trying out varying mixes of the suggestions above, I decided that the best morning routine for me was . . . to not have one. A little anticlimactic, right? I did, though, learn a lot. Here is what I learned from my experiment:

Morning Routine #1 — The Overachiever

The first-morning routine I experimented with was . . . everything but the kitchen sink. I tried to smash every piece of advice I had ever read or heard about morning routines into the two and a half hours of the day before my kid woke up. Here was my schedule:

5am: Wake up and immediately think of 3 things to be grateful for 5:10am: Take vitamins and chug 2 liters of alkaline water 5:15am: Meditate 5:25am: Journal 5:40am: Read something interesting (Eckhart Tolle, etc.) 6am: Work out (30 minutes cardio and 15 minutes weight training) 6:45am: Shower, finish with cold burst of water, and moisturize 7am: Juice carrots, spinach, kale, apples, and ginger and pair with coffee, butter, and coconut oil (gross, btw) 7:20am: Start writing or working Total work time before the kid wakes up: 25 minutes (approximate — he wakes up any time between 7am and 8am — usually around 7:45).

After over two hours of a rigorous morning routine, I didn’t have enough energy for the rest of the day. Yes, I felt accomplished, but I was also exhausted. Additionally, I found that trying to stick to a crazy schedule and fit every healthy habit in the world into the first two hours of the morning was, well, stressful. I thought, “Isn’t that kind of the opposite of what I was trying to accomplish?”.

Yes, I was doing good things (meditation activates the good parasympathetic nervous system and can soothe your anxiety, hydration is important to prevent nutrition-related non-communicable diseases, and, according to Healthline, butter coffee is proven to give you steady energy without a blood sugar crash). I was doing all of the right things, but perhaps, I was forcing myself to do too many of them.

After ten days of torture, I realized that starting my day with a schedule full of 2,092 things that I must accomplish before 8 am sucked up so much of my energy and discipline that I had very little left for the next 15 hours of my day. I often collapsed on my sofa by 2 pm and never recovered. In short, I decided that morning routine #1 wasn’t for me. It might work for Tony Robbins, but I figured that I should lay off the rigor and overachieve in other areas of my life. On to the next routine.

Morning Routine #2 — The Zen Master

The next morning routine I tried was a combination of activities that I thought would prepare my brain and soul for the day. I figured that if I could mentally prepare myself for the day, I could work out at lunch, do other healthy things throughout the day, and triumph over any challenge with wisdom and clarity. Also, I figured that, if I wasn’t going to be a super overachiever in the morning, I would at least try to be a zen master of my morning. Here’s how my second-morning experiment looked:

5am: Wake up and list three things I’m grateful for 5:15am: Free form journaling for 30 minutes 5:45am: Meditate for 15 minutes 6am: Read something interesting and uplifting During this whole time: No phone, no television, no podcasts and listen to 548hz healing music on Youtube 6:30am: Start writing or working Total work time before the kid wakes up: 75 minutes

The first thing I realized after trying this morning routine was that I would make a terrible monk. I enjoyed a peaceful morning, but I found that I was restless. Taming my monkey mind for 15 minutes of meditation has always been difficult, so a whole morning of mindfulness was both frustrating and, well, too unproductive for my taste.

As I was journaling, I would think of things I wanted to accomplish for work or stories I wanted to write for Medium, I’d get upset that I was forcing myself to journal and meditate, and I would negate the purpose of journaling and meditating. I genuinely couldn’t get to 6:30 am fast enough.

I also realized that mornings are the time I am most awake and creative. I found I was wasting my most creative hours of the day trying to clear my mind. Why not plan to clear my mind when it needed clearing? Why not meditate and journal around 4 pm when the stress of a day of working from home with a two-year-old has bubbled up to my ears?

So, in short, I decided that it was a hard NO on the Zen master morning routine. I figured I was just too impatient. (Things to work on in the next 10 years of my life.) I wondered, though, what if I didn’t have a morning routine? What if I just woke, up, grabbed a cup of lovely Ethiopian coffee with soy milk, stopped trying to be so perfect, and just started slaying my day? Enter morning routine #3:

Morning Routine #3 — The Un-Routine

Eff it. For my last ten days of morning experimentation, I decided to have no routine. Yes, I woke up, peed, and made coffee every morning, but that was about it. No meditation, no working out. Just drinking coffee, sitting in my favorite chair, and staring out the window until I thought of something I was excited about writing about. Ladies and gentlemen, morning routine #3:

5am: Wake up 5:10am: Coffee 5:15am — 7:45am: WRITE A POOPLOAD OF WONDERFUL STUFF AND START THE DAY WITH A SUPER WIN! Total work time before the kid wakes up: 150 minutes!

Yep. That’s it. Rather than journaling, making fresh juice, and crafting the perfect shower, I dragged my unshowered flabby jammie-wearing self to my chair and got the heck to work with my favorite cup of Joe. It was amazing.

I moved all of my other healthy activities to other parts of the day. I went for a run in the late afternoon when I started to get tired, I meditated at 4:30 pm behind the garage when my husband took my kid for a walk, and I took a shower to relax at night. Aaaahhhhh. That felt right.

Listen, every self-improvement expert will give advice, but I’m here to tell you that you don’t always need to take it. I’m also here to tell you that I’m a square peg and I don’t fit in the round hole of morning routines. I prefer putting my nose to the grindstone first thing in the morning and then dealing with self-care later in the day.

We all have a limited amount of time in our days and I am most awake and creative when I hop out of bed. Now, because of my fun month-long morning experiment, I have decided to take full advantage of these valuable minutes. AND, because I’m not juicing kale for 20 minutes, I have significantly more minutes to play with.

Now, I don’t always wake up and get to it. Sometimes, I feel like a need a shower first. Sometimes I go for a sunrise walk around my neighborhood. But, I give myself the freedom to check in with my body, see what I’m needing for the day, and do what I feel is right for that particular day.

The moral of the story is that healthy habits are obviously good for you, but you need to find a morning routine that works for YOU. Everyone feels differently at different times of the day, and if you want to be optimally effective with your 24 hours of the day, you should pay attention to your body and adjust your schedule accordingly.

Most importantly, you shouldn’t feel guilty if your perfect morning is different than what society tells you it should be. If you are conscious about crafting your morning to fit your specific needs on that day, you’re winning.

In the long run, after one month of trying on routines like different pairs of jeans, I have truly found that, when it comes to mornings, one size does not fit all. Listening to your body and taking care of yourself the best way you know how is oh-so-much more important than forcing yourself to be perfect the minute you leave your bed.

When it comes to mornings, you be you, boo. Namast-slay.