It’s What You Don’t Do in the Morning that Matters
By: Victoria Forsyth
Tags: New Years Resolutions, Productivity, 2021, Morning Routines, Goals

Everyone eulogises the morning routine. You can even experience, ‘The Miracle Morning’. Hundreds of books and articles are written about them, celebrities try to outdo each other with them (Dolly Parton is up at 3am, Mark Walhberg 2.30am). A market of morning-related products has also sprung up so you can complete your ‘Morning Journal’, ‘Morning Checklist’ and ‘Morning Affirmations’.

Over the last few months I have experimented with some different morning routines including:

Favourite components of these routines include exercise, meditation, journaling, prayer, work, fasting, gratitude and cold showers.

However, what I have realised from my early hour experimentations is that really your morning routine can consist of anything you want it to, the content doesn’t really matter.

The most important thing about mornings is not what you do, but what you don’t do. The one thing these routines have in common and the only thing that really matters and makes them effective is this: Do Not look at your phone.

Where you Day is Won or Lost

It is interesting that Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning was published in 2012, not long after smartphones were becoming more popular. Up until the use of smartphones we didn’t need ‘Morning Routines’. All these morning routines essentially are ways to get things done before our phones take over, before they steal our locus of control.

The small yet powerful device is the one thing that determines whether you win or lose your day.

Why is such an innocent looking thing so bad? Surely a quick check of the weather and the news can be no bad thing? Well it is. Just one small action of a quick look can massively impact your day. When we check the news or anything we are handing over our power and our control.

What we control and what we believe that we can control are important. The locus of control refers to an individual’s beliefs about the extent of control that they have over things that happen to them. If you blame external events and feel you have little control you tend to be more anxious and depressed, as well as more vulnerable to illness. If we take the morning to exert control over our lives by getting fitter, more educated, more zen, or just more us without distractions we can see how much we can control our lives.

The internet is like walking into a giant amazing library full of wonderful resources, but lurking amongst the books are people tempting you, do you want to buy this? Did you hear about this? Come and play this game with me, ‘Oi’ I want to have a chat. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to get any work done in a library like that, how much discipline and focus it would take to ignore all those people? It would take a lot of mental energy and we would probably choose somewhere else to work.

When I thought I was just checking the weather and the news, spending say a maximum of 5 minutes, I was actually looking at between 6 and 20 items. Despite these mainly being news articles, they would have still subjected me to adverts and just general thoughts about the world that I could do without. They also included the odd facebook and YouTube visit.

What is worrying is that first thing in the morning at an old workplace, colleagues would be taking selfies to return a snapchat to their teenage children. By the start of the school day their children had snapchatted, tictok-ed and selfied probably at least an hour away. In 2000 when I worked for a Sponsorship consultancy, the statistic given then, was by the time we get to work we are exposed to 1000 adverts already, from the radio, TV, billboards and advertising on transport and that was before smartphones. Digital advertisers now think Americans are exposed to between 4000 and 10000 adverts a day.

In 2018 France banned Smartphones in schools and other countries are likely to follow suit. (one wonders though if the damage has already been done before the start of the school day). Numerous studies are showing the negative impact of smartphone use. How is can reduce focus, negatively impact exam results, reduce cognition, harm mental health by social media.

It really doesn’t matter if we exercise, meditate or just eat a lovely breakfast mindfully, all that matters is that we are present and our brain is ours. Our thoughts are ours, our control is ours. Our actions are determined by us and not behavioural psychologists who are paid millions by advertisers to grab our attention and get us to click on something.

For anyone that has spent time with young children you know how annoying it can be when they are constantly wanting your attention, look at this, watch how I do it this time, (as they dive onto the sofa for the 100th time in what can only be called a mediocre way), read me this story, come and play with me. That is what our phones essentially are and a morning routine is simply some time to yourself before this begins.

One way to help myself avoid the temptation of the phone is to imagine, highly paid advertising gurus, wearing suits, shrunk down to 4 year old size, saying watch this, mummy/daddy look at this, look at me, me, me.

Sometimes if we are feeling low it can be a good distraction and a dopamine hit to avoid the real feelings of shitness that we are feeling. Smartphones are probably the most used painkiller or numbing device. They distract us from our pain. But if you’re feeling that bad, maybe a good cry or self compassion meditation or walk would be a lot better or getting more in control of your life.

How else can we avoid the smartphone and the dopamine hit it gives us?

Turn off your WiFi before going to bed

Leave the phone in another room

Put it into Airplane mode

Buy a small clock to have by your bedside so you don’t need to use phone for the time.

Use an MP3 player or an very old phone with no other apps if you use your phone to listen to books at night.

If you have an elderly relative, or want to be contactable in emergencies, don’t put in airplane mode, but have sound on and on the other side of your room.

Guru of productivity and systems, James Clear, doesn’t check his phone until midday. Give yourself time without your phone. Design your own morning routine, whether it is having a cooked breakfast, reading a book, or simply relaxing and pampering yourself with a beauty routine, enjoy it. Ditch the attention seeking gremlins, just be present, soak up that time, that ‘you time’ .

You don’t need a morning routine you just need a morning to yourself. Benjamin Hardy talks about how he feels good after a productive day, he is more happier at home with kids, if he’s done productive work rather than scrolled through his phone. Having experimented with morning routines I too can say it does improve how you feel and can make a massive difference to your day.