How Even a Free Spirit Can Implement a Morning Routine
By: Steven R. Durgin
Tags: Self Improvement, Productivity, Habits, Morning Routines, Time Management

How Even a Free Spirit Can Implement a Morning Routine

I have a great relationship with my morning routine now, and I don’t feel I’ve lost an ounce of my freedom Steven R. Durgin Jun 4·9 min read

Image credit: Jovana Stojanovic.

Schedules never came naturally to me, so I assumed morning routines were for a different sort of person.

By the time I had worked several jobs and finished my master’s, I had experienced the benefits of having structure imposed on me, but I didn’t know how to create it for myself.

After trying Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning for a year, I discovered that I can keep a morning routine. It took a great deal of trial and error and customizing to get something that worked for me. But I’ve realized that my pattern of resistance to structure had more to do with the how than the what.

I have a great relationship with my morning routine now, and I don’t feel I’ve lost an ounce of my freedom. For those prone to wander, here are four keys to building that relationship for yourself.

1. Stop “Shoulding” Yourself

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Everyone has their recurring “shoulds.”

I should be more productive.

I should de-clutter.

I should respond to messages more quickly.

It’s freeing to frame your morning routine as something you get to do for yourself, not as something you “have to do.” It is an indulgence.

Delight takes us further than duty. What gets lost in all of the “shoulding” is our ability to access what we truly want. If your routine feels like a dreaded burden, picture what you want out of it.

What feeling are you after? What sort of person do you want to be?

Speaking for myself, I want a healthy body, a calm mind, a grounded sense of purpose, clear intentions for the tasks of each day, the thrill of learning something new, and a habit of creating content that makes the world a better place.

It’s no coincidence that my morning routine is designed to cultivate these very qualities. (Exercise, Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Reading, Writing).

Once I’ve paused to imagine what I deeply want, I feel drawn to my practices. Why? Because I am tuning myself to see them for what they truly are: the path to awesome.

If framing is the pre-game, then savoring is the afterparty. If even one part of your routine goes well, give thanks. Slow down and sigh a bit. Maybe even smile. Celebrating your wins is a powerful way to reinforce what you want, increase your sense of agency, and set yourself up to do it again next time.

What are your personal, pesky “shoulds?” As you grow in awareness, you will see them show up in self-talk, journaling, and conversation. Those are places to pause, get curious, and rewrite the script, always returning to those things that pull your heartstrings and make you come alive.

2. Make It Your Own

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Our routines are as unique are our individual lives. Don’t go by the book, unless that book explicitly tells you to experiment. To Hal’s credit, The Miracle Morning (TMM) does.

If you’re unfamiliar, TMM is made up of six practices:

Silence

Affirmations

Visualization

Exercise

Reading

Scribing

While the second “S” is a bit forced (Who even says “scribing”?), SAVERS is a fitting acronym, because Hal’s argument is that these practices save time. It was also helpful when I was just getting started, because I could easily remember the routine, and didn’t want to keep writing out the full steps into every page of my planner.

Although Hal encourages us to do these six specific things every morning, they can be done in any order (nifty acronyms be damned). They can also be done in six minutes or in 60. You could run a ten-mile or just do squats for one minute. It doesn’t matter.

Morning practices are less about time or intensity and more about intention.

In my own process of trial and error, I reordered TMM to fit my needs: Exercise-Silence-Affirmations-Visualization-Reading-Writing. (I also ditched the word “scribing.” Sorry Hal.)

Exercise . If I didn’t start my day with a short workout, meditation was more like an invitation to fall back asleep. Even when I managed to stay awake, I found the quality of my “silence” lacking. In my waking moments, I am either too wired or too sluggish to enjoy the practice. Instead, I found a sweet spot with jogging one mile — intense enough to wake up my body, but short enough that I would never be drained afterward.

. If I didn’t start my day with a short workout, meditation was more like an invitation to fall back asleep. Even when I managed to stay awake, I found the quality of my “silence” lacking. In my waking moments, I am either too wired or too sluggish to enjoy the practice. Instead, I found a sweet spot with jogging one mile — intense enough to wake up my body, but short enough that I would never be drained afterward. Silence. I went against Hal’s advice on eating breakfast after the entire Miracle Morning sequence. After a quick shower and breakfast, I made “silence” my second step, and the payoff was tremendous. I had no jitters and no lethargy. I personally use the Headspace app to guide my meditations, typically for 10–15 minutes. What often follows is a state of calm and centeredness that I carry into the day.

For this reason, I think of the silence step as “making room” for my affirmations — carving out the posture of mind and body that is actually receptive to the messages I most need to hear.

Affirmations . Next, it takes about three minutes to read my affirmations. I often read them aloud to engage my brain as fully as possible. In the background, I play a curated playlist of lyricless songs, which I’ve identified over time as being moving and motivating, but not distracting. My affirmations are deeply personal, powerful, and designed to cut into my unwanted thought patterns. Crafting your own can be a process, but it is absolutely worth the feelings they produce.

. Next, it takes about three minutes to read my affirmations. I often read them aloud to engage my brain as fully as possible. In the background, I play a curated playlist of lyricless songs, which I’ve identified over time as being moving and motivating, but not distracting. My affirmations are deeply personal, powerful, and designed to cut into my unwanted thought patterns. Crafting your own can be a process, but it is absolutely worth the feelings they produce. Visualization . At this point, I work through a task flow process that I specifically designed for distractable people, which has its own infographic and steps. Identifying my tasks for the day gives me specific things to visualize. Taking my cues from the Olympians, I imagine myself actually doing every major task that I’ve scheduled for the day, and ask myself, “What energy or feelings do I want to bring to this task?” I choose the two to three words that capture my answer and write them into my planner next to that event. I have found that this habit produces a noticeable difference in my mood, motivation, and the quality of my work.

. At this point, I work through a task flow process that I specifically designed for distractable people, which has its own infographic and steps. Identifying my tasks for the day gives me specific things to visualize. Taking my cues from the Olympians, I imagine myself actually doing every major task that I’ve scheduled for the day, and ask myself, “What energy or feelings do I want to bring to this task?” I choose the two to three words that capture my answer and write them into my planner next to that event. I have found that this habit produces a noticeable difference in my mood, motivation, and the quality of my work. Reading . In my case, reading is the weak point. It is the one aspect of TMM that I have neglected the most, partly because I am a slow reader, which makes reading even a single page a potentially discouraging event. It’s a work in progress.

. In my case, reading is the weak point. It is the one aspect of TMM that I have neglected the most, partly because I am a slow reader, which makes reading even a single page a potentially discouraging event. It’s a work in progress. Writing. Finally, I write down my answers to some brief journal prompts. I jot down “Today’s message to myself,” a habit I’ve picked up from Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Planner. This message could be unique to the day, or it could simply be a snippet from my Affirmations.

So there it is. I broke one rule and bent some others, but it doesn’t take much forum surfing to realize morning routines look different for everyone, even those within The Miracle Morning community. And this is why customization is key.

At the outset, play with the duration of your morning practices. Play with the order. Explore each practice with curiosity rather than tense shoulders and an itch to “get it right.”

If a specific method doesn’t serve you, give it up. Whatever you do, don’t assume that “it isn’t working” after trying only one version of your routine a few times.

3. Turn Your Routine Into a Fun Visual

This one was inspired by Tiago Forte’s Second Brain methodology.

“By offloading our thinking onto a ‘second brain,’ we free our biological brain to imagine, create, and simply be present. We can move through life confident that we will remember everything that matters, instead of floundering through our days struggling to keep track of every detail.” — Tiago Forte

Who wants to carry the burden of constantly reminding themselves? As a highly distractible person, I ran with this. I externalized my processes, morning routine included, and designed crisp infographics for each one in my workspace.

Here’s my modified Miracle Morning:

Image by the author.

The benefits of visuals are worth highlighting here:

It’s attractive. I’m no graphic designer, but I’ve made my morning routine something I like to look at. Even if I decide not to do everything on the list (for me, it’s often writing that goes on the chopping block) it feels inviting rather than confining.

I’m no graphic designer, but I’ve made my morning routine something I like to look at. Even if I decide not to do everything on the list (for me, it’s often writing that goes on the chopping block) it feels inviting rather than confining. It curbs my tendency to dive into work. I get tenacious. Not long after the morning coffee, I have a nervous energy about the day that can get the better of me at times, and I dive into work from a mindset of scarcity (i.e., “What if I don’t get enough done today!?”). With visuals, I’ve literally put my priorities in front of me. It’s hard to miss them, more reliable than reminders on my phone, and allows me to start the day screen-free, carving out the space I need to do deep, mindful work.

I get tenacious. Not long after the morning coffee, I have a nervous energy about the day that can get the better of me at times, and I dive into work from a mindset of scarcity (i.e., “What if I don’t get enough done today!?”). With visuals, I’ve literally put my priorities in front of me. It’s hard to miss them, more reliable than reminders on my phone, and allows me to start the day screen-free, carving out the space I need to do deep, mindful work. It’s flexible. In my first few months with this routine, I had attempted to put down six Google Calendar events for the six practices. It was cumbersome, and I felt like I was doing something wrong if I didn’t follow the allotted times. Then I tried making a single block event. But with my variable schedule, I still ended up wasting time moving around digital items instead of doing them. Now, I love having a representation of my routine that is time-stamp-free.

All in all, I believe visuals were the standout factor in helping me connect with my routine. But there’s one more piece that I found necessary for the free spirit to truly connect with structure, and it comes from the world of dieting.

4. Give Yourself Permission to Cheat

Photo by Amina Filkins from Pexels

Most New Year’s resolutions fail for the simple reason that they are framed in all-or-nothing terms. Once we’ve made one mistake, we feel that the resolution has been broken, and if the whole point was to “get it right” for a year, then it’s a bust.

But that shouldn’t be the whole point. If we loosen our grip on fantasies of overnight change, we begin to appreciate the slow, complicated growth that marks our real-world experiences. And that growth includes the freedom to break the rules, to notice the feeling of one day with the routine and one day without.

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Direction, not destination, is the key.

When introducing new habits, we must recognize the profound rescripting that is taking place. Habits do not exist independently of each other. Most of us have no idea how entrenched we are until we try to adjust something.

It’s okay to be messy.

It’s okay to discover things that change the routine or the goal.

And especially on the on-ramp, it’s okay to cheat.

Some treasures can only be found when we wander.

So wander. And once you’ve wandered a bit, gently return to your structure with a deep sense that you are choosing to. Again, it’s only there because it will help you get what you truly want (See #1), it should only be something that fits your needs (See #2), and it hangs at your desk to remind you of what you can come back to when you’re ready (See #3).