Do you wish you could feel energized, calm, and full of excitement every moment of every day?

(I do.)

But we know… life isn’t like that.

The good news is, having a good morning routine will help you to feel more energized, calm, and excited for your day than just rolling out of bed and jumping right into action.

Keep reading to learn how you can create the perfect morning routine for your personality and lifestyle.

Table of Contents

1. Step 1: Discover Your Morning Routine Type
2. Step 2: Choose Your 3 Essentials
   1. How to choose your 3 non-negotiables
3. Step 3: Slowly Build Your Routine
4. Your Turn

Step 1: Discover Your Morning Routine Type

You have a different personality from me, and you also have your own circadian rhythm.

So what works for me might not work for you.

You might be the kind of person who snuggles up in your comforter until the alarm rings exactly 13 times.

You might be a total night owl who has never seen the morning sun.

Or you might already have a morning routine, and you’re either looking to get consistent, or looking for some new tweaks to make.

You’ll probably fit into one of these 4 types. Pick yours and you’ll see what I recommend as a next step.

• Late sleepers who don’t have a routine. It’s important to start small and get consistent before you try to get crazy with it. Start with Step 2 where you choose your 3 essentials.
• Have a routine but not consistent. If you’re not consistent, you’ve probably bitten off more than you can chew. I recommend starting with Step 2, choosing the bare minimum for your routine, and becoming consistent before you add on more.
• Night owl—what are mornings? If you’re a total night person, consider making yourself a night routine. Do the same things other people do in their morning routines, just at night.
• I’m already doing well in the mornings: That’s great! You might find some helpful tips inside Step 3 below.

(Which type are you? Let me know in the comments below!)

Next you’ll choose the 3 most essential steps to include in your morning routine.

Step 2: Choose Your 3 Essentials

No matter how productive of a person you are, there will still be mornings when you can’t get out of bed, you feel terrible, or something (or someone) fills up your morning in a way you didn’t expect.

For those days, I like to have 3 non-negotiable tasks that I want to do before everyone else wakes up. 

How to choose your 3 non-negotiables

Pick the 3 things that will have the biggest impact on your day.

They should make you feel good, prepare you for whatever you need to do, energize you, or get your mind clear and focused so you’re ready for anything.

If I had to choose, my 3 essentials would probably be getting ready for the day, reading my Bible, and watering my plants. 

I know that if these 3 things happen, I feel refreshed, I’m prepared for the day, and my plants will not die. And that’s a pretty good start.

If you’re the type who struggles to get up in the morning or aren’t consistent with your routine yet, I have one more tip for you: choose something you love to do as the first item of your morning routine, because that will motivate you to get out of bed. It might be having a coffee and a donut, reading a book, or watching 15 minutes of a show.

After you can stick to a 3-step routine for a while, you can start to get fancy with it.

Step 3: Slowly Build Your Routine

Your morning routine can be as simple or as complicated as you like it.

I’ve found that it’s often a balance between having enough to be helpful but not too much to be overwhelming.

Here are some pointers that I like to follow when I’m thinking about adding to my routine:

• Add new things one or two at a time. If you suddenly tack on a ton of things to your routine, it’ll be too much. Just do 1 (or maybe 2) at a time, then wait before adding more.
• Stack your habits together. It’s often easier to add new things to your routine if you link it with something else. For example, you could read 10 pages while sipping your coffee in the morning. Or you could journal right after you read a book, while you’re still sitting in your favorite chair.
• Organize your home to help your routine. Organize and place things where you use them, or designate a specific spot in your home for each part of your routine. I put my journal, books, and pens on a little table by a comfy chair, so it’s fun to sit down and write.
• Push back your wake-up time little by little. You can wake up earlier, but it’s hard to make big leaps quickly. Instead, try to go to bed and wake up just 10 minutes earlier, wait a while, then repeat.
• Front load your day. Anything that you have to do that’s really important, difficult, or unpleasant can be loaded into your morning routine. Then you’ll have it done before the day begins.
• Choose small habits that bring big results. You can choose a small, 5-minute habit that will build up to big results over time. This looks like: doing 5 minutes of exercise, writing 500 words, reading 10 pages, publishing 1 social media post for your business, networking for 15 minutes, etc.
• Find things you can reset, set up, or clean to give the day a fresh start. You could do a quick wipe down of your bathroom sink, empty your email inbox, go through your physical inbox and sort all the items, pull out frozen meat for lunch or dinner, and so on.

I like to think, how much can I get done in my morning routine so I can have an easy (and fun) rest of the day?

Want to know how I organize my morning routine? I’ll write a follow up post and link back to it here when I’m ready. For now, I encourage you to subscribe to my posts so you’ll be notified when that post goes live.

Your Turn

Which morning routine type are you, and what are your 3 non-negotiable tasks going to be? Let me know in the comments.

Now go set your morning alarm ⏰… let’s do this!