Determining Your Best Morning Routine for Success

Day 4 of the Makeover Your Mornings Challenge

Yesterday’s post covered a couple ways to find a little extra time in your busy morning to do the things that are important to you. Today, we’re going to cover two additional things that will help you determine your best morning routine for success.

I want you to think about what you SHOULD and what you SHOULDN’T be doing in those first few hours of the day. Ponder it for a minute.

All too often, we get stuck in a rut and do things the way they’ve always been done…because that’s the way it’s always been done.

We do it without really thinking about whether or not it’s the best use of our time.

But it’s not about cramming more things into less time.

Making over your morning isn’t about figuring out how to cram more tasks into fewer hours.

If you’ve ever read a book or article on productivity and time management, that’s probably the message you’ve gotten. But while it can help in the short term, it’s most definitely not a good long-term strategy for making meaningful changes.

I promise, if you try to do that, you’ll soon hit your limit. You can only get *so* much faster and more efficient, after all.

Let’s shift our mindset. Instead of adding more to our morning routines, let’s make smarter choices about the use of our time.

For example, if you want to spend 15 minutes doing bible study, meditation, exercising, or whatever — you don’t have to shave off 15 minutes from your sleep time or by showering faster or rushing through breakfast.

What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t have to add to your already lengthy list of things to do. Because if you do, you’ll just feel more rushed and stressed out.

It’s all about making wise choices when it comes to your allotted time.

 

If you aren’t part of the Morning Makeover Challenge yet, you can sign up right here.

 

Determining Your Best Morning Routine for Success

Instead of trying to fit more into your morning, try to think about what is the best use of your time. Compare your *perfect* morning with your current one. What are you NOT doing on your ideal morning?

If you can find a thing or two to cut out, it’ll be much easier to find time for the things you would really like to do.

There are a couple ways you can find things to stop doing. The first is to look for “busy work” — things you do out of habit that you don’t actually need to be doing every day.

That could be anything from checking your email first thing in the morning to spending a half hour scrolling through Facebook while you drink your coffee.

If that’s how you want to spend your time? No problem!

But if you’re simply doing it out of habit, then you might want to rethink it.

The second way is to delegate. You can quickly earn back your time in the mornings by getting others to do things for themselves that you’ve been doing for them.

Kids can help out by preparing their own breakfast or packing their own lunch, cleaning up after themselves, and making sure their backpack is ready to go.

These may be small things, and they are things that need to be done, but sometimes we continue doing them simply out of habit.

Making small changes could make a big difference in how your mornings go.

 

Day 4 Challenge

It’s SO easy to lose an hour to our electronic devices and wonder where the time went. This means less time for the important things on your to-do list. I challenge you to stay off social media for the first hour or so of your morning.

Try it out and see if you can manage it for the next few mornings (until the challenge it over). Who knows, maybe you’ll find so much more time in your mornings that it will become a lasting change!

Additionally, list out a few items you can remove from your morning routine and things you can delegate to others so that you have extra time for the things that YOU want to do.

 

Helpful Tools

If you find yourself checking notification on your phone immediately after hitting snooze, it might be time to invest in an old-school alarm clock.

Another option is the Sunrise Alarm Clock I mentioned previously, which helps your body to slowly wake up by gradually increasing the amount of light in your bedroom.

This way, you can tuck your phone away — somewhere you won’t be tempted to *quick* check your notifications — and complete your new, improved morning routine before catching up on social media.