How Changing My Morning Routine Boosted Productivity & Changed My Life

6 min readApr 23, 2019

I was never much of a morning person until a little over a year ago. Now it’s my favorite thing to look forward to thanks to establishing a better morning routine and can honestly say that it’s changed my life for the better.

I started to get curious in learning about the best morning routines when I was reading Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris, which was phenomenal. In the book he interviews countless thought leaders, experts, entrepreneurs, psychologists, and nutritionists. My thirst continued by listening to countless podcasts and reading a ton of articles about what things successful people do each day and how it has benefitted them. Everything that I came across always seemed to have a recurring theme with an emphasis on establishing positive morning routines.

Tim is a huge believer in morning routines stating that “in the morning and elsewhere, the more constraints I can create where I fly on autopilot and get a result I need or enjoy, the more horsepower, the more calories I have to allocate to being creative, and to doing things where thinking should actually be applied.”

I had personally never put a big emphasis on a morning routine prior to 2018. Typically, it would consist of me waking up around 7–8am, taking my dog out for a walk, drinking some coffee, eating a quick breakfast, and getting to work between 8:00am — 9:00am.

I’m always looking for ways to become more productive and creative so I figured I would give it a shot and share my morning routine and a few of the biggest learnings that have come from adopting a new routine and if you want you can skip to the bottom to see my typical routine.

After reading Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris, I became really interested and inspired and set out to change my own morning routine and see what impact it would have on myself. After experimenting for the past year, I can now say that mornings are by far my favorite way to start the day. I wanted to share my experience, preach the benefits, and hear what other routines have impacted people (if anyone reads this).

Wake up 2–3 hrs before you start to work.

I know this sounds crazy, but getting up earlier gets your brain working and leads to increased productivity. I used to want to stay up late working, reading, or like most of us getting sucked into a social media vortex. Now, I’m more interested in getting to bed early so the next day I can get started early and focus on having a productive morning. By having a productive morning you feel more accomplished, which will improve your mood and lead to a productive day.

According to a University of London study, those who wake up by 7:00 am also have a lower chance of being stressed, depressed, and obese.

Drink a Glass of Water First Thing

This was the most consistent thing that I found every successful person would do. I tend to guzzle a lot of water so this was pretty easy. It’s important for the first thing in your day to hydrate your body as you sweat and tend to get dehydrated throughout the night.

Make Your Bed

I can’t say that this was something I had really done before. Several people said that no matter what, every morning they make their bed. If you don’t accomplish a single thing during the day you can always count on coming home and feeling a sense of accomplishment. For whatever reason I found this to actually help. It helps you start your day feeling organized and thorough, hopefully setting your mind up to continue this for the rest of your day.

Don’t Look at Phone or Responding to Emails

This is something that I continue to struggle with. Naturally when I grab my phone at 6:00am to turn off my alarm the first thing I do is scroll through my notifications to see what emails, slack messages, or news pops up. 85% of the time that is the extent, sometimes if it’s absolutely urgent I’ll jump in and respond. This is something that I’m working to improve on and recently started extending my Do Not Disturb to start around 9:00 pm at night and last until 8:00 am when I am out of the gym

Morning Exercise

I would periodically work out in the morning but it was never consistent. Lucky for me I have a gym in my apartment complex and takes all of 1 minute to get there. I can say that this is probably the single biggest impact on my mood for the rest of the day. Getting to the gym at 6:15am I aim to spend 30–45min lifting weights or doing cardio has had more benefits that I probably realize.

Leaving the gym I always feel a sense of accomplishment and can tell the release of endorphins has made my mood better and leads to increased productivity the rest of the day. I find that when I don’t work out in the morning before work that I’m a bit sluggish during the day and my brain seems to not work as efficiently.

Even if you don’t have the luxury of working out in a gym, try some form of exercise every morning even if it’s doing 10 pushups, doing a short walk, running, or sit ups. The small release of endorphins and sense of accomplishment will do wonders. If you take nothing away from any other point, trust me on this one.

Sit in the Sauna

My favorite thing to do post-workout is to sit in the sauna and sweat it out for 15 minutes. Sitting in a sauna has huge benefits including increasing blood circulation, flushing out toxins, and relieving stress.

Meditating

I have never meditated in my life prior to 2018. I have seen the trend rise but never really believed in it and didn’t even really know how to start.

I started a ton of different searches to figure out what worked best for me. I had heard people praise about apps like Headspace, Calm, etc and tried everything out there. Ultimately what I found that I really enjoyed was a few Youtube videos that I linked below.

It took about a 3 weeks or so for me to realize the benefit of meditation from experimenting with what worked for me. Once I found what I liked and got better at focusing my mind and my breaths I became an instant believer in the benefits.

Research shows that mindfulness fights off stress by reversing the fight-or-flight response, improves your ability to focus, boosts creativity, and increases your emotional intelligence.

For me the biggest benefit has been to reduce stress and anxiety, being an entrepreneur there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t have either. It has also increased my mood, helped me sleep better, and increased my focus and productivity.

My top 3 morning guided meditation youtube videos (in no particular order)

My Typical Morning Routine:

6:00am — wake up from alarm and chug water
6:15am 6:30am — take dog on a walk
6:30–7:15am — lift weights at the gym
7:15am — 7:30am — sit in sauna
7:30–7:45am — meditate and drink coffee
7:45am — 8:00am — shower and protein smoothie
8:00am — 9:00am — work on setting priorities for day or week, personal priorities, personal development, and getting my head in the right space to start the day
9:00am — start work

How Changing My Morning Routine Boosted Productivity & Changed My Life

Written by Deuce Thevenow