Morning Routines of Most Successful People
Morning routine has been one of the most important parts of success of the most successful human beings in the world.
Every time I read something about how a proper routine can change once life, I doubt it straight away.
After waking up at 5:00 every day for 2 months I can tell you that it has changed my perspective on my day and goal in general.
You will not be able to wake up early if you have no clear-cut goal or some responsibility. You need to have some commitment.
I want to say straight away that I am writing this out of my personal experience, and I am in no case a licensed professional in any of the fields discussed below.
Most of the information is taken from books and public speeches.
Morning
When did you wake up today? 12:00, 10:00, 8:00? It doesn’t matter really at first what time you wake up. You can change your sleeping pattern with in a week.
The main question is, why did you wake up?
Do you have nothing to do at that day and you allowed yourself to sleep in?
Sometimes you do need to catch up on sleep, but if this type of sleeping behaviour is your norm, you need to change it.
The best way is to make sure you have your week or day planned. If you know what you will be doing and where and when, you will have to prepare and wake up with the correct outlook on the day.
There is no way of being productive when you are doing busy work without actually focusing at most important matters at hand. Those tasks that you don’t want to do, but you will have to do them anyway.
After successful 2 months of waking up correctly, I moved to another country. We did it with my whole family. Since then I had been struggling to wake up as early as 5:00 as I have fewer things to do in the new city that I know of. Mornings lost its structure and so did my sleeping schedule.
Did you wake up just in time to go to work?
If you woke up right before work and you only had time to take a shower and eat breakfast(I can probably make a hole post about why having breakfast, launch and dinner is a bad idea) you shoot yourself in the foot as now you only have to do your day job with no ability to grow personally.
Have you noticed what happened right before work and straight after work?
I have. For me, the worst time productivity wise is 30 minutes before a start of a working day and the whole evening after work.
I get no personal growth done in that time. Even time during the launch is a better option for self reflection, studying and creativity.
After work what do you want to do? Unwind, calm down and relax. If I force myself to do more work, I will be crashed the next day with no way of focusing and giving my all to tasks.
Have you noticed that nothing productive gets done after 19:00? You either drink a glass of wine and watch a movie, or you go out with friends and socialise or you get sucked into social media with Instagram/Facebook/Name your social network of choice.
That is exactly why I choose to do everything before work. Anything work or socialising related will have to wait until after work when I am only half as engaged.
What would you rather do, think about crazy ideas and being 100% engaged with your friends while regretting that you are not doing any productive work? OR be half as engaged and more relaxed with your friends but with the benefit of knowing that you have done everything that you planned and more. You will know that you DESERVED this relaxation time.
So in order to do anything to grow, you need to make time for yourself.
How to create time for yourself?
Creating time is by changing your life schedule from unproductive time to sleep, and mornings(the most productive time) to self-growth work.
As an example you work 9:00-17:00. If you used to wake up at 8:00 for work than by getting up at 7:00 you created 1 hour of time that you can spend on anything that you desire.
Do you know that by spending 30 minutes daily on a language grantees you proficiency in 6 months? Do you know that spending 1 hour daily on a language guarantees fluency in 1 year?
So by just waking up 1 hour early lets you speak 10 new languages in 10 years, is it not worth it?
What if you woke up at 5:00? Isn’t that making time for 3 more hours for ANYTHING you want?
You see where I am going with this. Have a reason to wake up early. You get that reason and motivation boost only if you are real with yourself.
As a disclaimer, I am sure each one of us heard about different type of early bird and late bird stereotypes of how humans are. Those are not true. Every human being can make themselves an early bird if needed. What you need to do is go to sleep earlier.
Going to Sleep
Arguably it is the most important time.
In the book Magical Morning there was a research confirming that the thoughts that you have before going to sleep will impact the way you sleep and how you will sleep. The prior thoughts will even have impact on your sleeping cycles giving you more light and low-energy sleep or deep and reenergising.
What you need to do is tell everyone in your surrounding, be it your roommates or parents or a loved one or even children that you need to make time for yourself. That time is at 20:00.
I usually lie in bed strictly at 20:00 and I put all the devices away. If I am travelling I also set an alarm on my phone.
After that I set an alarm on my sundial alarm clock, the clock that imitates the rise of sun 30 minutes before the scheduled alarm so that it is much easier to wake up as the body aligns the natural clock of the body with wake up time. I will for sure write another post on this.
This routine tells my body that I will sleep very well and that there is no reason to worry. Just go to sleep and you will be energised.
After that I start reading a book of my own. It has to be fantasy or some novel that I like but has no deep history or self-growth type plot. It needs to take worries of you, not put more in.
Sometimes when I am feeling extra energised or in the bad mood, I choose to make myself some tea. Usually camomile but sometimes black tea.
Combination of each of this small things allows me to fall asleep and feel amazing before and after it.
The way you wake up is going to be the way you felt when going to sleep.
Try this today. Before going to sleep, think about something that makes you happy and say out loud(preferably) that you will feel energised and happy when you wake up.
Weekend is More Time for yourself
Remind yourself, after a busy week was there a weekend after which you felt even more tired? If yes than that means that probably you do not know how to spend your free time efficiently.
How do you spend your weekends? Is it relaxation without any particular plan?
I will need to write a full blog post on this as well but just remember. Waking up early in the weekend and planning your time of relaxation is going to give you an extra week each week. You will feel that the weekends are too long and you wouldn’t be able to wait until you can do your work.
Thanks for reading, I hope I helped with my personal takes and experiences. All of this I got from studying the way very successful people behave in the mornings and why.
Cheers
Klim Y
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