The Best Way to Supercharge Your Day
The secret to supercharging your day and setting yourself up for lasting energy,
discipline, and success is an optimized morning routine.
People that have spent time perfecting their morning routines seem to have limitless energy and discipline allowing them to get work done that seems superhuman. In reality, a significant amount of their daily success can be attributed to a strong morning routine.
Today I will discuss with you the benefits of a strong morning routine, I will take you through my morning routine and why I do each part, as well as some very important things to NOT include in your morning routine. Then I will finish with how you can work on building your optimized morning routine.
Why morning routines are so important
Morning routines will set the tone for the rest of your day. If you start the day out productive and getting after it, it is highly likely that you will maintain that momentum throughout the day. If you start the day being lazy and undisciplined then you can almost count on that day being a waste.
Momentum is one of the most powerful forces you can use to your advantage, if only you know how. Morning routines utilize momentum by getting the ball rolling down a certain path, allowing you to more easily continue down that path for the rest of the day.
The more often you go down a certain path each morning the more ingrained it gets, and just like with habits, the easier and more likely it will be that you go down it the next day.
My morning routine
I have been experimenting with optimizing my morning routine for about a year and a half now. Over that time, I have learned a lot about what works best for my body, and at what time my body and mind are optimized to perform certain types of tasks. Below I have written the outline for my daily morning routine.
4:00 am - Wake up, no snooze
Cold shower
Drink a tall glass of water
4:15 am - Begin deep work
6:00 am – End deep work and get a snack (fruit)
6:05 am – Devotionals, Bible Study, Prayer
7:00 am – Gym
As I will talk about in the next section, it is imperative that you wake up when your alarm goes off, without question, without bargaining, and especially without hitting the snooze button. These things are a waste of time and make you mentally weak.
The next thing I do is hop into a freezing cold shower. I have already talked about the benefits of cold showers here, but I will give a short summary now. Cold showers wake you up immediately so you don’t waste any time, and they actually improve your mood if you view it as accomplishing something that was difficult but necessary, instead of focusing on how much it sucked. It will also create mental discipline so that when you command your body to do something it will do it.
I then drink a tall glass of water to flush out my system and rehydrate. In general, when we wake up, we are dehydrated which causes us to be lethargic. By drinking a tall glass of water you further wake yourself up so that you can start your day 100% ready to go, and avoid all of the negative effects of dehydration.
The deep work session is the time in the morning where you are able to enter into a hyper focused state and get your best work done. This time of morning will be where you perform your most intellectually challenging work, and by completing it immediately you will have set yourself up for success the rest of the day.
At the end of deep work I typically eat an apple. Usually after a couple of hours I am starting to get hungry, and I don’t like exercising on an empty stomach. Plus an apple is light but also has plenty of fiber to fill you up and carbs that your body can use effectively during a workout to help you maintain higher energy.
The next step in my morning routine is devotionals, Bible study, and prayer. During this time I am able to center myself and set my direction for the rest of the day. It is important to take some time each morning to reflect, be grateful, and give thanks to start off with the right attitude.
Finally, I end my morning routine with a workout. The workout provides a nice break, reenergizes me, and provides me with a further sense of accomplishment because I have completed another task that will improve my life in the long run.
Things you must avoid in your morning routine
While everyone’s morning routine is unique, there are certain activities that will always be detrimental to your productivity and focus. These activities include:
· Using your phone
· Eating heavy foods
· Watching TV
· Hitting snooze on your alarm
Our phones are the biggest distraction in our lives, and if we give into that distraction first thing in the morning by checking our texts, or social media, you will be setting your self up to be distracted by those same things for the rest of the day. By delaying any phone usage for the first couple hours of the day you allow yourself to be significantly more productive in those first couple of hours, as well as rewired your brain to not be so prone to the distraction of your phone so you don’t feel like constantly checking it.
Eating heavy foods first thing in the morning can hold us back during the day for a couple of reasons. The first is that digestion required a lot of energy, and when we eat something heavy right away it can often cause us to be groggy and tired the rest of the day. The second reason is that you don’t allow your body time to reset itself for the day by flushing everything out of your system from the day before.
When you watch TV first thing in the morning you are putting yourself into a passive and reactive state. While you are watching TV you aren’t consciously learning new valuable information and you aren’t proactively doing anything, you are reacting to the TV. The issue is that it is easier to live life in a passive and reactive state. So when we start the day in that state it is difficult to switch to an active and proactive state where we can get meaningful things done.
And finally, the dreaded snooze button. The snooze button, right after the phone, is probably the biggest time waster many people have in their day to day lives. Hitting the snooze button for an extra 10 minutes will not give you any effective sleep, and you will not feel any better when you wake up again. By hitting the snooze button you are allowing your mind to be undisciplined and weak, and when you start of the day undisciplined and weak it will carry through the rest of your day.
Setting up your morning routine
Finding the right morning routine for you will be a process of trial and error to find what helps you be more productive/focused, and what doesn’t.
Begin by adding or taking away only one thing at a time. By doing this you will be able to put all of your focus into establishing that one thing as a part of your routine. After a week or two, once you feel good, add something else in.
If you make a change, such as waking up at 5 instead of 5:30, and you find that it causes you to lose sleep which decreases your productivity, then revert back to your old routine.
This process is all about optimization, but even after you have found a routine that works well for you, I encourage you to continue to try new things periodically. We may find something new that we never thought of, or our bodies may change as we get older and now a different routine is optimal.
Remember that everyone’s morning routine will be unique, so don’t necessarily copy someone else’s just because they have success with it.
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