How To Start Your Day Well
Optimising your morning for high performance
How you wake up and start your day dramatically affects how you feel, how you act and how you perform through the hours ahead.
The concept of the ‘morning routine’ has long been part of high-performance discussions.
Whether you choose to label it as a routine or not, the small habits you consistently build over time clearly compound.
The challenge is that although many experts describe what the perfect morning should look like, putting it into practice is less straightforward.
Not everyone has the desire to wake up at 5am for a 30 minute session of meditation, visualisation and journalling - especially when, the moment you wake up, so do the kids, dogs, and cats, all demanding attention, food, and entertainment.
And if you find yourself, like many leaders, stuck in the cycle of not getting enough sleep, responding to a 5am alarm call might not seem like a necessity.
The key is to find a routine that optimises your morning; rather than conforming to someone else’s idea of what that should be.
Whether it's a few moments of deep breathing, a quick stretch, or a moment of reflection, these small habits can have a profound impact.
Here are six things to consider to help you optimise your morning and build a habit that is simple and sustainable.
Think: Being satisfied with what you already have is widely found to be one of the keys to mental wellbeing, and greater happiness. This concept, often today referred to ‘gratitude’, essentially involves reminding yourself that you have a pretty good lot in life. Given humans are wired with a bias for negativity, it can help shift your mindset and start the day on a positive.
One quick way to incorporate this into your routine is to start the day differently. Instead of waking up with a sigh and saying, 'I need to get up to...,' consider building a simple habit of reflecting on two or three things you're grateful for first.
It doesn’t need to be grand; perhaps you're grateful for your comfy bed, for waking up in a nice room, for the opportunity to work from home, or for the people around you.
Do this before getting out of bed and you’ve already set a positive tone for the day and started cultivating a positive mindset.
Before you hop out of bed, ask yourself: What two things are you grateful for this morning?
Wake: Being awake and at your desk is, naturally, a minimum. But to be at your most alert in the morning, research shows huge benefits in getting outside as early as you can.
The quality of light is at its best after the sun rises, and experienced outside is 50 times more effective than through a window at activating the brains neurons and clicking the circadian clock into drive.
Listen below to neuroscientist Dr Andrew Huberman talk in his Huberman Lab podcast about how to be more alert during the day and wake up quicker:
Then ask yourself: What is your best opportunity to get high quality light in the morning?
Move: Moving your body boosts your energy levels, and helps you wake up. But when you work from home, it can be all to easy to move seamlessly from bedroom, bathroom, kitchen to desk in a few minutes without actually moving your body beyond standing and sitting.
Getting sufficient physical exercise isn’t just good for your health and your body’s longevity. It has been shown to improve concentration, build sharper memory and mental stamina, enable faster learning, enhanced creativity and lower stress. If you want to improve your performance, move your body.
Pick something you enjoy or, something you can stick with and build on. Doing something is better than nothing. You might schedule your regular workout or run in the morning or if your time is tight, you might opt for a 10 minute walk, doing a quick yoga/stretch or even simply holding a plank for a minute.
Take a moment and reflect:
What will it cost you to move your body in the morning?
What will it cost you if you don’t?
How much time can you realistically give to moving your body each morning?
What will you do and when will you do it?
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Read: Reading in the morning is a great way to start your day. It doesn’t have to be a self-development book; in fact, reading something entirely different from your daily activities can foster creativity.
The more you read, the better your concentration becomes, and your ability to imagine ideas and new concepts improves.
Similar to how moving and stretching your body is beneficial, reading a few pages from a book whilst you’re eating breakfast in the morning can stimulate and stretch your mind. It doesn’t need to be much more.
Reflect on this:
What genre or type of book brings you the most inspiration in the morning?
How can you incorporate a brief reading session into your morning routine without feeling rushed?
What ideas or concepts from your morning reading can you apply to your daily activities for enhanced creativity and innovation throughout the day?
Breathe: You’re probably accustomed to spending time surrounded by voices, whether they be family, those you work with or the podcast hosts you listen to. Just for a moment find time to intentionally listen to your own mind too, in place of the thoughts of others.
Taking a moment to breathe helps you to build perspective and calm and again will set the tone for your day.
If meditation isn’t for you, or you don’t have the time, box or square breathing is a great technique that takes 32 seconds and that can be done when you sit down at your desk ready to log on. Or any time of the day when you need focus and clarity.
Simply do this:
1. Inhale to the count of four
2. Hold your breath for the count of four
3. Exhale to the count of four
4. Hold the exhale for the count of four
5. Go back to number one, and repeat.
Delve: If you want to go all in and re-evaluate your morning habits read this by Hal Elrod, one of the most highly acclaimed books on defining a stellar morning. The book introduces the concept of the "Miracle Morning Routine" and six key practices to experiment with.
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