By now it’s no surprise that waking up early and having a productive morning helps set the tone for a successful day. Books like The 5 AM Club, Deep Work, and many others all talk about this. For those that don’t feel like reading several books on the topic, here is a shorter article on some of the benefits of waking up early, but most importantly, establishing daily rituals.

Benefits

Here are some of the benefits of starting your day early and with a plan:

You become more organized and with a clear vision
You’re more disciplined
Getting the most out of your day
Getting to know yourself better finding out what works best for you
Setting yourself up for success, whatever that looks like for you

Life Without Rituals

When you set rituals for yourself, you’re essentially starting your day off with a plan – making you more proactive. Without rituals, it’s more like you’re taking the day as it comes and adjusting as you need to. Being able to adjust is a good thing, but we can slip into having a more reactive day and our intentions/goals for the day might take a back seat. It’s still possible to have a good day, but did you have a great day?

Going From a Morning Routine to Morning Rituals

For the most part, I’ve always had a morning routine. As life changed, my routine adjusted, but a constant has always been to wake up early. Establishing my morning routine in the summertime during the pandemic wasn’t too difficult. I’ve always been a morning person, naturally waking up around 5:30am every morning – even on weekends. My general routine looked something like: wake up at 5:30am, spend about 15min stretching, cut up some fruit, grab some water, and sit outside on the deck for 30-45min listening to an audiobook or podcast. Then I would go inside and hangout with my mom for 15-20min while she’d get ready for work.

I live in the Chicago area though, so as winter started coming around any morning routine became difficult to stick to. It’s dark, it’s cold, and even though I was still waking up early, I started having a harder time getting myself out of bed early. I struggled sticking to the plan I had set for myself the night before and I noticed myself being more reactive during my day than proactive. I wasn’t liking my situation and needed a way to get myself going again in the mornings.

When the new year came around, I decided to shift away from a routine towards adopting rituals. I still didn’t want to get out of bed early because my bedroom was warm and I knew the rest of the house was going to feel cold. My mood wasn’t upbeat so I didn’t feel like jumping into work or learning so early in the day either. The two main changes that worked for me were: 1. planning out my day using a bullet journal format for my tasks and time blocking those tasks, and 2. making the first activity of my morning something that I was going to look forward to – for me, that’s reading for fun versus education and I didn’t have to get out of bed just yet to do it.

What I found the most helpful was starting to be intentional about what I was doing with my morning. I started picking up habits that made me feel better. I follow Matt D’Avella’s YouTube channel and in some of his videos he talks about picking a simple habit and sticking to it for 30 days. So I picked up journaling. It’s something I tried getting into in the past, but never stuck to it because it felt forced, I didn’t know what to write about, and then when I did have something to write it was taking me a lot longer to write it out than to just think it. This time around, I decided I wasn’t going to make myself write anything lengthy, but instead write a few bullet points on whatever I accomplished or milestone I hit that day, even if it seemed like something small.

Turns out I really got into the habit of journaling this time around. I noticed myself waking up really anxious and so I’d grab my journal and start jotting down what I was feeling and what thoughts were coming to mind. Then I started doing breath exercises first thing after waking up as a way to calm my thoughts down and clear my mind. It was these simple habits that led me to what my morning rituals are now.

Current Morning Rituals

Since it’s mid March and still kind of cold in Chicago, I’m not eager to jump out of bed just yet. So this is what my current morning rituals look like:

5:15am – Wake up
Meditate – 30min
Daily journal, gratitude journal, & daily mantra – 15min
Stretch – 5min
Drink lemon water with mineral salt, eat fruit and hangout with mom – 35min
Walk on treadmill – 10-15min
7am – Make my bed before starting work

What I found that makes these rituals easier and fun to stick to is writing them out like a checklist. I make my morning rituals part of my daily bullet journal schedule. I go marking each one as I complete them and it gives me that sense of productivity and accomplishment. Come 7am and I’ve already accomplished 7 things in my day – that helps set the tone for my workday.

Nighttime Rituals

To keep up with my morning rituals, developing nighttime rituals became just as important as my morning ones. To get my ~7.5-8 hours of sleep I know that I have to be in bed no later than 9:15pm ready to do a shorter 10-15min meditation to help me fall asleep. A few of things I enjoy ending my day with include: planning my next day, journaling my successes for the day, reading/winding down from the workday, and catching up with my mom. To ensure I’m in bed and ready to meditate by 9:15pm, I time-blocked each activity and worked my way backwards to figure out what time I needed to start my nighttime rituals. This is what they look like:

7pm – Stop work and watch tv for an hour with mom
8-8:10pm – Get ready for bed
Stretch – 5min
Plan next day, journal, daily mantra – 15min
8:30-9:15pm Read

Changes I’ve Noticed In Myself when I stick to My Rituals

The bullet journaling and time-blocking gives my day direction. I notice I’m being/feeling proactive instead of reactive during my day. Because of that I am accomplishing more during my day giving me more positive things to write down in my daily/success journal. Meditation has helped reduce overall anxiety and self-doubts because I can start and end my days with a clearer mind. Throwing my daily mantra in the mix helps to remind me about why I’m doing what I’m doing. It gets me pumped in the morning knowing that what I have planned is helping me fulfill my purpose. At night, my daily mantra allows me to do a check and ask myself if what I did today was still in line with my purpose, or did I find myself straying away.

Yes, occasionally I stray away from my rituals. Sometimes it’s intentional and sometimes it’s not. For example, right now throughout the month of March I’m going to have class Mondays-Thursdays from 4-8pm. That’s on top of my entrepreneurship workday – so my rituals have been adjusted for this month. My nighttime ritual got thrown out the window a bit because I like having a drink now on Thursday nights to celebrate making it through the week and staying up an hour later to watch an episode of a show I like. This makes me a little more tired Friday mornings, so I let myself stay in bed 30min later.

As for my weekends, well, I tried sticking to my weekday rituals, but it didn’t really workout because my mindset changes on the weekends. It’s the weekend y el cuerpo lo sabe! Haha. So my weekend rituals look a little different, the point is that they’re still intentional and something I can stick to.

Waking Up Early Isn’t For Everyone

Some people just aren’t a morning person. There’s nothing wrong with that. As long as you know which hours of the day are your prime-time hours, you can still set yourself up with rituals to start and end your day and reap the benefits. For some people, they struggle to get out of bed because they dread some of the things they have to do that day. So then you procrastinate to get out of bed, and now you’re starting your day late. It’s okay to start your day off with something completely unrelated to your to-do list if it’s something that you look forward to doing that’s going to get you motivated to get your day going. You can start implementing morning rituals like I did using the 30-day simple habit trick. Play around with figuring out what works for you and keep in mind that how you end your night affects how you will start your next morning. Make those rituals into a checklist so you get that feeling of accomplishment at the start of your day. If you miss a day, that’s okay, keep at it.