The routine outlined below has done the impossible: turn me into a true morning person. After almost a year of daily practice, it’s now so ingrained in my life that it requires no willpower whatsoever. 

So, here we go…

Normally, I wake up naturally somewhere between 4 and 5 am. After getting out of bed, the first thing I do is to put on the bright living room light and fire up my wake-up song (below).

During these three minutes, I do the morning bathroom run, wash my face with cold water, swirl some strong-tasting mouth-wash, make my bed, put on some deodorant and weigh myself. This 3-minute sensory assault always leaves me wide awake 🙂

I time it so I’m done just as the next song on my morning playlist starts. This is my cue to smoothly glide into my constitution. 

Two minutes later, I’m totally psyched for the day. The next inspirational song on my playlist then automatically queues me to fill in my Graph of Life. Seeing my streak of good days grow offers another little psychological boost every morning 🙂 

Then it’s time for some morning exercise: one of seven different Rodney Yee Yoga routines (one for each day of the week). I do the sacrilegious thing of taking it double speed. Otherwise it takes too long and gets a little boring for my taste.

Following this, I put on my favorite blended rain and fireplace noise courtesy of Noisli and settle in to read a couple of interesting or inspirational pages (currently, I’m reading The Art of Happiness). 

Next, it’s time to set up my to-do list for the day. Given its importance, this task is strategically positioned for when my brain is totally awake and inspired. 

After this, I work on my first to-do until 6:15. The length of this session is flexible and depends on when I woke up that particular day. 

At 6:15, I have a highly nutritious, tasty and convenient breakfast combined with two sets of light weights and some more inspirational music. In the summer this happens on my east-facing balcony, but I move inside for the cold, dark winter. 

Breakfast is done just in time for two back-to-back Skype sessions with my accountability buddies. 

Following some fun and positive exchanges, I dive into the next item on my to-do list, already with a huge head start on the rest of the world 😎

Time commitment

My rather spartan lifestyle gives me the ability to maintain this pretty extensive routine with near-perfect regularity. Most people will prefer something simpler (which is totally OK). But just to illustrate how efficiently this can be done, here’s a breakdown of the time commitment: 

1. Wake-up song: a little over 3 minutes
2. Constitution: a little over 2 minutes
3. Graph of Life: about 2 minutes
4. Yoga: about 10 minutes (short version: less than one minute)
5. Reading: about 10 minutes (short version: about one minute)
6. To-do list: 5-10 minutes
7. Breakfast: 15 minutes
8. Accountability buddies: 30 minutes

Items 1-6 take a little over half an hour (or less than 15 minutes if I must revert to the short versions). I’d venture to say that almost everyone could find 15 minutes in the morning for something this valuable. 

Breakfast is something most folks do anyway. It can be intelligently designed for maximum convenience to focus nearly all your breakfast time on enjoyment rather than preparation. 

Half an hour of accountability buddy time is something of a luxury. You can certainly get most of the benefits with far less than 30 minutes. 5-10 minutes will do just fine.

So, there you have it. Please put in some time to design something like this for yourself. This routine has been a life changer for me and I cannot recommend it strongly enough! 

Tomorrow, I’ll share my (much simpler) evening routine. See you then!