Are you looking to streamline your morning routine at home or in your business?
A morning routine is a series of regular ongoing activities that are performed in the early part of the day mostly upon waking and before beginning other responsibilities and activities. Morning routines generally involve preparing oneself or others, taking care of household chores tasks, and leaving home to travel for work or other affairs.
If you find it difficult to leave your house on time or start work in a timely fashion, then you may want to consider reviewing and updating your morning routine activities.
In this article, you’ll learn what a morning routine is, why and when you should streamline your routine, and the benefits of doing so.
You’ll also uncover a handy process to help you easily streamline your morning routine so you can start your day off on the right foot.
Before we get started, if you want a simple daily structure to help you prioritize your work, my free Productivity Mindset Planner™ is a good place to start.
Key Takeaways
- A streamlined morning routine reduces decision fatigue and creates a calmer, more consistent start to your day.
- Auditing your current routine, as in writing out every task, reveals hidden time drains you didn’t know were there.
- Identifying 2–3 non-negotiable morning goals makes it easier to cut what doesn’t serve you in your morning routine.
- Preparing key items the night before (clothes, lunch, keys) is one of the simplest ways to save morning time.
- Prioritizing self-care before caring for others creates a stronger foundation for the rest of your day.
Table of Contents
- What's a morning routine?
- Why should you streamline your morning routine?
- When should you streamline your morning routine?
- How can you benefit when you streamline your morning routine?
- How to easily streamline your morning routine
- Part 1. Conduct a morning routine audit
- Part 2. Streamline your approach
- FAQ: Morning routine
- Conclusion
What’s a morning routine?
A morning routine is a series of regular ongoing activities that are performed in the early part of the day mostly upon waking and before beginning other responsibilities and activities.
Morning routines generally involve preparing oneself or others, taking care of household chores tasks, and leaving home to travel for work or other affairs.
Some common morning routine tasks include bathing, dressing, eating breakfast, preparing a packed lunch, and gathering personal belongings.
Other general morning routine tasks may include preparing others in the household, such as bathing, dressing, and feeding children or adults, or caring for pets.
Additional morning routine tasks may include exercising, meditating, praying, reading, or relaxing.
Why should you streamline your morning routine?
Streamlining your morning routine allows you to have a more relaxed start, prepare items in advance, and clearly integrate your responsibilities.
As a productivity expert, I know streamlining your morning routine may not be the first thing on your mind when it comes to improving your productivity.
But there are several reasons to do so. Let’s take a look at some thoughtful reasons to take a second look at your schedule.
Streamlining your morning routine allows you to:
Create a more relaxed start to your day
Creating a more relaxed start to your day begins with having a morning routine that is both physically doable and manageable. When you have a properly structured routine, you know what to plan for and expect as the day progresses. You may even find that you are more relaxed simply knowing you’ve properly accounted for your day’s activities!
Since there’s no need to rush or hurry yourself through your early-morning activities, you can be more present when enjoying your morning coffee or helping loved ones get ready. This in turn may create a better foundation for your day overall as you’re ready to start your day from a calm and relaxed state.
Make preparations the evening before
Making preparations the evening before allows you to identify and complete one, two, or more activities in advance of your mornings to help them run even smoother. Once you know which activities are key to your mornings, you can use this pre-planning time to your advantage.
For instance, let’s say you need to get yourself ready for work in morning, but you also need to walk and feed the dog, and get your kids ready for school. To save additional time in the morning, you may decide to pre-pack your business bag, select and layout a complete clean business outfit, and set the table for breakfast the night before.
Integrate different responsibilities
Successfully integrating different responsibilities into your morning routine means you clearly and fully acknowledge there are activities both big and small that must be completed during your morning routine. You’re not ignoring or downplaying any activity, you’re simply accepting it as a fact of life.
When you appropriately do so, you’re no longer leaving things to chance. You’re not frantically trying to squeeze in Fido’s walk at the last minute before heading off to work.
For instance, when you fully acknowledge you must walk the dog, shower, dress, tidy up the kitchen, and grab your lunch from the fridge, you can plan for these activities. Instead of being an emergency, they will just be part of your regular daily activities.
Focus on what really matters
Having a streamlined morning routine allows you to focus on what really matters to your day and prioritize different activities and tasks as necessary. When your morning routine is lax or full of activities that do not serve your immediate goals, it can be difficult to determine exactly which tasks you should perform.
Case in point, have you ever sat around playing a game on your phone in the morning only to realize a few hours have gone by and you’re late for work? Knowing what constitutes a morning routine task and what does not can long way in helping you be punctual, staying on schedule, and successfully completing your work for the day.
When should you streamline your morning routine?
You should streamline your morning whenever you have a major life change, there are changes within your household among family members, or whenever you feel like you could be doing more with your mornings.
Morning routines tend to vary over the course of our lifetimes. Your daily routine will be different from when you were a child, teenager, adult, student, parent, professional, business owner, to a retiree.
What’s more, it’s not uncommon for our roles and responsibilities to change over the course of a year.
If you’ve recently had some sort of change in your professional or personal life, then you’ll probably want to consider streamlining your routine.
You may decide to streamline your morning routine when you:
- Feel overly stressed, overwhelmed, or pressed for time
- Want to refresh or upgrade the way you perform your daily tasks
- Experience some form of major change in your business, industry, or occupation
- Have a change in location, hours, or travel in your business or line of work
- Have a family member who’s started a new position or has a different set of responsibilities or needs
- Experience an urgent or unexpected medical or health issue that needs attention and care
How can you benefit when you streamline your morning routine?
There are several benefits to streamlining your morning routine including eliminating unhelpful activities, prioritizing key tasks, and reducing stress around preparing for appointments and meetings.
First, when you evaluate your morning routine you may find you are spending unnecessary time on unhelpful activities. While these activities must be completed, working on them in the midst of your morning routine may not be the most helpful.
For instance, you may find yourself working on non-urgent tasks such as cleaning your clothes closet or cleaning the hall staircase. Cutting these activities from your morning routine may free up more time in your schedule for you to prepare yourself and others for the day.
Second, you may uncover key tasks that are regularly ignored, yet are key to your daily success. As an example, maybe you regularly misplace your work bag and house keys. You spend at least 10 minutes looking for them every day and arrive late to business appointments.
You could create a plan to store these items in a centralized spot in your living room or hallway or allow yourself ample time to start preparing your belongings in the morning.
Here’s a few more key benefits to streamlining your morning routine:
- Reduce stress around preparing for appointments and meetings
- Create a more comfortable routine for yourself and others
- Focus attention on activities related to yourself and your household
- Minimize lateness and late starts in your business or work
- Feel confident knowing you have successfully prepared yourself and your belongings for your day
How to easily streamline your morning routine
Now that you know a bit more about why you should streamline your morning routine, how should you go about fixing things?
Follow these simple tips to streamline your routine.
Part 1. Conduct a morning routine audit
Conducting a morning routine audit is a quick way to gain insight into streamlining your morning routine for the better. Here’s what to do:
Take a moment to fully write out your current routine
Take a moment to fully write out your current morning routine on a piece of paper with a pen or layout your digital calendar. This activity will help you gain some perspective on what you’re actually doing in the morning, even if you aren’t entirely sure about it at the moment.
Start with the time you normally awake to the time you finally arrive at your business, work, or school, or begin activities at home, such a remote work, taking care of the house, or caring for others.
List out every task you perform. This may seem like overkill, but being detailed in this exercise will allow you to make the most of your hard work in this exercise.
Review each task. How many tasks or items do you actually perform in your morning routine? Three, five, seven? You may be surprised at how much you’re actually trying to accomplish in a small period of time. Don’t get upset about your results. Just review them and be aware of them.
Let’s use the following example of a small business owner, Sara who works from home, lives alonea, and owns a dog. For the purposes of this exercise, I’ve kept this example simple.
If you have a more complex schedule, such as you have others you care for or other responsibilities, you will need to do a bit more writing and organizing. To avoid getting discouraged or overwhelmed by the number of tasks, begin by writing out the first five tasks in your day followed by the next five tasks, and so on. This process will allow you to better visualize each grouping of tasks, and you guessed it, organize and segment these groupings as needed.
- Wake up
- Meditate
- Check email
- Use bathroom
- Brush teeth
- Drink glass of water
- Walk the dog
- Feed and water the dog
- Take shower
- Get dressed for work
- Prepare sandwich for lunch
- Play games on phone
- Drink cup of coffee
- Eat breakfast
- Take vitamins and medication
- Watch favorite streaming show
Identify your morning goals
Identifying your morning goals allows you complete what must be done on a daily basis as well as stay on track with your schedule. When you’re crystal clear about your goals, then you accurately plan for them on a regular basis.
What do you absolutely need to accomplish every single morning that will help you prepare yourself for the day to come? What activities or actions directly impact your planned or scheduled day? Remember, these aren’t wish list items, these are items that you will 100% accomplish, no matter what.
Here’s how your morning goals might translate in practice:
- Be mentally and physically prepared for the day
- Spend time and care for my dog, Lucky
- Be punctual for work calls
These are three goals that must be hit every single morning, without fail. When you have these goals at the front of your mind, you can better plan your morning routine around this.
So, from our example above, how might Sara support these goals? We can segment her actions from above into the following goals
Be mentally and physically prepared for the day
- Wake up
- Meditate
- Use bathroom
- Brush teeth
- Drink glass of water
- Change into sweatpants and pullover
Spend time and care for my dog, Lucky
- Walk the dog
- Feed and water the dog
Be punctual for work calls
- Take shower
- Get dressed for work
- Prepare sandwich for lunch
- Drink cup of coffee
- Eat breakfast
- Take vitamins and medication
Want a simple framework to plan your day before it starts? Grab my free Productivity Mindset Planner™.
Cut out non-essential items
Cutting out non-essential items in your routine means you are removing or eliminating items that are not conducive to your immediate goals in the morning.
A good way to gauge whether or not something is non-essential is whether or not you lose all sense of time as you take part in that activity. When do tasks seem to pull you away from getting ready in the morning? When did time just seem to fly by?
Take a moment to think about the last couple of mornings. When and where did you get drawn into the activity? Checking out ongoing sales in your inbox? A last-minute closet organization stint? Researching potential vacation destinations? Decluttering your to-do list?
Did you have to scramble out of the activity and get back on track with your regular schedule?
Check your task list from above to see which tasks you could cut out of your current routine without detriment.
From our example above, Sara might realize that she’s fully absorbed by these three tasks:
- Check email
- Play games on phone
- Watch favorite streaming show
So much so, that she gets lost in them and falls behind schedule. In this case, she might want to trim the amount of time spent on or completely eliminate them from her morning routine.
Part 2. Streamline your approach
Now that you’ve conducted a morning routine audit, the next thing is to streamline your approach so it’s even more efficient than before.
Here’s some key points to keep in mind:
Prioritize self-care
Prioritizing self-care means putting yourself first by taking the time to bathe, dress, and eat before helping others get ready. By taking care of yourself first, you’ll be more prepared to take care of others for the remainder of the morning.
Caring for others in your family and household requires focus and attention, all of which can be done from a better foundation when you’ve properly taken care of yourself.
Prioritize self-care as a necessity, and not as a luxury. You’ll be one step closer to starting your day off on the right foot.
Prepare items the night before
Where possible, prepare items the night or evening before so you have at least one or two of your tasks prepared and ready in advance. This might seem like an inconsequential move, but you’d be surprised at how much this preplanning can be a lifesaver!
To get started, try getting one or two things ready in advance. You could lay out your wardrobe for the next day, pack up your purse, briefcase or backpack, and prepare your lunch and snacks.
From our example above, Sara might choose to pull out her clothes the night before and prepare her sandwich for lunch.
How about collecting your phone, house and car keys in one place where you’re sure to find them? All that’s left to be done in the morning is to pick up your materials and head out the door.
Don’t think, act
Don’t think about getting ready, act! Try spending more of your time standing or in motion as opposed to sitting or at a standstill. Remember, a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest.
Getting reading in the morning quickly and easily means doing everything you need to do so you’re ready to get on with your day. Don’t think about what you have to do, just go ahead, and do it.
Now’s not the time to think heavy thoughts, get lost in decisions, or ponder the meaning of life. It’s time to get yourself ready so you can get out the door or start your day in earnest, prepared and ready to go.
FAQ: Morning routine
What is a morning routine?
A morning routine is the set of regular activities a person completes in the early part of the day — usually after waking and before starting work or other responsibilities, such as bathing, dressing, eating, and preparing for the day ahead.
Why should I streamline my morning routine?
Streamlining your morning routine helps you start the day calmer, reduces time lost to non-essential activities, and makes it easier to consistently complete the tasks that matter most before work begins.
When is the best time to update a morning routine?
The best time to update a morning routine is after a major life change — a new job, a change in household responsibilities, a move, or simply feeling that your current routine no longer fits your schedule. I cover how to deal with an overbooked schedule in my time management guide.
How do I start streamlining my morning routine?
Start by writing out every task in your current routine, then group those tasks under 2–3 core morning goals. Anything that doesn’t support those goals is a candidate to cut or shorten.
What’s the easiest first step to a smoother morning?
Prepare one or two items the night before — clothes, lunch, or your keys and bag — in the same spot each time. This one habit removes several small decisions from your morning.
Conclusion
A streamlined morning routine isn’t about squeezing in more — it’s about being intentional with the time you already have. By auditing your current routine, identifying what truly matters, and cutting what doesn’t serve your day, you create space for a calmer, more focused start every morning.
If you’re ready to bring that same sense of structure to the rest of your day, my free Productivity Mindset Planner™ is a simple place to start. And if you’d like clarity on your routine and responsibilities, schedule a strategy session with me.
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