do this morning routine to improve productivity
An effective routine helps us to start, continue, and get the most out of our day—all while helping us find our purpose, drive towards our goals, and achieve our personal and professional success. The goal of this post is to help you create the ideal morning routine to help you improve productivity.
While everyone has a different way to begin their day, this article will show some ideas that have worked for many successful players and athletes in general—to further increase productivity and help begin each day the right way. Numerous studies have proven these methods to be an effective way to not only jump start your morning, but to improve your health as well.
why is a routine important?
We are what we repeatedly do. Our habits and routines are the “ingredients” that add up to our overall output as people. A morning routine is simply a step-by-step series of actions that we do on a daily basis that helps us begin our morning. Having a morning routine that jump starts your day supports your ability to be productive each and every day. Productivity is key to improvement and growth, so the routine outlined below is organized in a way to support that.
The problem many people have is that their morning routines have little to no deliberate plan of action, and they aren’t consistent enough to realize the results that come as a part of having a good morning routine—so they end up quitting or going back to their old, less productive, way of doing things.
This article may just be the thing you need to get back on track and really take advantage of each day. Here is an example of a high-quality, step-by-step morning routine:
1. Complete an easy task first:
Ever heard the saying: “always make your bed right when you get up”? There’s actually truth to it — by making your bed right when you get up you are actually accomplishing a simple task that initiates momentum to accomplishing another one. In other words, each consecutive task you complete becomes a trigger or "cue" to complete another one.
The momentum this can create can be extremely valuable to help begin a day, and allow you to be more productive throughout it. As this momentum builds, you will find it easier and easier to accomplish harder and more time consuming tasks throughout the day. A great way to go about this is to gradually make each consecutive task harder until you get to the big projects that you need to spend a lot of time on.
2: Eat breakfast
Conclusive science shows that eating breakfast is an absolute game changer not only for your physical health, but for your mental health, your performance as a person, your habits, your productivity, and etc:
“In addition, infrequent and/or frequent breakfast skipping was associated with depression, lower happiness, post traumatic stress disorder, loneliness, short sleep, long sleep, sleep problem, restless sleep, sleep problem due to traumatic event, and poor academic performance.” (Link and citation to study at the footer of this article)
As you can see, breakfast is pretty important, and it only scratches the surface of why you shouldn’t be skipping it. But what should a breakfast include? The ideal breakfast should be made up of some lean protein, healthy fat, and high-quality carbohydrates. As an example, having a smoothie with some protein powder, almond butter, banana, and blueberries would be a simple breakfast for someone on the go. A more extensive breakfast such as eggs with lean ground turkey, a sweet potato and onion skillet hash, and some avocado on the side is also a fantastic option. Feel free to mix and match but the trio of protein, healthy fat (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat), and high-quality carbohydrates (from real foods) is essential for a healthy breakfast.
Improving this could make the most impact in improving how you feel, and thus, improving your productivity each day.
3: Hydrate
Starting off your day with a glass of water, a glass of water with lemon, or if you’re really motivated, a glass of lemon water with some Himalayan pink salt or sea salt can definitely provide a big boost in your health, awareness, mood, and cognitive performance first thing in the morning.
Every cell, tissue, and organ in the body needs water to work properly. So starting off with something as small as a glass of water can provide huge benefits considering the 8-9 hours you just went without any. Mineral salts can provide additional benefits when it comes to adrenal health, and supporting other important functions to help us feel our best.
4. Take a shower
Some say that both a hot and a cold shower can be beneficial at waking you up, boosting creativity, and etc. Which one should you do?
Warm showers increase your core body temperature, and I have heard cold showers offer life-changing benefits — so doing a combination of both might just be the answer. My recommendation is that you try a warm shower first and then end in cold for the last 30 seconds or so. You may even find that building up to a minute in the cold water at the end can provide even stronger benefits.
Ultimately trying both and seeing which one works best for you is the most ideal approach for each person.
5: Get yourself ready for work (physically & mentally)
Getting yourself ready by doing small things that prepare yourself to be presentable, and to be refreshed can be an important cue in order to mentally switch into “work mode”. Brushing your teeth, putting on work clothes, and preparing yourself to look presentable goes a long way in mentally preparing to be productive. These little daily actions that you do before your day even starts can be real game changers — they are important to help clear your mind, and reduce stress before starting your day.
6: Plan out the day
Establishing a plan of attack for your day is pretty crucial to ensure you are prioritizing the correct things in order to make the day as productive as possible. For some people, writing things down works best as the visual cue of reading the tasks/activities is necessary to begin and stick with them. For other people, just make a mental note of some non-negotiable things that you need to do.
If you don’t write them down, make sure to follow this process to make sure you have a specific implementation plan to get important tasks done:
I will do (task) at (specific place) at (specific time).
Studies show that this type of deliberate plan of implementation results in a higher percentage of action and execution. I promise you, if you take this one seriously, you improve faster than you are right now - I can guarantee it.
7: Train or workout
Adding in a workout in the morning can be super beneficial for cardiovascular health, be a natural anti-inflammatory for your body, and promote increased endorphin release which are those “feel good” hormones in the body that improve our moods dramatically! If you are a professional player, you already know how impactful this can be since you likely train/workout in the morning the majority of the time.
The secret is to work out in the morning, get the energy-boosting and increased endorphin releasing effects, and then enjoy the rest of the day knowing you’ll be more productive, feel better, and continue to feel the benefits of the workout as you work. As a professional athlete myself, it’s pretty insane how beneficial working out in the morning can be — definitely give it a try!
Bonus: if you can get outside and workout in the sun, that’s even better. Vitamin D is created in our body when our skin in exposed to sunlight — it provides huge benefits to our health, and is absolutely essential for all of us.
8: Set up your environment
Environment plays an important role in our ability to get things done. Did you ever want to finish something but you found yourself always getting distracted by things around you? That’s exactly what I am talking about. The environment we live and work in can become “cluttered” with distractions that reduce our productivity and give us the inability to do focused work. Removing some of these things or moving to a different environment can benefit us a ton when it comes to our productivity.
Changing work rooms or environments, removing surrounding objects, or creating environmental boundaries are some of the “hacks” I have used to dramatically improve my overall productivity. You may need to change the place that you do your work if you are a remote worker. If you aren’t remote, then maybe it’s removing objects in your environment such as a cell phone, books, and food to make sure they aren’t distractions that take away from your focus.
Lastly, environmental boundaries are for people who have a hard time keeping their life separate from work — find a designated location for work and never let personal stuff enter than area or room. This works magic at increasing productivity and can benefit your morning routine by giving you the ability to set up a proper environment to allow you to actually focus.
how to be consistent and maintain your routine
Firstly, the best way to maintain a morning routine is to be consistent long enough for it to become a concrete habit. The problem is getting to that point. Here’s what to do—
Part of the reason for the first point, complete an easy task first, is to help make the start or the initiation of your routine that much easier. Once you start, it’s more likely that you will keep going and follow through—half the battle is just starting. The purpose of the first point in this article is to help you in that aspect, so just focus on starting the routine in the morning and I can almost guarantee you’ll find yourself following through more often than not.
Notice how the first points are all focused on taking care of YOU. Improving YOU generates the biggest return to the goals and aspiration you want to achieve. After you’ve taken care of yourself, the focus then shifts to the responsibilities of work or whatever puts foot on the table for you. This is intentional to make sure that the most important aspect of the morning routine, self preparation and care, is taken care of to reduce friction in your routine and make it more sustainable long term.
Make sure to take care of yourself as that builds a foundation and impacts the quality of work you do.
key takeaways
The key takeaways of this article are to take care of your body first as that creates the foundation for everything else, and create a deliberate plan of action and environment to support focused and meaningful work to optimize productivity. Then continue to optimize and find which routines and strategies work best for you, and finally stay consistent with what works long enough for the routine to stick and become a habit.
Improving overall is never an easy, straightforward process. It takes time, energy, deliberation action, adversity, risk, uncertainty, and most of all, a proven framework to build your life around (a routine). Focus on improving each day, and you will win.
Nonstop.
Written by professional footballer/soccer player and NASM Nutrition Coach, Heath Martin.
"Skipping Breakfast and Its Association with Health Risk Behavior and Mental Health among University Students in 28 Countries" article:
Pengpid, Supa, and Karl Peltzer. “Skipping Breakfast and Its Association with Health Risk Behaviour and Mental Health among University Students in 28 Countries.” Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity : Targets and Therapy, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 18 Aug. 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7443458/.