Do You Have A Morning Routine - As Many Highly Successful People Do?

Many of us are too rushed, too stressed and too overtired to want to spend time on a morning routine. Would you even consider it to be a waste of time?

Setting Your Day Up For Success

But while you are considering that question, why not consider this also. Among the multiple benefits of establishing a regular morning routine is the positive energy flowing from having a really great start to your day, which then stays with you as you launch into your morning's work.

Mindfulness nonsense, you may say, but there are multiple high achievers who swear that part of their continuing success and drive is owed to their personal morning routine. Let's examine some of these.

Richard Branson is as good an inspirational role model as any. Ascribing a morning and evening fitness routine to look after his body as being important to his success, it's that feeling of the high we get after exercise that propels him forward - "if I feel great, I can achieve anything. I’ve always believed that the fitter you are and the more time you find to look after yourself, the more time you’ll have for everyone else."

We may not all have time for a hard game of tennis at 6am, and again in the evening, nor regular kitesurfing off Necker Island, but a daily 40 minutes of exercise - in his case weight lifting - as part of his systematic fitness program should be possible for most of us. However, "your health and fitness doesn’t always have to be an earth-shattering effort...you can do it in a very simple, personal way." As he says, consistency is key, to keep going even when you don't feel like it.

Looking outside of your bubble

Jeff Hoffman, another serial entrepreneur and, among other things, founder of Priceline for cheap travel deals, has this morning ritual, which he calls 'infosponging'. 

Having noticed that really successful people seem to process a greater swathe of the world's information than others, he adopted infosponging, which involves taking the first ten minutes or so of the day to challenge yourself to learn one new thing. This must be something random that you have no idea why you're learning it and you have no reason to. So if you're in banking you can't consider new developments in banking, but you could follow your curiosity to click on a new technology in healthcare, or trends in the fashion industry for example. Set out to learn one new thing each day outside of your bubble.

Then write down one sentence to encapsulate what you have learned. A great example which he gives was a story he read about perishable commodities, that the entire market and pricing mechanism for, say, bananas, is totally different to other products. So that was his infosponge for that day, summarising that perishable commodities require a different promotional and pricing scheme because they are very time sensitive and diminishes as a banana starts to turn brown. So what, you may say?

Everything that you learn in such a random way becomes a puzzle piece. Periodically he will look at all those puzzle pieces, move them around, and ask himself 'can I make something out of this?'

So, the connection he made with bananas, was an earlier piece he had read about the number of airline seats that fly around the world empty each day. So he connected those 2 puzzle pieces. At least a banana may have a lead time of one week to sell. With an airline seat all the goods are spoiled as soon as you close the door - so it is even more perishable than a banana.

In this instance he could instantly see the connection to build a perishable product distribution system for things even more perishable than bananas - like empty plane seats and hotel rooms. And thus Priceline was born.

So infosponging is an excellent way to start your day, and not particularly time consuming.

Airplane Mode Or The Thermometer Of Life?

Another highly successful entrepreneur is Dean Graziosi, author of 'Millionaire Success Habits'. His morning routine is vastly different, and begins the night before by putting his phone on airplane mode at night. Waking up in the morning without a night-time's legacy of email or texts, no impulse to react to them, to get them done and out of the way; why become the 'thermometer of life', when life just grabs hold of you in the morning to tell you how your day is going to be?

Now the day can begin in a more thoughtful way. Many successful people consider gratitude to be a key to success, and Dean begins by 'feeding his soul', lowering the bar of gratitude in the first few moments of waking up, perhaps about the comfort of your bed, the fact that you have a house to live in, or the very fact that you still exist when 150,000 people died in the last 24 hours. Gratitude also forms an important element of morning rituals for other high-fliers ranging from Oprah Winfrey to Tony Robbins, who thinks of three things he is grateful for, from his past, his present or his future. Next, Dean Graziosi opens a book he has gained something from (giving 'The Untethered Soul' as an example) and reads a couple of sentences out loud.

After feeding the soul, feed your body - a big glass of water, with lemon, then a green juice of some sort.

Now it's time to move your body, with an exercise routine, perhaps a run, or simply an early morning walk.

Finally, having set the day up for success, before starting work, write a list of 'The Things I Get To Do Today'. These may be things that you don't particularly like to do, but when you think about it, it's better than cleaning drains. You get to do those things because you are fortunate in life.

The Miracle Morning

A more structured approach to take is SAVERS, an acroynym coined by Hal Elrod in his excellent best-selling book 'The Miracle Morning'.

To kick off a 'SAVERS Morning', on waking you spend a little time contemplating Silence, for as much as 10 minutes. Use the time purposefully to encourage your hopes, your aspirations, the positive side of your life, what you want to achieve. You could also think of this as meditation. In fact, hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio attributes the arguably even more effective Transcendental Meditation as probably the single most important reason for whatever success he has had.

A simpler form could begin with a basic breathing exercise. Tony Robbins' approach for this is to “sit straight with your eyes closed, inhale deeply through your nostrils while simultaneously lifting your arms in a shoulder press motion, and then exhale forcefully through your nostrils while bringing your arms back to your body, palms up.” Take those breaths “in quick succession,” says Robbins, and start with three sets of 10 breaths, taking breaks in between each set. The exercise should leave you feeling “energized.” 

The 'A' of SAVERS stands for Affirmations. Forget all the hokum about thinking or asking for something enough times and it will happen. The real strength of affirmations is in setting out several statements about what you intend to do, what you will be achieving over the next 12 months, what your legacy will be. Something of a mission statement that you say out loud to yourself.

'V' is for Visualisation. You have an aspiration - perhaps making enough money for an early retirement. Work on visualising what this will look like, where you will be, what you will be doing, and with whom.

You are visualising your future success in whatever you are setting out to do, and you visualise it in such a vivid way that, in your own mind, it has already happened. Tony Robbins is another strong advocate of visualisation, and focuses daily on three goals that he wants to make happen, either that day or in the future. He imagines that he’s already achieved each of those three goals.

'E' is for Exercise. As creator of the Easy Fitness program this is one of my strong points, of course, and I am very well aware of the positive feelings which flow from a morning exercise session, which can endure for at least an hour or two afterwards, making you feel good about yourself and ready for anything.

'R' stands for Reading. Spend 10 minutes or so reading any book or journal which inspires you and which may be thought-provoking.

'S' is where the acronym breaks down a little. It stands for 'Scribe', as the real word the author had in mind, 'journaling', would ruin it. SAVERJ? Hm.

Scribing, or journaling is simply to write down things which are on your mind, what you want to do, today and in the future, what may be troubling you, anything at all. Getting things off your chest, out of your brain and on to paper.

There is a lot more to it than that - 224 pages to be precise - and I can hear you saying, "OK, so SAVERS could take 1 hour out of my morning start". Short of getting up an hour early, who has time for that, no matter what the benefits may be? Of course you can adapt it a little to your own circumstances, devote less time to each element, or perhaps select the ones which you find most beneficial. You could also incorporate some of them into what you are already doing. For example, reading or scribing could be done either over breakfast or on your journey to work; exercise could be stepped up by walking or cycling briskly to work or the station -although I would recommend the full 20-minute exercise routine of the Easy Fitness program of course!

The Least Pleasant Morning Ritual

Another, shorter, morning ritual I have heard of is rather less pleasant but may have some merit. The extreme would be to eat a frog for breakfast, but the more realistic proposition is to take a cold shower first thing every morning. Neither would be an enjoyable start to the day - to say the least - but that is precisely the idea. Imagine how you would feel afterwards. Nothing, at all, for the rest of your day is going to be as bad. It's all sunshine and roses from here, no matter how challenging your day ahead may be!

The Best Morning Ritual - for myself

Finally, this article would be incomplete if I failed to mention my own morning routine. Taking elements from each of the various routines described above (but leaving out the frog and/or a cold shower!) I rise at around 6am, take in several glasses of reviving water and immediately set out on a brief walk of 20 minutes or so, while incanting some meaningful affirmations and contemplating my life and the day ahead. On my return I begin my Easy Fitness routine which lasts 20 minutes, and includes variations on thirty push ups or sit ups, for example, as well as various stretching exercises. I personally take my own 'Extreme' model of the program, although beginners have it far easier than that. Following this, a little time for reading and journaling, and then, having consciously reordered my life several years ago to eliminate a lengthy morning commute, the working day begins.

If you have a morning routine, or ritual, what's yours? If you don't yet have one, perhaps you could give it a try.