Make Mornings Work For You

I love the idea of morning routines. I’m always impressed by people who manage to run many miles or conquer their most pressing business challenges all before the rest of us are eating breakfast. I’ve written a lot about such routines and how to make them work.  

So people sometimes assume that I have a similarly intense early morning routine. In reality, I’ve spent the past 14 years caring for small children, who often wake unpredictably. These varying wake-ups, plus their varying needs, have made using early morning hours somewhat more complicated.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t make my mornings a positive part of my day — particularly if we stretch the morning time frame to mean something past the wee hours. If you, too, have variable mornings, or many responsibilities, here are some ways to make the first part of the day work for you.

1. Track your time. It’s always the first step. Even if your mornings are different from day to day, it helps to see rhythms, and what needs to be accomplished, and what space might be open. I’d recommend tracking for a week (168 hours) but even just logging your days from wake-up to mid-morning can be helpful. 

2. Think about the possibilities. A realistic good morning for me would include strong coffee in my favorite mug, snuggling with my younger kids (the older ones are less into snuggling!), getting outside for a bit now that the weather’s nice, chatting with the older kids over breakfast, doing my daily “rituals” (reading a chapter of War and Peace, writing in my free writing file, and some quick resistance training) in between school runs, and working on a writing project for the first hour or so of my work day. On weekends, I’m often able to do a run in the morning before the kid activities start. If you consider the hours between wake-up and mid-morning, what would you like to do? What might reasonably fit?

3. Think about the logistics. I chose the activities I listed above because they work with my need to watch a toddler during the early morning hours and with my kids’ school schedule and our family’s childcare schedule. When in doubt, think short. Each chapter in War and Peace is only 4-5 pages! My daily free writing requirement is 100 words, which is about the length of this paragraph. We baby-proofed the back porch so going outside is moderately relaxing. Think about what you can do to make at least some of your possibilities into real options. 

4. Think 168 hours, not 24. I know the whole idea of a morning “routine” is to do it daily…except many of the people who tout their morning routines actually don’t do their morning routines seven days a week, 365 days a year. I maintain that anything you do three times a week is a habit. So even if it doesn’t normally work to run in the morning because you’re the primarily parent of a toddler, maybe your partner can take over for 30 minutes 1-2 mornings during the workweek, and you can run then. Aim for the weekends too and, voila, you have a morning exercise routine. 

5. Be flexible. I aim to complete my “rituals” between our nanny’s start time (8 a.m.) and the elementary school children’s bus stop time (8:33 a.m.) but that only works if my husband is driving our eldest to his middle school. On the days I do that school run, I only have 10-15 minutes or so between returning home and the time when the elementary kids start getting shoes on. So I split the ritual and do part then and part when I’m back inside. If I need to drive the elementary school kids, or if I haven’t managed to shower before 8 a.m., then things might split differently those days too. I try not to schedule too many 9 a.m. meetings (because it’s my go-time for writing!) but if I have an important one, I’ll do my writing projects later. If you get too hung up on a particular time, it will be easy to fail. But if you think of your routine as more of a checklist — things you’d like to do before mid-morning — success will be more likely.

I know that eventually my mornings will look different. Someday the toddler’s wake-ups will be more predictable, and eventually he’ll be old enough to fend for himself. Then I might be able to construct a different sort of routine. But it’s possible to make mornings better at any stage of life. How would you like to spend the first part of your day tomorrow?

P.S. Please check out my book What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast for examples of morning routines! And tune into my podcast, Before Breakfast, for an every-weekday-morning dose of inspiration.

This article originally appeared in an email to my newsletter subscribers. https://lauravanderkam.com/contact/.