A Guide to Win The Morning!

Developing a morning routine and planning your day can provide the biggest dividends in having a productive day. So Winning the Morning deserves it’s own page where we can review the different aspects involved in waking up, creating a morning routine, and planning out your day. Let’s begin with waking up!

Part 1: Use an Alarm Clock to Wake Up

Our cell phones are amazing devices but to win the morning starts with winning the night. And having your cell phone on your bedside table is an awful end to our day and beginning to tomorrow.

Upon waking up you want your mind to be clear of distractions and notifications so you can focus on your highest leveraged activities for today. A cellphone will distract you and right off the bat decrease your chances of having a highly productive day. I recommend either turning your cellphone off before bed or charging it outside your bedroom for the night. Also the ability to easily snooze a cellphone alarm is detrimental, you set your alarm for a reason, so get up at that time!

Some people are convinced that they’re just not ‘morning people’. If there’s something that all successful people seem to share in common (other than they all read) it’s waking up early.

Read: How To Wake Up Early

The 'Wake Up Naturally' Alarm Clocks

It’s important for our bodies to wake up naturally and not when in the middle of a sleep cycle. Consider an alarm clock that can simulate a sunrise to help our bodies complete their sleep cycle by the time our alarm goes off.

Philips Wake Up Light

This alarm clock really is the complete package. With 20 different brightness settings this alarm starts gradually brightening 20-40 minutes before your alarm is set to go off. And you can choose from 5 nature sounds to play when you begin waking. More expensive than alternatives, but this alarm is proven to work and may be just what you need to stop hitting the snooze button!

Sunrise Alarm Clock

An alternative natural sunrise simulator to help you get your butt out of bed when you intended to. While not as advanced as the Philips alarm clock (only 3 brightness settings) this clock is very affordable and worth the investment in experimenting with waking up via natural light.

The 'Get Out of Bed' Alarm Clocks

Sometimes even if we are well intentioned and motivated to wake up early, we will snooze until we feel well rested. Often, just standing up out of bed can be enough to wake us up to tackle the day. Here are some alarm clocks that will force you out of bed.

Ruggie

If you want to turn this alarm off, you’re going to have to sit up and put your feet on this memory foam pad. Now that you’re sitting up right and with no ability to set a snooze, let’s just start the day!

Clocky

So still having trouble waking up and getting out of bed? No problem, we just need a solution that makes sure you get out of bed. Clocky here will literally run away and hide forcing you awake to go find it and turn it off. Now that the adrenaline is going, let’s just stay up and start the day!

The 'Nuclear Option' Alarm Clocks

So you still wish to sleep in and delay starting the day then? These alarm clocks will be sure to annoy the hell out of you to the point you’re not going to click snooze and get up to start the day.

Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock

These 2 loud and annoying alarm clocks with an attached vibrating bed shaker will be sure to wake up even the deepest of sleepers! I recommend testing the alarm clocks above first, but if you really have trouble waking up this will shake and wake ya! They are also perfectly sized for travel, so those on the go or digital nomads can bring this with them. They also allow you to turn off the sounds and just use the bed shaker if you don’t want to annoy everyone else in your house

iLuv TimeShaker Wow

#2: Develop a Morning Routine

Now that we’re awake, how should we go about starting our day? I believe having a consistent morning routine is ideal to winning the day. Doing the same things each and every morning until you’ve cemented this habit as a necessary start to your day. Activities can involve many things from fitness, mindfulness, writing, reading, and what we eat and drink. The most important factor is creating an initial plan, and sticking with it for a week, then a month, and then iterating changes as we see fit.

Read: How To Create A Morning Routine

Watch these 3 videos on creating a morning routine, developing a mindfulness practice, and how to plan your day from 3 thought leaders in these respective fields.

Creating a Morning Routine

After we gain some mental clarity with our mindfulness practice, how should we go about starting our day? Tim Ferriss has asked hundreds of top performers on his podcast this exact question and synthesized some results here. This is a good place to start, but you will need to experiment and customize a plan that works best for you.

Daily Mindfulness

Our minds are lost in thought 47% of the time. Starting the day we should be thinking about what we want to achieve and to be less distracted. Daily mindfulness is NOT optional, you need time for yourself to collect your thoughts for the day in order to properly plan your day.

Planning Your Day

In our morning routine we want to plan our day in accordance with our personal growth goals. What will help us become our best selves? What is the highest leveraged activity we need to accomplish today to push our goals forward? Tony Robbins has one framework you can use – Rapid Planning Method to plan your day. But there are many solutions here, some as simple as a to-do list, just make sure capturing the activities that are most important for you today.

Build Your 1st Morning Routine!

There can be many additional activities to test and incorporate in your morning routine depending on your life situations. But try your hand with just jotting down a morning routing to try consistently for 1 week.

Note: I am currently creating a How-To guide on Building a Morning Routine, be sure to subscribe to receive an email when it’s published! Much more to come on this!!

Daily Performance Boosters

As we look to Win The Morning, some days we won’t have the energy or discipline to do what needs to be done. Rather than fall back to unproductive habits, here’s some performance boosters to experiment with as you start your productive day.

For more information on ‘butter coffee’, popularized by Bulletproof Coffee, check out this primer here.

Bulletproof Coffee

As someone who drinks 2-4 cups of coffee a day I’m always looking for ways to have sustained energy and focus. It’s tough enough to get a few uninterrupted work hours in a row to focus on projects and goals, so I want to limit the caffeine lulls I face as well. That’s where Bulletproof coffee steps in and has been an aid. Read more below on the science of butter coffee and how butter helps slow the absorption of caffeine to give you energy for a few hours rather than a quick caffeine spike and drop.

Read Blog: What is Bulletproof Coffee?

As we set out to start our days let’s make sure we put our best foot forward: Waking up early, planning our day, and getting shit done! And if you’re really tired research some nootropics or holistic remedies to help boost productivity!

Win The Morning!