Morning Routine for Success in the Office

Throughout history, people have recognized the value of starting strong. “Well begun is half done.” So runs the classic proverb from Aristotle. While this idea holds true for lots of things, it is especially relevant to the relationship between your morning and the rest of your day. Abraham Lincoln allegedly claimed that if you gave him six hours to chop down a tree, he would spend the first four sharpening the ax. He understood that preparation is the key to success. Richard Whately lived by the bluntly phrased maxim: “Lose an hour in the morning and you will spend the rest of your day looking for it.” He believed that a structured morning was essential to a structured day. These men came from diverse backgrounds, but their proactive attitudes towards life brought them success in their respective fields. How can you apply their nice ideas to your morning? Here are some ideas: 

Make your bed: 

Admiral William H. McRaven, a retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral responsible for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden,  wrote a whole book titled Make your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World based on lessons he learned from his time in the infamous Navy SEAL training. The main gist of the book is summarized in this quote from the commencement speech he gave on the same topic in 2014: 

If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.  

Making your bed starts the day off on the right foot. It reminds you that you are a person who gets things done. Visually, it declutters your bedroom, preventing stress now and giving you a sanctuary to return to at the end of the day.  

Things You Need Before Coffee: Water and Sunlight 

Hydration is Key: 

If you can’t function before you have your morning cup of joe, you are certainly not alone. But here’s the problem with that habit:  

Your body naturally produces cortisol in the morning to get you going for the day, but coffee stimulates adrenaline production. Your body doesn’t need excess stress hormones, so it will decrease its cortisol production and let the coffee do the work. If you stick to water for 60-90 minutes after you wake up, your cortisol peak will have already passed and when you drink your coffee, the adrenaline will be a welcome boost. 

Here’s why you should hydrate first: Your brain is 75% water. You lose about 16 ounces of water per night by exhaling humidified air and sweating. A dehydration level of even just 2% can impair cognitive functions like concentration and memory, so drinking water sharpens your mind to prevent a dip in your abilities and ensures an optimally productive day.  

In addition to balancing hydration levels, drinking water before your coffee prevents a crash later in the day. During the day adenosine builds up in your brain, inducing increasing sleepiness the longer you stay awake. While you are asleep, your body clears out the adenosine built up in your brain from the previous day. Caffeine blocks the adenosine receptors in the brain, so if there is any leftover adenosine in your brain when you drink your morning coffee, that adenosine, in addition to whatever adenosine you have built up that morning will overwhelm your brain when the coffee wears off, causing you to crash. Proper morning hydration supports the brain’s waste clearing system, ensuring that you get the excess adenosine out of your system before coffee blocks the receptors. That way the receptors don’t get flooded when your coffee wears off. So next time you’re about to reach for the coffee pot, consider replacing that 16 ounces of water you lost last night first.  

Get Some Sunlight: 

Natural light triggers the aforementioned cortisol spike, so giving the sunlight some time to wake you up before you caffeinate makes sure your coffee is supporting your brain when you actually need it, not suppressing your body’s natural morning functions. 

But that’s not all. Sunlight also helps regulate your circadian rhythm. When the light hits the photoreceptors in your eyes, your body starts a countdown for releasing melatonin. More sunlight leads to more melatonin, which makes you sleep well at night. Getting sunlight in the morning is an investment in your next night of sleep.  

Move Your Body 

Exercise releases mood-boosters like endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin, which literally biologically gives you a positive mindset to start the day with. Like making your bed, prioritizing physical activity in the morning, even low impact activities like stretching or walking, gives you a sense of accomplishment before you even leave the house. This study 

Many celebrities and successful business people prioritize exercise in their morning routines. For example, Anna Wintour, longtime editor-in-chief of American Vogue, starts every day with an hour of exercise (usually her favorite sport, tennis). Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, also wakes up early every day to give himself time for exercise. He says, “I work out every day. It’s important to me. It’s a priority, and I schedule around it,” and since his days, like most people’s, quickly fill up, he carves out time in the morning to make sure exercise doesn’t fall through the cracks.  

Groundbreaking thinkers and writers like C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Frederick Neitzsche, and Henry David Thoreau said that movement made their thoughts flow better than anything else. Nietzsche said that “all truly great thoughts are conceived while walking” and Dickens said, “If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.”  These men were extremely different and held starkly contrasting views on most of life’s big questions, but both were geniuses in their own right and credited their creativity in part to physical movement. If bodily exercise inspired these men to produce world-changing ideas and literary works of all different kinds, it is safe to assume that morning exercise will help organize your thoughts ahead of a busy day. 

Engage Your Mind 

Meditate, pray, read, journal, make a to-do list. Do something that involves your mind and helps you calm and organize your thoughts before the day gets busy.  

Kobe Bryant was known for spending 10-15 minutes every morning in silent meditation, just sitting with his thoughts. In an interview once, he said, “It sets me up for the rest of the day. It’s like having an anchor. If I don’t do it, I feel like I’m constantly chasing the day as opposed to being able to be controlled and dictate the day. […] I have a calmness about whatever comes my way. And a poise.” If you feel like you start every day off already running behind, Kobe’s method might be worth a try.  

Mother Teresa prayed for three hours every morning to prepare for a day serving people in dire need. Most people don’t have three hours to spare, but then again most of us aren’t living among the poorest of the poor all day every day. In her book In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories, and Prayers she said, “The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life.” Attending to your own spiritual and mental needs in the morning allows you to give more fully throughout the day.  

Reading keeps your education going after you graduate from a classroom setting. It improves focus and concentration and reduces stress levels by absorbing your attention. Interacting with literary characters increases empathy and social understanding, and reading good literature refines verbal intelligence and communication skills.

Journaling is another good option. All sorts of successful people, from Leonardo da Vinci to Charles Darwin to Richard Branson to Oprah Winfrey, have journaled. Da Vinci and Darwin used their journals to record their observations, inventions, and discoveries, and Branson uses his as a memory aid and processing tool for his ideas, while Oprah focuses hers inward on gratitude, mindfulness, and personal growth.  

What do Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Tom Brady have in common? Aside from being extraordinarily successful in their respective fields, all of them make and follow to do lists. Elon Musk’s is a series of high intensity time blocks so he can take care of all his companies. Bill Gates likes to take what he calls “think weeks,” where he takes a week-long retreat to step back and look at the bigger picture of his company, his life, emerging technologies, and the industry as a whole. If you can’t afford a think week to reorganize your whole life all at once, maybe start one day at a time. Give yourself 10 minutes in the morning to step back and assess the best way to execute today. Tom Brady’s plan is less focused on attacking major problems and more focused on consistently disciplined daily decisions to prevent burnout and make peak performance a habit.  

Conclusion 

Maybe you don’t have time to do all of these things every day. But if your morning lacks structure or your routine has gotten monotonous, take some inspiration from the greats and incorporate a thing or two from their schedules into your morning tomorrow. See how the right morning routine can change the tone of your entire day!