Having a productive morning routine in 2022 can set you up for success in all areas of your life. Here are some examples of things you could incorporate into your morning routine and other tips.
Why is having a productive morning routine important?
A morning routine sets the tone for the rest of your day and the rest of your life because it’s during a normal day in your life that your life in its entirety takes form.
It’s easy to think that “life” only happens when those big and important highlight-days of our lives happen; but what actually builds up the entirety of our lives is all of those small, seemingly insignificant daily lives we go through. Day by day, month after month, year after year.
The daily habits you perform; including having a productive morning routine, are what ultimately decide in what direction your life goes over time. The decisions and things we do everyday build up, it accumulates, it grows over them; both the good and the bad.
Related: Your success comes from your daily habits – Atomic Habits (Review)
Exercising your body and mind every day builds up positive health over time; smoking every day builds up negative health impacts over time. You perhaps won’t notice the impacts from your actions after just a few days, weeks, months, or even years; but when you look back; haven’t all your routines made a dent in your life?
And all of this is why having a productive morning routine is important. As this new year of 2022 is just starting, it’s the perfect time to mentally set you up for a new routine.
Why is it important to be“productive“?
The word “productive” may have gotten a bad reputation over the last few years; because a certain strong and unhealthy hustle culture has used the word everywhere.
But being productive just means to take action that:
“Causing or providing a good result or a large amount of something”
Cambridge Dictionary
And that result or amount of something can be:
- Happiness
- Health
- Well-being
- Free time
- Hygiene
- Success in reaching personal goals
- Financial gains
- Memories
- Experiences
- Happy relationships
To aim to be productive in your daily life does not mean to aim to turn yourself into a hustling unanimated robotic work machine. It just means that you are taking active steps into getting out the things you want out of life.
To be productive can include time spent with loved ones; if one of your aims is to have happy and meaningful relationships. To be productive can include reading your favorite book or watching a really enjoyable movie; if one of your aims is to consume those types of contents into your mind.
So you see, productivity shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing, reserved for companies or super-hustlers to use. Productivity should be used by anyone, because it brings positive effects in our lives, towards the direction we want to grow and move. It’s one of the pillars of leading a positive, purposeful, driven, and meaningful life.
How to start a productive morning routine (in 2022)
I don’t support telling every human on earth to follow the same goals or dreams; because we are all different people. We need to come up with our dreams and think about what we want out of life; instead of always letting society and other people tell us what to aim for and what constitutes a “good” life.
So, I also don’t believe in just giving you a setlist of routines to follow; because not all “good” and productive actions are suitable for your personal goals and aims in life. Instead, here’s what I suggest you do.
Step 1: Decide your own goals & aims
The first step is for you to think, imagine and dream about what you want out of your life, and what personal goals you want to be chasing.
Here are 10 questions you can ask yourself to find out what you want out of life and your daily habits:
- What would your ideal dream life look like? What actions would you be doing from morning to night in that life (ideally)?
- What would you do in life if money, time, and education didn’t matter?
- Do you have any people you look up to or are inspired by? What do those people do that inspires you? Perhaps you may want to incorporate those actions into your own life
- Are you jealous of someone else’s life, routines, actions, and habits? Perhaps those are things that you should start doing yourself
- If you could start over from scratch; who would you become? What daily actions would this new person be doing every day?
- What would feel meaningful for you to experience, achieve, or have before you die?
- If you were your parent, what would you make yourself do every morning? (Wanting the best for yourself)
- Are there some actions you do every morning (or day) that do not sit well with you? That you experience bad conscience about doing? Perhaps those are things that you should aim to eliminate from your behavioral pattern
- If you knew you’d die in two years, what actions would you start taking every day from now on?
- If you knew you’d live a long time and that the future will come; what would you want yourself to focus on achieving and building over time? (Think long-term)
Step 2: Break goals into actionable steps + Set the routine
Now when you have an idea, or even perhaps strong goals that you want to aim for; it’s time to break those goals down into small actionable steps you can take daily.
For example, if you want excellent health; break that down into one or two small habits you can perform each morning in your morning routine. (E.g. Exercise for 20 minutes or eat a healthy and nourishing breakfast)
Once you have a list of actions that you’d want yourself to do each morning, start rearranging them into a step-by-step routine that would make sense and feel comfortable for you.
For example, perhaps you know you can’t actively move your body as soon as you wake up, so you can move that routine down. And maybe, you know that you enjoy reading the first thing you do (instead of checking social media); so that could be a way to push up the list.
You will probably need to go back anyway and change it up once you’ve tried it out, but you can help yourself by doing it before you begin as well.
In addition: The routine does not have to be super strict or set in stone. It can work as a general guideline as well, you can change up the order as you wish anyway.
Make it enjoyable for yourself and easy to perform. This shouldn’t feel like work or a constant painful struggle. It’s supposed to help you, give you more joy in life, and more free time to do unproductive things.
Step 3: Practice getting into the routine
In general, it takes between 22 days up to 3 months for humans to develop a long-lasting habit.
So, the next step is to just perform your morning habit every morning until it becomes your new normal.
Once it has become normal for you, you won’t even need to think about what you’re doing each morning. Your body and mind will move by habit and you will every day be moving towards your personal goals and aims without needing to exert much effort.
That’s how easy it is, and I think you know how valuable such an automated routine can be for you.
My productive morning routine in 2022 (Example)
If it helps, here’s my daily routine. Perhaps you can get some inspiration from it or some insight on how some goals may translate into daily actions.
As earlier mentioned, I believe our morning routines should be tailored to our own goals.
So first, here are my personal goals that I build my morning routine around:
- Feel inspired, motivated, excited for life
- Financial and career/creative goals and projects that I want to achieve
- Good health and daily contribution to maintaining it
- In touch with my emotions, dreams, desires, and feelings
- Good hygiene, skin, and healthy hair
- Always a clean home, dishes, and clothes
My morning routine in 2022:
- Wake up anytime before 9:30
- Get inspired: reading a book on my phone, look at art and design inspiration, listen to music that sets the mood right, try to think about something that makes me excited to live and makes me want to get up out of bed
- Get up from bed & practice gratitude: Open the window and get fresh air, breathe in deeply. Look and appreciate the sky, birds, nature, or anything I see. Practice gratitude while doing it.
- Hygiene: Brushing teeth, skincare, haircare, etc
- Daily weight-in: And log it into an app because I like graphs and I enjoy seeing data about my health and body over time
- Drink water: Humans tend to wake up dehydrated, so drinking a glass or two of water before anything else wakes up us is healthy for us.
- Clean, do dishes, wash clothes: Clean at least one area of my apartment in a relaxed manner, do any dishes left from the day before, perhaps start the washing machine if needed
- Make my bed (Very sloppily perhaps; but at least I perform the motions like a normal human adult)
- Journal: Journal about anything I need to get off my chest, about what I aim to get out of the day, perhaps write a to-do list for the most important tasks, perhaps write affirmations that sets my mind into a more positive and grateful mood.
- Coffee: It’s not a part of any of my goals per se (except feel energized and inspired for life). But I enjoy drinking tons of coffee or green tea; perhaps because I enjoy feeling pumped up in the morning.
- Work! Now I’ve taken care of everything I feel I need to do, and I have relaxed, got inspired, motivated myself, and can finally sit down and start creating things from a positive mindset
- Exercise: Before my definition of the morning is over (which is around 13:00-14:00), I make sure to get out to exercise; get my heart rate up for at least 20-30 minutes, and log that exercise into my smartwatch
I don’t do every single thing every day, or in that exact order. But most days I do, and it helps me so much. During some periods of life, I fall off the wagon; but then I jump right back in and I’m feeling so great again! I’ve been able to keep this routine up for years, and it’s highly enjoyable, productive, and it keeps giving me more and more positive results.
Even if I “waste” the entirety of the rest of my days (you know; accidentally get stuck on Instagram for 5 hours), I still have done everything I want to be doing every day! And this routine of mine only takes 1-2 hours to do (perhaps longer if I work longer), but it’s doable any day.
After this routine, I still have at least 12-14 hours of the day to do other things such as work more, hang out with people, read, waste time, do unproductive things, or think about life.
I sincerely hope this article could give you some helpful tips and advice on how to create a productive morning routine in 2022!