Why morning routines may not be the productivity answer for YOU
Do you feel like you need a morning routine to be productive and successful? Do you keep seeing advice from people who are crushing it and feel like you should do what they’re doing?
**Quick note - if this is TL;DR, skip to the bottom where you can watch or listen the video that goes with this topic in less than 5 minutes.
There is an incredible amount of information online about morning routines, and tons of information in general about "formulas" you should follow in order to create success. We are taught to believe that productivity is king and that we should do everything in our power to maximize it.
I'll be honest. I find this emphasis on morning routines in the pursuit of productivity to be triggering AF.
Why do we shower admiration on people who tout their insanely early wake-up times? Why do we believe that somehow their early wake-up is the key to all of their success? And that really begs the question of what they've deemed success to be, but that's a question for another time.
Some will argue that you can train yourself to be a morning person, but that hasn't been my experience. To my relief (and vindication!), there's research to back this up. A quote from the article sums it up nicely:
"It turns out our internal clocks are influenced by genes and are incredibly difficult to change. If you're just not a morning person, it's likely you'll never be…if we try to live out of sync with these clocks, our health likely suffers."
THANK YOU. That's exactly what happened to me. Just because I'd set my alarm to wake me up earlier, I wasn't able to fall asleep any earlier at night. I didn't adjust or get used to the new schedule. All I really accomplished was to feel more exhausted for more hours of the day, which actually diminished my normal productivity.
The second reason that this topic is so triggering for me is because the obsession with morning routines is everywhere, and the language used is incredibly annoying. Who sees "Wake up and grind!" and thinks "oh yes, that's for me!"? You may not know this about me yet, but I absolutely abhor the hustle and grind mentality. I was in it for a long time and it nearly broke me.
The glamorization of grinding it out like it’s a prerequisite for success is insane when you consider that people will literally go against how they’re built in order to do what some “successful" person tells them to do, no matter the cost.
Here’s the deal. There is no one formula for success. Each of us has to do what works best for us. It’s okay to treat suggested routines as an experiment and see how it goes. But, resist the urge to see that suggestion as superior to what works for you. It’s not. It happens to work for the person who’s sharing it. That doesn’t mean it's for you, and it doesn’t mean you’re broken or wrong if it doesn’t.
Productivity that comes at personal cost to you is simply not worth it.
And, someone else’s version of productivity isn’t one you should adopt without thoroughly considering its impact if you were to adopt it in your own life.
Instead, consider your natural rhythms and build routines around those. For instance, I’m a night owl. I fall asleep somewhere between midnight and 12:30 and wake up at 7 during the week (because I have to) and around 8 when I don’t have to. I also know about myself that mornings are the best time to set the tone for my day, so I might journal or meditate, then I focus on things that require creative brain power, because I’m just not as good at that later in the day. I also break up my week (because I can) to have days focused on content and creative pursuits, and days that I’m people and client-facing. If you don’t have that freedom in your work, you can still find ways to optimize your time so that you can take advantage of your own rhythms.
You can also watch this in video form: