Morning Routines — who’s right?

I’ll cut to the quick. I don’t know. I don’t know who’s routine is right for you, but I know what routine is right for me. It’s the one I figured out by trying everything I’ve ever heard of and keeping the things that make me feel awesome.

I was inspired to write this after constantly seeing this guy, Craig Ballantyne, who has these social media ads promoting his program ‘Millionaire Morning Routine program’ or Farm Boy Morning Method. What caught my eye was his ad opening with the ‘morning sins’ (ie: ‘don’t do these’ according to him). These are the ‘sins’:

• Meditation
• Exercise
• Affirmations
• Journaling
• Visualization
• The 5 am club

The reason they caught my eye is that these are the things that I found to make my morning awesome. Not because someone told me they would. It was because over time I tried one or the other and found it to add a huge benefit to my day.

Obviously, we’re all different and react differently to individual stimuli, but I think what happened with this guy is he was just doing it wrong. Or maybe he’s just using these as a hook to get people to listen or buy his program and then reframing it. For example, one of his selling points is to not join The 5am Club, yet I’ve heard him in one video say he gets up at 4:30, and in another say he wakes just before 4 am without an alarm. So clearly he’s found getting up early to be beneficial.

What he discovered (and spins a little) is that waking up early and ready to kick ass is properly preparing the night before. It involves planning. Planning to sleep earlier so you can get up early with proper sleep. It involves planning your morning the night before so you’re not fumbling around wasting time, which brings me to the five other points he made that I referenced above.

After waking (I also wake around 4 am with a full nights rest) not only am I able to complete four more of the five remaining ‘sins’ within 30 minutes, but I’ve also made an amazing thermos of freshly ground and brewed coffee, dressed for the next few hours, and completed my morning bathroom rituals in the same 30 minutes and am heading out the door to begin the sixth and final ‘sin’ — exercise.

‘How?’ you might ask. This is how I do it:

• Wake up at 4 am-ish and journal using the 5 Minute Journal (5 min)
• Breathe/meditate using the Wim Hof method (5 min)
• Make coffee, dress, bathroom (10 min)
• Head out the door to exercise, listening to an affirmations program (5 min) and beginning my walk
• Visualization — for me this happens throughout the morning routine and the rest of the exercise session. I often stop momentarily to take notes.
• Exercise/walk until I’ve finished any audio or Zoom meetings I’ve planned for the day. The audio usually includes spiritual, health, business, and life lessons. These are my priorities so they come first. I also know I wouldn’t do them later in the day, also why they come first.

This last item, one may argue is the most disruptive to his point which I believe has something to do with getting directly to work, the work you’ve laid out in your plan the night before. I would argue, or simply point out, that this is the best part.

You see, my exercise is in what I think of as a different type of gym. The mind gym. Get it? I’m going to work out my mind! I am heading out the door to walk for the duration and am plugging into my audiobooks, podcasts, zoom calls, audio programs, or whatever I have planned to help me execute my morning, day, week, and life, better.

I do agree that one’s mind is most productive early in one’s day and decreases as the day goes on. This is where I differ on this point. When I exercise, especially walk, my brain is in hyper mode! This is exactly when I want to be taking in information, learning, making notes (which I do on my phone while I’m walking. It’s a mini-computer after all), sharing ideas remotely, and best of all is when the majority of my life-changing ideas happen and I do not want to be interrupted.

So, that’s how I do it. You may do it differently, but whatever you do you want to be tracking and making sure it is really working for you and not just comfortable. Trying difficult things, or things you just don’t really want to do can often be surprisingly beneficial. I try everything! If I know anything, it’s that we people don’t really know anything until we do it.

Go. Try. Or as Master Yoda would say “Do or do not. There is no ‘try’.”