Name: 8 Reasons Your Morning Routine is KILLING Your Productivity
Uploaded: 2021-12-12T17:51:05.000Z
Duration: 9 min 17 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The foundation of any great day starts with a great morning routine, and yours is holding

What you do in the morning during the hour or so after you wake up sets the tone for

A good morning routine sets you up for success; a bad one sets you up for failure.

Here are eight morning routine mistakes that are holding you back, and what you can do

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make is not having a consistent morning routine.

Order breeds order and chaos breeds chaos.

Starting your day off feeling organized and prepared will give you positive momentum to

Even something as simple as making your bed when you wake up can have a profound impact

As Admiral William H. McRaven said in his UT Austin commencement speech: “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 will encourage you to do another task, and

By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.”

Every action you take in the morning sets up future actions throughout the rest of the

Starting your day off with a few small wins gives you positive momentum to accomplish

On the other hand, starting your day off with a few small losses halts your momentum and

Mistake number two is hitting the snooze button.

It may seem harmless to silence your alarm and sleep for another ten minutes.

In fact, it may even seem beneficial to get in a few extra minutes of rest when you’re

The reality is, though, that hitting the snooze button often does more harm than good.

When we sleep, we cycle through four different stages.

Stage one, stage two, and stage three are known as non-rapid eye movement or non-REM

When we fall asleep, we first pass through the lighter stages of sleep, stages one and

two, before going into the deeper, restorative stages of sleep, stage three and REM.

Throughout the night, we cycle through these four stages of sleep completing one cycle

The problem with hitting the snooze button is that it disrupts the sleep cycle.

When you go back to sleep, you don’t necessarily pick up where you left off.

In other words, you might have cut yourself short on precious deep sleep only to return

So the extra ten or fifteen minutes of sleep after hitting the snooze button is unlikely

If you notice yourself feeling tired in the morning, hitting the snooze button every day

You need to get to the root of it and fix your sleep.

Waking up tired in the morning is a reflection of the quality of sleep you got the night

So instead of trying to fix it in the morning once the damage has already been done, you

need to fix the problem before it occurs.

You want to be proactive with your sleep instead of reactive.

I’ve done an entire video on the science of sleep and how to wake up feeling more refreshed

Number three is not getting enough early morning sun exposure.

As humans we are diurnal, meaning that we are biologically wired to be awake during

the daytime and asleep during the nighttime.

One key hormone that helps regulate this biological rhythm is melatonin.

It helps set our circadian rhythm and primes our bodies for sleep come bedtime.

Research has shown that when people are exposed to sunlight in the morning, their nocturnal

melatonin production occurs sooner in the day and they have an easier time sleeping

This alone has been game-changing in me getting a better handle on my sleep onset insomnia.

I shoot for at minimum 2 minutes of morning sun exposure when I’m rushed, but ideally

at least 5 minutes and up to 10 when time allows.

Sun exposure also promotes the production of vitamin D, which is important for bone

As a society, we are spending more time inside and less time outside.

As a result, it is estimated that approximately 42% of Americans are vitamin D deficient.

Short, repeated sun exposure throughout the day has been shown to be ideal for increasing

vitamin D, so starting your morning with even a few minutes of sun exposure can be a great

way to jumpstart your vitamin D production for the day.

Mistake number four is checking your phone first thing in the morning.

While you sleep, your brain is able to work free from the distractions and overstimulation

Your subconscious can focus on problems that you weren’t able to solve throughout the

day and can explore creative solutions to overcome them.

When you start your morning with a screen, however, you hinder the “download” process

It also puts you in a reactive state rather than a proactive one.

Instead of being intentional with your morning and emotional state, you are reacting to all

As Matthew Walker, Professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley, explains, when

you check your phone first thing in the morning, you let a flood of anxiety wash onto you.

This is problematic not just because it’s a bad way to start your day, but because you

train your brain in a sort of Pavlovian way to expect a rush of anxiety when you wake

And this anticipatory anxiety is enough to negatively impact the quality of your sleep.

For many of us, checking our phones first thing in the morning has become so deeply

ingrained that it can be a difficult habit to break.

When implementing any habit change though, the best way to approach it is to start small.

Start by committing to wait five minutes after you wake up to check your phone - maybe after

you brush your teeth and use the bathroom for instance.

Then after a couple of days, extend it to ten minutes, then twenty minutes, and so on

Ideally, you should give yourself about an hour after you wake up before you check your

phone so you have adequate time to complete your morning routine free from distraction.

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8 Reasons Your Morning Routine is KILLING Your Productivity

anxiety

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