Is it going to be helpful for you to set up morning and evening routines?
The short answer is I believe pretty strongly that yes it is. The truth is that we all have some kind of morning and evening routines – that’s not in any doubt. The question is whether or not it is one we have actively decided upon or whether or not we have passively fallen into it.
The extreme examples
Maybe you have heard about Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. It’s reported that he gets up at 4am every day and spends at least 2 hours in his iron paradise – the gym. Or maybe you know that former Navy Seal Jocko Willink tweets a picture of his watch out around 4:30am every day and then tweets a picture of some weights or gym equipment and a sweat soaked concrete floor about an hour later.
And so, you think, morning routines are for crazy people. They mean getting up stupidly early. They mean hours and hours of different stuff, often involving massive amounts of physical exercise. Ultimately, it all sounds like something I want no part of.
The aim of your morning and evening routines
Yes, there are people who do this and who swear by it and that’s great. Actually, morning routines and evening routines have a very simple aim. In the morning we need to get ourselves ready and set up for the day. In the evening we need to close down, wind down and drift into a good night’s sleep. That’s it.
But why is this a good idea? Well, we all have these already, the question is whether or not they are effective or are making our day harder for us.
Too often in the past my mornings have followed a pattern established long ago by the Saved By the Bell theme song. Falling out of bed with just enough time to shower and get dressed and then running for the bus. Arriving at the office still feeling like I should be asleep and with no idea who I am or what planet I am on. Or, if we have a family, the focus is all about getting everyone else ready for the day. No thought is given to getting ourselves ready for the day.
And at night, we work or do jobs right up to the point we crash and then we watch TV or mindlessly scroll on our phones until we conk out and fall asleep.
Why are Morning and evening routines so effective?
We all have morning and evening routines – that’s not in any doubt. But – are they helping you or hindering you?
First, they both serve to set our body clock over time. The time we get up and the time we go to bed somehow gets hard wired into us and so over time getting up and going to bed gets easier and easier. As our body adjusts, the benefits compound.
The intentionality of it, of thinking it through, making a plan and following that, works like taking a run up in the morning. The aim is to prepare us for the day ahead. Actually thinking this through, therefore, means we can set ourselves up for a much more effective day. This is done primarily by hitting more notes in getting ourselves up and ready than we would normally.
As the day draws to close, the process of following a small routine to close down the day, wind down our minds and our bodies will ultimately, and especially over time, lead to better sleep and set us up for a better tomorrow.
What to avoid.
Before I dive in to outlining the notes to hit in a morning and evening routine we need to address what to avoid.
Complexity here is a killer. The aims are simple. So, you don’t need to start your day with 10-20 different things that all in takes 2-3 hours. You don’t need to drink 3 raw eggs, run 10km, do 100 press ups, read 10 chapters of the Bible, spend 30 minutes learning Greek and then read 2 chapters of book for studying. The more complex the longer it takes. The more likely you are to never follow it. And, being honest – you aren’t really setting yourself up for the day, just starting it earlier.
Inflexibility is also not going to work. Maybe you aren’t well. Maybe you’ve been kept up through the night. The point is we aim to follow it but we need to be flexible based on actual circumstances.
Avoid unrealistic expectations – especially at the start. The point is to keep it simple and effective rather than shoot for the moon and fail. Don’t expect to be able to get up at 4am. Don’t expect to include a 30 minute run every day as soon as you wake up if you aren’t used to it.
Lastly – don’t copy someone else. Everyone needs to do this differently and whilst I would recommend looking at other people’s examples – you are going to need to tweak them.
So what are the notes you want to be hitting?
Morning Routines
In the morning it’s all about waking yourself up and getting yourself going. To do that you need to remember that you are a physical, biological being, you are a spiritual being and you have a mind. There are some practical things that need to be done as well. Each of these things are important.
I’d start by drinking some water. A friend studying sports science once told me that in the summer you can sweat up to 2 litres over night and you need to replenish that in the morning. Some people add lemon to it – I can’t stand lemon water. At this point I’d recommend doing some kind of exercise – stretching or something like a few push ups. The reason is to continue the process of waking the body up.
If you are a Christian then I would move next to reading the bible and prayer. You can follow a bible reading plan or devotional book. This doesn’t need to be your main or your only input for the day but it’s really helpful to have something right at the outset to remind you who you are, who you serve and why you are here.
It’s always good to do something that is mentally stimulating like reading for 10-20 minutes. That might be from a book or from an article.
Normally I am proponent of having a good breakfast but so this needs to be included as well.
Lastly there is the practical stuff – for most the basics are showering and getting dressed. For others it might involve making lunch or packing a bag.
The order in which you do things is totally up for grabs (though I’d drink the water first and would normally shower before getting dressed!) and it may be, based on your current situation that some stuff has to happen in the middle – like getting children up and feeding them. That’s ok.
Evening Routines
In the evening – it’s all about closing off and winding down. I have a short checklist to finish my day and plan tomorrow. I won’t go through this in detail now but the aim here is that I am not still feeling like I haven’t done everything I need to and so am still thinking about it. Today is finished. Then I do something to help me relax. For me this is reading. Then I go to bed. A lot of science suggests that switching off all screens an hour before bed is a really good idea and I am trying to follow this. Sometimes I will watch something instead of reading, or do a bit of both. I would strongly recommend against reading or replying to emails, reading the news, scrolling through social media or doing anything on our phones during this time.
The time you get up and the time you go to bed is for you to decide. For me, I think my current morning plan needs about an hour so I need to get up an hour before my day needs to start. From that I can work out what time I need to go to bed and therefore what time to start winding down. I aim to close my day and plan tomorrow between 9pm and 9:30pm currently. Then I read for 30-60minutes or so.
That’s it – it’s pretty simple but the benefits cannot be overstated.
A few pointers to finish
- Consistency is good – so I’d aim to do this every day as far as you can. I’d also aim to keep the times consistent every day, even at weekends, as far as you can. My experience is that sleeping in on a weekend prevents my body clock from adjusting. However, it’s not wrong to use the weekend to catch up on sleep if we need to for whatever reason.
- The season of life you are in determines what is reasonable. I’d say if you have young children, your plans will need to be less involved, shorter and more flexible.
- Don’t beat yourself up when you fail. You won’t have a perfect streak and the point is that these plans and routines are servants, not masters.
- Don’t beat anyone else up if they mess this up for you Your family may need you meaning you can’t follow your plan. That’s good – be thankful you’ve been able to serve others.
So – in conclusion – I highly recommend spending a bit of time to think about how you want to actually start your day and how you want to end your day. Be intentional and active in this – not just passively following the path of least resistance. Morning and evening routines, done well, can make the difference between an effective day and one where you are just meaninglessly busy.
