I figured out what's missing from the advice on morning routines

What is a morning/evening routine actually FOR?

There's two different main purposes and advice-givers mix them up.

Content creators lump these two quite different things under "morning routine" and it causes trouble when you try to design your own.

Purpose 1: Locking in good habits (Medicine)

There are actions you think would be good for you, and the way to make sure you get them done is to build them into a non-negotiable part of the day (it's much, much easier to have a morning routine than it is to have a 2pm routine). Then, whatever else you have to do today, however much it gets out of control, you can still go "at least I got some exercise in", "at least I practised guitar" – whatever matters to you.

Purpose 2: Creating a specific emotion state (Sugar)

So a wind-down evening routine might be designed to make you feel calm and cosy in the late evening, so you can get to sleep. A morning routine could be designed to make you feel clear and focused.

Why these two purposes get mixed up, and the trouble it causes

A lot of the actions are the same! But they are done for different reasons.

So, maybe one person goes for a jog in the morning because it energises them and sets them up for the day.

You see their morning routine and you think, "jogging is good for you, I should do that too." But YOU hate jogging, especially when it's cold out. So you are actually not following their routine at all – their routine energises them and yours makes you miserable.

And Morning/Evening Routine content creators don't communicate clearly what purpose a given step is serving for that individual.

One person might do a braindump of all their random thoughts before they go to bed, because they want to build the habit of journalling. Another person doesn't care about journalling, but getting your their thoughts out helps them sleep better.

One person meditates because they feel great immediately afterwards; another person meditates even though they dislike it, because they want to train their ability to focus.

How do you want to feel, in the morning and the evening?

This all clicked for me because a lot of morning routines are designed to be very gentle and cosy. Some Type A person works hard all day and needs to snatch their moments of calm when they can. Or they start the day very anxious and need to pacify their nervous system before they can get anything else done.

But cosy morning routines are terrible for me! If I curl up with a book and a coffee, I will find it really hard to wrench myself away to start work.

The way I need to feel in the morning is energised and mobile, not cosy and ensconced. Doing a little bit of tidying works quite well for me because it's physical movement, it's got nothing to do with "I should clean".

Do you want to feel the same every day? Are you starting from the same place every day?

Most mornings, I need a routine that gets me from being a slug to taking actions. But some mornings I CAN be cosy and read a book till 11. I want to take advantage of that when I can! And some mornings I wake up stressed and anxious for no reason, and I need steps that will bring me back to equilibrium.

Okay, so, process for the mood-management style routine:

1. Choose a time (morning, after work, evening)
2. Decide how you want or need to feel at that time of day. Write it down.
3. List things you have always considered you might want to put on your routine. Do any of them contribute to the mood state you want to create? Or are there things you haven't tried that you think MIGHT create that mood state?
4. Brainstorm other things that might create that mood state, thinking outside the usual 'healthy routines' box.
5. You probably have too many things now. Choose a small number of them that are kind of different from each other (ie not three different kinds of reading). It's an experiment, so just choose at random, you can try different things later. You can also try a flexible, menu-style routine, if you're not prone to choice paralysis.
6. List things that detract from the target mood state. Probably this means 'no phone' or at least no social media, news or email. If it's something you have to do, try and limit it. (Like, maybe you have to check email first thing in case of emergencies, but you could set a 2-minute timer to make sure you only check for emergencies, rather than getting sucked into the rest of it.)
7. Test routine. Remember that the goal is not to do whatever noble activity is on your list, but to create a mood state. So if you put 'Morning Pages' in your routine, and you hate doing them and they just make you ruminate on the negative stuff (hi!), this doesn't mean you failed at Morning Pages. It means Morning Pages don't create the mood state you're going for, and should be replaced with a new experiment.

As an aside:

• In praise of Morning Pages (and how to do them)
• Why I don’t write Morning Pages (and what I do instead)

'Figure out' goals

A Figure Out Goal is where, instead of setting a goal like "eat 5 serves of vegetables", you set a goal like "figure out ways of cooking vegetables that taste good".

Figure out what morning routine would make me feel [energised/calm/etc]

Clean kitchen daily --> figure out what part of cleaning the kitchen I'm so resistant to, and brainstorm workarounds

etc.

If you set a New Year's Goal that you're now struggling with, try turning it into a Figure Out goal. And then think of some steps towards figuring it out.

Mood management vs doing stuff that's good for you

Lots of people have pretty stable moods (and/or their productivity isn't as sensitive to mood changes as someone with ADHD) so they can afford to have pure 'take your medicine' routines.

Some people are drowning and cannot be thinking about chipping away at their long-term side-hustle or whatever, they just need to get themselves to passably functional.

For me, I'm trying to negotiate trade-offs. I have started running 15 minutes on the elliptical every morning, not because that's a pleasant way to start the day (it's not!) but because if I try and schedule it later, I don't get around to it.

Whereas stretching in the evening is a double-win: it gets me away from my screens, it's pleasant, AND regular stretching is a habit that I want.

It's complicated though: working on your own projects in the morning creates an emotion state! It makes you feel like the day belongs to you, not just your boss.

I think it actually takes a lot of work to figure out how things make you feel. (Or maybe that is just me, I'm mostly not a Big Feelings person.)

This piece was originally published in The Whippet #185 – subscribe to get the next one in your inbox!