As an adult, you will wake up an average of about 22,000 mornings. Now, depending on your health and gender, you may live more or you may live less.
According to the CDC, the average life expectancy in the U.S. is about 78.6 years. Now, since you aren’t considered to be an adult until the age of 18, this would leave you with just over 60 years of adulthood.
(60 years as an adult) x (365 days a year) = 21,900 mornings.
Voila, your 22,000 mornings as an adult give or take a few.
I am somebody who loves detail. You can tell me that I’ll live for a certain length of time, but it really won’t make too much of a difference to me. But when you put it into days, that really helps me see just how valuable each and every single day truly is.
It’s almost like this switch flips inside of my mind and I realize that while 22,000 mornings is a lot, at the same time, it’s also not…
The earth has been around for how many years? Life has existed for how many years? By the end of my life, I will have been alive for a mere fraction of this time. Unfortunately, I have wasted a lot of it.
That’s why I am now on a mission to not waste another morning. For the last two years, I have implemented a morning routine that has helped me to be more productive, more efficient with my time, and ultimately has helped me to live a more successful life.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Morning Routine
So, how can you start making the most out of your morning to ensure you don’t waste any more time than you already have? Here are some of the strategies that I have implemented into my morning routine to ensure I don’t waste any more time than I already have.
1. Get in a positive mindset.
I do this by writing in a gratitude journal. I have talked about this before, but a gratitude journal is one of the most effective ways to put yourself into a positive state of mind.
Have you ever woken up in a bad mood and allowed that mood to carry with you throughout the course of the day? If so, you will probably agree with me that bad days feel like wasted days.
By doing something as simple as getting yourself into a positive state of mind, you avoid that feeling. The reason for that is because once you are in a positive state of mind, it’s a lot more difficult for any negative emotions to bring you down.
By writing in a gratitude journal, you are prioritizing happy and positive thoughts first thing in the morning, and they will stay at the forefront of your mind throughout the day. You will carry those positive thoughts with you, and you will naturally have a better day because of it. Therefore, you will experience fewer of those negative, wasted days.
2. Get the important tasks done first.
Whatever is most important to you, be sure to get it done first thing in the morning. Maybe that’s exercising for an hour, reading 20 pages, eating a healthy breakfast, or a combination of any of these. Whatever is important to you, make it your first priority.
Personally, exercising and writing are what’s most important to me. Every morning, I wake up a few hours before I have to work to ensure I have enough time to get in my daily exercise, as well as have enough time to write my thoughts. If I don’t do these things in the morning, I know the likelihood of me actually doing them at all slowly starts to decrease with every passing hour.
Not only that, but we have the most amount of energy right away in the morning. This is when our minds are at their sharpest.
Think about your energy levels like gas in a car. Every morning, you start out with a full tank gas. As the hours pass, you travel more and more miles. What happens to the fuel levels? They start to decrease. By the time you get home from work, you are maybe running on a quarter tank of gas but need half a tank in order to accomplish all of the things you have left to do.
All I’m going to say is good luck with that.
We all know that when we get home from a long day at work, the only thing we want to do is throw our feet up and relax. So allow yourself to do so without feeling stressed. The best way to do this is to get your most important tasks done first thing in the morning.
3. Exercise.
This piggy-backs off of the last point, but if you continue to push off exercising in the morning, the likelihood of you actually doing it is going to decrease significantly. You may have other obligations that require your time and attention. Something might have come up during the day that is going to steal more of your time. Something could have happened where you just don’t feel like exercising.
You get the point…
Make your health a priority of yours and get it done right away in the morning. Not only does this ensure you actually get it done, but it’s also going to improve your health and will hopefully help you to see many more mornings in the future.
4. Time-block your mornings
Time blocking is an effective strategy for any task and for any time of the day. It is a time management method that requires you to divide up your day into certain windows of time. Each window has a purpose and is dedicated to a specific task.
For example, the first 10 minutes of my morning is dedicated to writing in my gratitude journal. The next 45 minutes are dedicated to exercising. After that, I give myself an hour to write. If I have time after that before I go to work for the day, I will devote that time to reading.
These are all things that are important to me, and by devoting a certain window of time every morning for each of these tasks, I am ensuring that I will be able to get them done with little to no distractions.
5. Plan out your day
Whether it’s in a planner or simply in the notes app on your phone, write down the tasks that you have for the day as they come to mind.
As humans, we think an average of 50,000 different thoughts each and every day. I don’t care who you are or how good your memory may be, there’s zero chance you will remember even 10 percent of these thoughts.
So, do yourself a favor and write down the most important ones. If you know you have something upcoming, write it down so you don’t forget it.
Before You Go
Life is a blessing and at any time, it could be taken away. Make the most out of the time you have remaining, get the most out of your mornings, and achieve the life you are deserving of having.
Use these 5 tips to help you get the most out of your morning and create a better life for yourself.
Michael Bonnell
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