The Morning Routine That Changed My Life

Imagine waking up and the first thought you have is a grateful one. Grateful for a new day, excited for what you might accomplish, fully aligned with the direction this day is taking. 

For clarity, this isn't a letter on gratitude, it's a letter about structure. But through, because of, and living inside, that structure, is gratitude. I know this because I live it every morning, and I carry the comforting feeling of gratitude with me, until I sit down to write letters, like this one, mid morning. 

The first hours of the day show you what kind of person you are going to be that day, and what kind of day that person is going to live in. When those first hours are chaotic, loud, reactive, or changeable, everything that follows inherits that instability. You start the day already negotiating with yourself, sometimes breaking promises to yourself, often perched at the sharp end of a dopamine spike. 

It stands to reason; If you want a calm, peaceful, productive day, you must have a calm peaceful productive morning.

This morning routine will also make you more resilient, and better equipped to deal with challenges, difficulty, and events entirely out of your control

• Think of your mood as a rolling scale from 1-10, 10 being the best you’ve ever felt, pure unadulterated joy, 1 being you’re considering walking into traffic. If you start your day at an 8 or a 9, and something unexpectedly stressful, or negative happens, but you started the day the right way, your mood might only slip down to a 4 or 5, which is manageable. If you start your day poorly, maybe by snoozing your alarm a few times, doom scrolling social media and checking your emails, smashing a coffee, maybe smoking a cigarette, and encounter that same difficult moment, your mood might slip down to a 2 or 3, which is a dangerous place for anyone to exist. 

The Routine - Simple in principle, meaningful is practice;

• Having set my body clock to wake at the same time every day, I get straight out of bed, no internal negotiating, no snoozing an alarm. The world feels peaceful and still, full of possibilities.
• I immediately drink a full pint of water with electrolytes (this is set by my bed the night before). Overnight dehydration is real, and even mild fluid and sodium loss affects cognitive performance, stress tolerance, and perceived effort. This is not a health hack, it’s the simplest way to bring the system back online before you ask it to work.
• I feed the cat and sit with him while he eats. That small obligation anchors me outside of my own head. 
• Then I sit quietly for a few minutes. No phone. No noise. I’m not meditating in any formal sense, I’m orienting. I look at the day as it actually is. What’s urgent? What needs effort? What am I looking forward to? This is where the shape of the day gets set, before it can be distorted by other people’s priorities.
• Then I drive to the gym to train. I find exercise in the morning much better than the evening when I often feel tired and more prone to excuses and low effort. The same weekly routine and cadence, compound lifts, machine work, nothing fancy. I make sure the last few reps of each set really count. If my heart rate isn't high enough, I perform 15 minutes on an incline treadmill, ya know, to feel alive…
• After the gym, I take a hot shower. The aim is to come back into the body, calm the system, and reset before the next phase of the day. 
• Then I eat a protein-heavy breakfast. Again, not for optimisation, but for stability. 
• With my blood sugar steady and my hunger handled, I head outside for a morning walk, literally 20 minutes is enough, just to breathe. Sometimes I plan content in my head, oftentimes I practise mindfulness - with my mind quiet, I focus on my breath, and take in the sights and sounds of my local park.  

Only then do I sit down to write. My writing is the first real output of the day. Even if the work is imperfect, the act of sitting down and producing something is the point. It re-establishes that I act first and react later.

That’s the full routine, I told you it was simple. There is nothing else hidden behind it.

What makes this work is not discipline or motivation. It’s sequencing. Each step makes the next one easier. Water leads to stillness. Stillness leads to movement. Movement leads to training. Training leads to clarity. Clarity leads to work. By the time the world has woken up, I’ve already kept several promises to myself.

This is where the real change happens. Not in feeling better, but in learning to trust yourself  again. Don’t start your day with ambiguity and end it with regret, start it  already aligned with who you said you were going to be.

If you’re looking for something to copy, copy the order, not the details. Fix the start time. Fix the first action. Fix the rule about output before input. Protect the sequence aggressively. Let the routine do the thinking for you.

Mornings don’t need to inspire you, but they do need to carry you.

What This Gives You.

The first thing this routine gives you is a firm base on which to build the rest of your day.

When you wake up and immediately launch into a familiar pattern, you are not asking yourself how you feel, or questioning your motivation. You are already in motion. And that alone removes a surprising amount of mental noise.

By the time most people are opening their eyes and reaching for their phone, you have already done several things you said you would do. You’ve built proof, and I can't stress enough how much that matters. It changes how you carry yourself through the rest of the day. Decisions feel lighter because you are no longer starting from zero. You are already 1-0 up on the scoreboard.

Stillness and calm before anything, anchors you mentally. Training anchors the morning physically. Writing anchors it cognitively. Together, they create a sense that the day has a centre, rather than just a start. 

You don’t need to tell yourself you’re disciplined. You don’t need to shout affirmations in the mirror. You don’t need to convince yourself you’re serious about your life. You have evidence, and evidence does the job for you. Over time, that trust compounds. Over time you will stop making smaller, brittle promises, to protect yourself. You’ll start assuming you’ll follow-through as the default.

Perhaps one of the most important elements of a fixed routine like this one, is that it gives you momentum before doubt has a chance to get involved. Doubt is rarely a problem later in the day. It’s a problem first thing, when nothing has happened yet and everything feels theoretical. This routine removes that window of opportunity for doubt to creep in. 

I know that none of this feels dramatic. I am fully aware that some of it sounds basic. But often it's the repetition of the basic that makes the most difference. This routine works because it’s boring, repeatable, and impossible to argue with once you commit to it. 

protocol;

• Fix a wake-up time and keep it constant. Earlier is useful, but consistency matters more than the number on the clock. Pick a time you can hold at least five days a week without resentment.
• Drink a full pint of water with electrolytes. Your brain will thank you as much as your body will.
• Find a few minutes of quiet stillness before you commit to anything. It feels counterintuitive to go from being asleep to being still and quiet, but this time is crucial to getting the best out of your day. 
• Remove your phone from the first hour entirely. Not reduced use. Not selective use. Out of reach. There’s nothing going on in the world that can't wait an hour. 
• Train early. Not perfectly. Not maximally. Early enough that it cannot be displaced by meetings, mood, or fatigue. The session only needs to be good enough to count. Completion matters far more than intensity.
• After training, come back down. Shower. Eat properly. Stabilise. Treat this as part of the routine, not a reward.

The goal is to protect the sequence, not the individual aspects. Feel free to edit this routine according to your time, responsibilities and lifestyle. If one element slips, return to the order the next day without drama. Do not redesign the routine in response to a bad morning.

That’s literally it.

You don’t need to optimise it. You just need to run it.

Good luck.

- James