Steal My Morning Routine as a Corporate Employee & Business Owner
Mornings - ugh!
They can be tough, can’t they?
Even more so if you’re a corporate employee with a side hustle! It’s so easy to let your entire day turn into jumping from one work project and to-do to the next! It can very quickly spiral into a situation where you are putting your very self on the back burner, and I think we all know how ugly that can get.
So, how do I do it?
I would by no means say that I’m an expert at morning routines. In fact, I have found over the years that for your sanity and for meeting yourself where you’re at in terms of your workload, capacity, stress levels, etc., sometimes our morning routines absolutely need to adapt to you, where you are in life, and what you need.
Mine has changed a lot over the years and I’ll be the first to say that I have quite a bit more flexibility and freedom in my day-to-day life, even as a corporate employee than most. I wake up later than most. I have shorter days than most (though not on Sundays), but that is simply what I’ve prioritize over time.
Could I have a more lucrative corporate job that kept me much busier and had way less flexibility? Sure. But that’s not what’s important to me.
Anyways, what has changed over the years—especially as my work in burnout and stress management has flourished and changed—is what I actually do during my morning routine and what has become non-negotiable.
I’ve written many morning routine posts before: how to create your ideal morning routine, the miracle morning, how I tweaked my morning routine from the miracle morning to create my mindful morning routine, and recorded podcasts on my anti-burnout morning routine.
But, over the last year, I’ve made some realizations (more yes!) about my morning routines, the ways in which it needs to adapt with me, and how to ensure what needs to get done gets done.
So, let’s get into it…
First things first, 3 elements (or S’s) a morning routine needs to have…
#1
SIMPLE
If I’ve learned anything over the years it’s this: elaborate morning routines don’t work! It’s why I quit the Miracle Morning. It’s why I even stopped doing (or just revamped) my mindful morning routine. If we make a morning routine too complex it’s not going to get done.
I saw a quote the other day about habits (that I think relates to routines, too) from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Most of us construct our habits around what we can do on our best day. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, ‘what can I maintain even on my worst days?’” It’s the same thing with our morning routines. What’s something I can keep up with, even on my worst days?
#2
SUSTAINABLE
Your morning routines also have to be sustainable. So much of what I talk about as a burnout and stress management coach is about sustainability. Our habits have to be sustainable. Our routines have to be sustainable. Our self-care has to be sustainable. If you can’t do this thing for the long-term, well, then what the heck is the point.
I think a big part of sustainable morning routines is that they need to be adaptable and flexible. You may not be able to meditate for 15 minutes and read for 30 every single morning, but if we simply leave our routines open-ended and say we want to meditate and read at whatever duration we can every morning, that’s sustainable. Sustainability is something that is easy to incorporate and meets you where you’re at, even if where you’re at isonly having 15 minutes to do your routine.
#3
SELF-FOCUSED
This one is nice and to the point. Self-focused means it’s about you and what you need. As such, the best morning routines very well might change over time and I think that’s important to remember.
If in one season of your life your morning routine needs to be focused on physical activity, do it! If in another season of your life the most important thing is to make space for self-reflection like meditating or journaling, do it. If another season is about educating and growing yourself, do it and focus on things like reading.
Lately (meaning over the last year or so), what I’ve really felt like I need is to dive into my business activities relatively quickly in the morning. Now, a lot of morning routine gurus would tell you that’s a bad thing, but I actually disagree. I’m often at my most focused and creative in the morning, so this is a great time to work on my business and leverage that. I think sometimes avoiding work in the morning (depending upon you and how you work) can actually waste crucial energy and focus needed to get things done and can sometimes add to my workout. If I’m in the mood to knock something out, instead of working against that, I’ll work with it and get some work done.
I’d say these are the 3 most important components of a morning routine.
Now, I’ll give you a little glimpse into my current morning routine, in case you want to steal it 😉
My focus in my morning routine over the last year or so has been upon balancing self-care and making time for my business. So, that’s something that’s baked into my morning routine.
My morning routine currently consists of 3 main activities:
Meditation. I try to keep this very simple and sustainable by simply using the Calm app and doing the daily, 10-minute meditation. It keeps me in practice without overcomplicating my morning.
Reading. A big thing for me as a high-achiever is the need to constantly be learning and growing, not only for myself personally but for my business. I’m not always able to work in reading articles or doing continuing education training in my business, so I really focus on being able to do that in my mornings through reading books. No matter what, I always sit down and read for a period of time.
Journaling. This is a part of my current routine that is completely negotiable. Sometimes I do it and sometimes I don’t. One of the other ways that this has changed is I used to be a complete die-hard about pen to paper journaling, but recently I’ve been journaling inside of Notion, which has been working really well. This is another example of “do whatever it takes to get something done”. Sure, there’s an ideal way for me to journal (pen to paper), but if I’m more inclined to journal inside of Notion and journaling happens by doing that, I don’t argue with it.
Checking into my day/tasks. As my business has grown a lot over the last couple of years, this is something that I have more intentionally added into my morning routine. It’s really easy to get side-tracked in my life by my day job and I can’t afford that anymore. So, I intentionally check-in to my Notion Digital Planner (which you can learn more about here) to:
Check-in to my tasks and intentions for the day
Block out my morning with tasks and to-dos for my business (which is primarily when I get my business activities done)
Determine when I’m going to start my day job for the day. My schedule varies from day-to-day depending upon my students, when they’re available, etc. So, while somedays I might not start until 2 or 3pm, other days might start at 9 or 10am. So, this check-in is super important
OPTIONAL - Workout. When I was doing #75Hard, getting in at least one of my two-a-day workouts in the morning was crucial! Otherwise, though, morning workouts aren’t always a necessity for me. I know myself and I’ve been working out at home for long enough that I can trust myself to get it done later in the day. Even if I don’t “want to”, it will still happen. Sometimes, though I’ll work in a little bit of activity by bouncing on my rebounder, which is such a handy thing to have!
