3520: Failing at Your Morning Routine? Try This Instead by Erica Layne on How to Increase Productivity

[00:00:00] Before we start, please check out our new podcast, Good Sleep. Have you ever noticed how a calm mind can really set the stage for a good night's sleep? That's the idea behind our new podcast, Good Sleep. Greg, our host from Optimal Relationships Daily, is here to help ease you into a peaceful night's rest with some positive affirmations. And these affirmations aren't just comforting, they can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true good sleep. So press play on Good Sleep tonight because a good tomorrow starts with a good sleep.

[00:00:30] with a good night's sleep. Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Living Daily. Failing at your morning routine? Try This Instead by Erica Layne of ericalayne.co. And I'm Justin Malik, your very own personal narrator today and every day. I mean, narrating means there are no interviews on this show, it's just a short podcast where we can both improve our lives one day at a time. So with that, let's get right to today's post and start Optimal Living Daily.

[00:01:01] Optimal Living Daily.

[00:01:06] Failing at your morning routine? Try This Instead by Erica Layne of ericalayne.co. I tiptoed past my kids' bedrooms and managed to get down the stairs, making barely any noise. I clutched a journal and my laptop to my chest, silently sliding onto the couch, too afraid to even get a mug out of a kitchen cabinet for fear of waking the kids. I needed this time. Half an hour to myself in the soft light of dawn,

[00:01:34] few minutes to think and breathe in the silence before a full day of work and family. But inevitably, before I even had the chance to write a single sentence in my journal, I heard a tiny person squawking from her crib, and then another tiny person flushing the toilet. They were awake, and my time to myself was gone.

[00:01:56] Is a strong morning routine the secret to success? For years, I feel like I'd been hit over the head with the power of a morning routine. Seems like all of the big names in business and entrepreneurship swear that their morning routine is the secret to both their professional success and personal fulfillment.

[00:02:16] So every time I read another article or heard another influencer rave about their morning routine, I'd give it yet another try. And every single time, I'd give up within a few days. My reason for giving up has been that no matter how early I wake up or how silently I walk through the house, my kids always catch on to me. It's like they have a sixth sense that alerts them from the moment I wake up.

[00:02:41] Even now that they're older, now that the crib has long since been disassembled, they somehow still know when I'm awake. But instead of a baby squawking from bed, now it's the heavy footsteps of a preteen boy that come find me every morning. Especially during my early years of parenthood, I found it more frustrating to hope for time to myself and then be disappointed than to just keep sleeping and get up when they did. What does it say about you if you can't maintain your morning routine?

[00:03:11] Have you ever felt like a failure because you can't just get a morning routine to stick? Maybe like me, I have visions of writing your daily affirmation and doing some light stretching or yoga. Maybe also like me, you've struggled to stay consistent. A pocket of time to use instead. This time when I was failing at my morning routine also happened to be one of the times in my life when I felt the most depleted.

[00:03:36] I was exhausted from raising little kids, working a job I didn't like, and supporting a traveling spouse. I felt like I had nothing left to give. That was when I suddenly thought, if mornings aren't working, maybe nights can. Morning, after all, isn't the only time when you can fill your soul and set your intentions. As I thought about it, I realized I was hugely under-utilizing the last minutes of my day. My bedtime routine.

[00:04:04] Every night I was zoning out with Netflix or scrolling mindlessly on my phone when what I really wanted was to inhale the smell of a new book or take a hot bath. I wanted to reflect about my day and visualize the next one. So I gave the last 30 minutes of my day a total makeover and I've never looked back. Three reasons a bedtime routine may work better for you. Number one, your schedule, internal clock, or season of life.

[00:04:33] If you're up all night with a baby, it's going to be hard to gather yourself enough to practice a thoughtful morning routine. If you work swing shifts or any kind of untraditional hours, there may not be a natural place to put a morning routine. And if you've always been a night owl and can't even wrap your mind around this practice, you're not broken. You're just you. As an aside, did you know you might be genetically predisposed to favor nights over mornings?

[00:05:02] Anthropologists call it sentinel theory. The theory that humans evolved to be more alert at different times of day so that the group was never completely vulnerable to outside threats. It's fascinating, right? We do have influence over our internal clocks, but being a natural night owl isn't a character flaw. It's something you can work with. Number two, your frame of mind. Your frame of mind at bedtime is very different from your frame of mind when you wake up.

[00:05:30] At bedtime, you might feel less rushed and less distracted by the upcoming tasks of the day. Plus, bedtime is naturally a reflective time. You can use these precious minutes to reflect on the day you had, evaluate anything that went off track, practice gratitude, and appreciate yourself for all your efforts. And you can visualize the upcoming day and make a gentle plan for how to tackle it. And number three, the quality of your sleep.

[00:05:59] Do you have a hard time turning your mind off at night? I know for many women, myself included, the moment they hit the pillow is the moment their brain goes into overdrive, replaying past exchanges and worrying about everything under the sun. One of the best things you can do for your quality of sleep is to go to bed on a positive note. Have you ever gotten into an argument right before bed or read an email that suddenly gets you all fired up and then found yourself completely incapable of drifting off to sleep? I think we all know this feeling.

[00:06:29] Anger or anxiety ramp the brain up, which explains why it's so hard to fall asleep on a negative note and why it's so incredibly powerful to create a positive note to end your day on. In addition to that, a lot of us are using screens until the moment we turn out the lights. And the flood of information our devices present to us also ramps up the brain, not to mention blue light. But you can choose to set screens aside for your bedtime routine, allowing you to fall asleep that much faster.

[00:07:00] Back to a question I asked earlier. What does it say about you if you can't keep up your morning routine? In my opinion, absolutely nothing. You just listened to the post titled, Failing at Your Morning Routine? Try this instead by Erica Lane of ericcalane.co. And I'll be right back with my commentary. The grind never stops as a business owner. When you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do.

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[00:08:25] Terms and conditions apply. Thank you, Erica. Fair point. And another article highlighting how we're all unique and what works for me might not work for you. As usual, this is why I love reading from different authors. If it was just a couple of authors, we'd probably keep hearing how we need that morning routine. But it might make us feel worse over time if we're unable to make it happen for whatever reason. And I could definitely relate, especially when she talked about trying over and over to have that perfect morning routine

[00:08:55] and feeling like a failure when it didn't work. Even though I don't have kids waking me up, I've definitely struggled with this idea that I should be a morning person just because that's what successful people supposedly do. I've always tended to be more productive later in the day. And for the longest time, I felt like that was something I needed to fix. When I first started this podcast, I actually did a lot of my recording and editing really late at night, sometimes after midnight, because that's when I felt most focused. And it was quiet.

[00:09:24] And over time, that's changed just like things have changed for you over time too. As usual, it's about finding what works best for you. Maybe it's a morning routine. Maybe it's a bedtime routine. Or maybe it's something completely different. I think it's progress as long as you're thinking about it. So thank you for being here and thinking about these things along with me. Have a great weekend. And I'll catch you tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.