Creating and Sticking to Your Morning Routine
The Goal Achievement Podcast, hosted by Matt East, is all about helping you find clarity, design a plan, and most importantly achieve your goals.
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How to Create and Stick to Your Morning Routine
Podcast Transcript
Hey guys, what's up. It's Matt! Hope you're all doing really well. On today's episode, I am going to share with you a tip to help ensure that you actually take action and do your morning and evening routines every single day without a problem.
The big question we all face every morning is this, how can we focus more time on the projects, activities, and relationships that are most important and meaningful to us and less time on the stuff that doesn't matter. So we can actually move closer to our goals and dreams. That is the question. And this podcast is the answer.
My name is Matt and welcome to the goal achievement podcast. I'm so glad you're here now. Let's dig in!
What's up guys! Welcome back to another episode of the goal achievement podcast. I hope you're all doing really well. So I am back for another episode of giving you my top three priorities for the day. I hope this is helping you think through what you want to accomplish with your day and nudges you to determine, and to write down your top three for today. What are the top three things that you want to accomplish today? Hopefully by taking time to think through that, it creates clarity and the focus that you need to help you to execute at your highest level possible today.
But before we do that, before I share my top three for today, I have a listener question kind of based on yesterday's podcast. So let's take a couple minutes to chat through that question. So here it is.
The question is: “Matt, I'm great at doing my top three each day. I've been doing them for a few months since reading your book and it's going great, but I've struggled to consistently stick to my morning and evening routines. I'm trying to make the most of this time, so I'm trying to squeeze a lot of things in, but I end up not doing much at all. How can I improve taking more action with my habit layer?”
That's a great question. So let's think through this a little bit. So I would say to find your rhythm for your morning and your evening habit layer. So for your morning, we call that the habit layer, but it's essentially just your morning routine and your evening routine. And we're just trying to be super intentional with it. I would suggest, in order to get started and to find your rhythm you mentioned that you are trying to squeeze as much in as possible, I would say don't do that. Until you have really built the habit up and you are definitely taking action on what's most important to you during that morning and evening routine.
So that could be whatever you want. That's totally up to you, but as you're trying to gain momentum and to build that morning routine or that evening routine into your day to day, we want to really simplify. We want to make it really easy. Let me give you an example of that: So for my morning routine, I use my mornings to try to exercise. Essentially, I'm just trying to sweat. So it's trying to get some exercise, trying to break a sweat, and the way that I do that is I set up a couple carrots.
So I wake up every day, then I feed the dogs and then I start coffee, and I've set the coffee the night before so all I have to do is hit that start button and I'm good to go. Since I have fed the dogs then I have to let them outside. When they're outside, I pour coffee into my mug and when it's, you know, non COVID, I drive to the gym and then I work out. Then as my reward for working out I jump in the steam room or sauna room, then I shower, then return home. If you look at that, the main goal was to work out. I love drinking coffee in the morning! So the drive to the gym instead of dreading that, I'm able to sip on my coffee.
So that's kinda my reward for getting in the car, the opportunity to sip on my coffee and just enjoy that drive. It's a short drive, no big deal. I'm not usually looking forward to the workout necessarily, but I know if I work out and I get to the gym, I get to chill out and do some stretching and some relaxing and some meditation in the sauna or the steam room. So that's kinda my carrot there. So I've set it up where I enjoy the drive because I get to enjoy my coffee and I get through my workout because I know on the other side of that, I get to relax in the steam room or the sauna before showering and coming home. So that's what I'm trying to accomplish with my morning routine.
That's just an example. I mean, who knows what you're trying to do, maybe you're trying to write or build a business or work out. I don't know, whatever it is, instead of trying to do all those things, like write a book, start a business, and work out in the morning, just really get clear about what you want to use that time for and try to simplify it and try to make it as simple as possible and repeatable as possible.
Try if you can to build in some rewards, like I've done with my being able to sip on my coffee and being able to go to the sauna after working out. Try to build that routine in a way that you enjoy what you're doing and you could do it forever. This isn't about a quick change for 30 days. What is scalable and what can you do for the rest of your life? If that was my morning routine for the rest of my life I would be thrilled with that. I mean, I love that process. I've done it for like 10 years up until COVID and I could do that forever. I can't wait to get back to it!
I'm still not going to the gym, Indianapolis where I live is pretty... a lot of big COVID numbers are here right now, so I'm still avoiding the gym. Instead of going to the gym right now, I either run, or stretch, or when it was really nice out I was going to hit golf balls a lot, which was fun. I had not played a ton of golf since I was younger, and I've kind of started that again since COVID, which I really enjoy. So that's what I'm saying, do stuff you enjoy doing! Make it enjoyable, make the process as easy as you can on yourself. You want to be able to actually accomplish this and not just have it be a dream. Actually build a morning routine that you can take action on every day and that you can do somewhat easily that’s not a grind.
Something to keep in mind with your evening routine is, I see a lot of people who are very aspirational with their evening routines and they kind of forget that they've worked for 10 hours up to that point or eight hours or whatever it is, or they've been focused on other stuff all day long, and they forget that they're going to be tired. So a lot of times people with their evening routines they're little overly aspirational. A lot of times I will try to get my clients to make sure that their evening routine is something that they're going to enjoy and they're going to be able to execute.
Many of you know, my evening routine is basically very much built around spending time with my wife, and relaxing and cooking dinner and just being present around the house and doing some chores usually, and just kind of enjoying winding down. There's nothing that's too complicated or too difficult for me at that point because I'm worn out, you know, I’d get up at 5:30 or 6am. So in the evening I'm not trying to do anything too taxing.
So set yourself up for success, both in the morning and in the evening by trying to give yourself rewards, give yourself carrots and by making it easy, and making it somewhat enjoyable. If you want to tighten it up and add more things later after you have really built up the habits you can, you can do that no problem! That's what I would suggest, if you are struggling to really take action on your morning and evening routines. So that's it! My advice is to find a way to reward and to incentivize the behavior that you are seeking to take action on.
By the way to that person, if you want to actually chat through this, you can schedule a free 15 minute coaching call with me. It's kind of buried on my website, but it's there, it's at the very bottom on the footer, and there's a section where you can have scheduled time with Matt and you can schedule a complimentary 15 minute coaching session if you have any additional questions on that. So schedule some time and we could connect and chat up.
My top three for today. Here we go.
Number one. I need to block an hour to tighten up and to finish that presentation I started yesterday. So I told you I was working on a present for the local Techstars and that presentation is tomorrow, Wednesday afternoon, and I want to have the presentation done and ready to go today. I made great progress yesterday, so I basically just need to tighten it up, make sure it's all good to go, and I'll be all set for my presentation tomorrow.
My second priority is: I'm joining a podcast today as a guest. So I need to prep a bit for that and actually record the interview. That time's already blocked. I need to block a half hour for the prep before the interview. So that'll be good.
Number three is: I'm currently holding all of my client calls on Tuesday and Thursday, so I have a nice chunk of client calls today that I want to just enjoy. I want to bring really positive energy to those interactions and just really focus. So I enjoy those calls. They're all with longtime clients and it's super fun to connect and catch up and to hear what they're focusing and working on and making progress with. So, that's it, that's my top three!
Remember, I challenge you to take some time and get clear on what you want to accomplish today with your focus and energy. I mentioned this yesterday, that fundamental principles really drive high performance and productivity much more than we think. We give it credit for how simple it can be. So planning and taking some time to think through what your top three focus areas and priorities are for today is a great example of high performance being driven by a very simple principle or fundamental principles.
So let's approach every day this week with clarity, and focus, and let's do it! Let's execute at the highest level possible today. So if you haven't already, take a few minutes and write down your top three. Think through it and get it down on paper.
Let's make it a great day! If you need anything, please don't hesitate to reach out.
Bye-bye.
