In my last blog post you created a list of the things you do in the morning. Today let’s dig in and start making blissful mornings happen for you. Let’s get started by working backwards.
What time do you need to leave in the morning? If you’re just going to your home office, what time must you be seated at your desk? For me, it’s 10am.
Go through the notes you took last week and make a list of items you must do each morning. Then go through that list again and take out the items that don’t actually need to be on that morning list. Here are examples of some items you could possibly take off of your list:
- Make sandwiches for kids.
- Decide what to wear.
- Iron clothes.
- Check Facebook.
- Watch morning weather channel.
- Check and respond to email.
Many of these things could be allotted to different times of the day. Maybe you could decide what to wear and iron your outfit the night before. Maybe you could prepare lunches for the kids’ the night before. Maybe could wait to until you get to your office to do your first check on email and Facebook. You get the idea?
Now that you know what you really want to accomplish in the morning, write down how long each item will take you. If possible use real time estimates, don’t guess. If I were developing my morning routine this way, it would look like this:
- Walk to home office at 10am
- Stretching/dancing meditation – 20 min
- Walk home – 10 min
- Coffee with Dave – 15 min
- Walk with Dave and dog to our cafe – 10 min
- Prepare my smoothie to take with me on my walk – 10 min
- Feed hungry puppy – 10 min
- Get dressed – 10 min
- Shower – 10 min
- Take dog out, drink glass of water, run to restroom – 5 minutes
- Relax in bed thinking my morning gratitudes – 10 min
- Morning buffer time – 10 min
- This is a total of 120 minutes or 2 hours, which means I must wake up at 8am.
Notice I added a 10 min buffer for those instances when something comes up. For example, the dog gets sick, my keys are missing, I get a phone call I have to take, etc. And sometimes I’m just running slow in the morning. It’s good to have a little wiggle room in your schedule so you don’t need to stress when things don’t go exactly as planned.
Now you have a basic plan for your mornings. Try it for a week. Make adjustments as needed. Notice how it impacts the flow and calmness of your morning. In my next blog post we’ll look at how to wake up already in the flow and feeling good. See you then.
