Do you roll out of bed and into work? Do you hit the snooze button six times before you are ready to get up? Do you feel shit getting up after hitting the snooze button six times? Do you wish you had more time in the morning to prepare yourself for the day mentally?

Your morning routine can have a positive or negative effect on your day. Now when I say create the perfect morning routine, I’m not suggesting you have to be part of the 5 am club. The time you get up will be dictated by the time you start work or the time the kids get up.

That being said, it usually involves getting up a little earlier than you typically do. I will say, what I am about to share with you is something that has to be built over time, and trying all these strategies at once will lead to failure. 

Don’t Snooze the Alarm

I know what you are thinking. You love the extra 15mins you get from snoozing the alarm, especially in the winter. But you generally wake up from that 15min snooze period feeling shit, and you almost always regret those last couple of taps of the snooze button.

I have not snoozed my alarm in nearly two years, and it’s been an absolute game-changer for me. It was the start of a process to develop the perfect morning routine for myself, and it took me six months to nail this process.

Let us have a look at a practical example of creating the habit of not hitting snooze: If you currently set your alarm for 7 am but don’t get up until 7:30 am, set your alarm for 7:15 am and commit to getting up at that time.

You might be looking at that and saying, “I think I can manage that”, and that’s precisely the way you should be thinking when trying to create a new habit. It must be achievable for you.

Do not try to be a hero and go from getting up at 7:30 am with 40 taps of the snooze button to getting up at 6:30 am. You can scale back the time if need be once you have consistently accomplished the above. 

Make a to-do List the Night Before

Now that we have the no snooze rule down and we are confident that we can accomplish this consistently, we move on to our next change. A rule of thumb I like to use is if you can nail the new habit down for 2-3weeeks, move on to the next one.

Remember, these are suggestions and in a particular order that I think works best generally. However, you can change the order to what suits you best.

The next step is to brain dump everything you must do the following day into a notepad. Get it off your mind. Waking up throughout the night worrying about when you will do x,y and z the next day is hazardous for your sleep.

When making a to-do list, people can get carried away and write 50 tasks to be accomplished in a single day, forget about being a multi-tasker, trust me when I tell you, multitasking is a myth and results in poor outcomes.

Please keep it simple, be realistic and set yourself up to win. Make a list of the most important things that must be done the following day and make them a priority.

 By writing these down the night before, it allows you to free your mind for a better night’s sleep, plus it saves you time the following morning.