Minimalist Mornings: 20 Things I Do Before I Sit Down to My 9-5

Intentional Living

Jun 4

You might be wondering, “What does a morning routine have to do with minimalism?”

Minimalism is way more than cleaning out your closet or decluttering your kitchen. With minimalism principles, you have the power to design your life so that your priorities are front and center.

Time and energy are the hardest to control, so with thoughtful consideration you can accomplish everything you want by minimizing time wasters and maximizing heads-down focus time.

As a writer, runner, mom of two, YouTuber, and employed person, my morning routine is my key to productivity for content creation.

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A creatively abundant minimalist morning routine.jpg

How to have an abundant minimalist morning

First thing’s first. I know you’re here because you want to establish a morning routine that will bring you creative abundance.

I know for a fact that my days are more balanced when I have a self-care focused morning routine.

But—unlike other morning routine posts (and even ones I’ve written before), I won’t tell you that you should exercise, meditate, read, and journal. What matters most is finding a routine that works for you.

How early you have to get up

First, early rise is optional. Mind explosion, right?

But really, the time you wake up is relevant to your lifestyle. Their 5am might be your 8am, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you have the personality and the ability to wake up an hour or two earlier than others in your household or before your day gets started, do it!

But if you don’t have that ability? Forget it. Don’t force it to happen. You know yourself best!

(And if you’re not sure, just try it and see how it goes for a week.)

Hacks to wake up early

Yeah yeah, set an alarm. But really, if you set an alarm that you know will wake you up, no matter what that looks like, you’ll be in a good place.

For example, I have a haptic alert set on my watch so that I won’t wake anyone else up. And as a backup? I have an accent lamp that turns on at a specific time as my last resort so I know when I have to get out of bed.

You can try putting your phone in another room and having that alarm go off, or having all the lights go on in your bedroom… whatever works for you!

Gear up physically

It’s simple. Drink a large glass of cold water.

Not only will this rehydrate you, it’ll also help to wake you up physically and mentally.

Coffee or tea is optional. (I personally don’t want to wait the few extra minutes to boil water and brew my caffeine-free tea, so I wait until after my morning routine.)

Avoid inputs so you can be proactive instead of reactive

This is probably the most important thing about your creative morning!

Whether you’re writing, making art, or what have you, it’s crucial that you don’t check your phone or email or news or social media, etc, before or during your creative work time.

No podcasts. No videos.

If you can help it, don’t even look at your phone until 9am or whenever your official day starts. Turn off wi-fi on your computer or your entire house if you need to.

By turning off any inputs or the temptation to consume content first, you’ll be able to be more proactive instead of reactive.

Plan the night before

This is also crucial. Whether you use a digital bullet journal, an analog bullet journal, a sticky note, a notecard, a planner, etc… taking time the night before to determine what you want to work on will benefit you tenfold.

Not only will it give you direction on what you will accomplish, but it will also give you the extra motivation to get out of bed since you’ll have a goal in mind.

Keep in mind that routines will shift and grow

Yeah, my original Miracle Morning disappeared.

Before kids, my morning routine was simple and self-indulgent. My mornings were planned to a T, and I executed it like my life depended on me. It was a beautiful thing and I felt energized daily.

The morning routine shifted and even disappeared for a bit because of my young early riser. It was hard not to resent the busier and busier mornings of feeding and dressing the entire family, but after some finessing and reframing and help from my very supportive partner, I built a new morning routine that I look forward to every day.

You will need to re-evaluate your morning routine as things change, and that’s a powerful tool to remember!

The 20 things I do before I sit down to my 9-5

Without further ado, here are the 20 things I do every weekday morning before I sit down to my 9-5. I hope that by observing my routine, you can find pockets of time and space to focus on your goals.

4:45am: My haptic alarm goes off on my Apple Watch, allowing me to wake up without disturbing anyone else.
Chug a 16 ounce glass of water.
Take supplements, usually with even more water.
Grab my laptop and head upstairs to my office.
Wake up my computer and quickly close any applications or browser windows that I left open from the previous day so I don’t accidentally check texts, emails, or DM’s.
Start my time-tracker to log a 90-minute block.
Open Notes and find a topic I want to write about. Or, have a task in mind that I need to write about.
Write for some time.
Edit for double that time.
Write and edit a 250-word version for social media.
Usually by now it’s 6:30 or close to 6:30, and the kids can’t be held back any longer. I go downstairs to make and eat breakfast. Usually a sweet potato, butter, and chia seeds for me.
We get everyone dressed and packed for school, and I send them out the door with Dad.
It’s about 7:15, so I pull on my workout gear and go run around town, usually 3 miles, with a 5-minute warm-up and cool-down. On my days off, I’ll spend this time recording a video or catching up on administrative tasks for my business.
8:00am. Stretch.
Shower, dressed, and made up in 15 minutes. (I’ve really mastered this through mom life.)
Plan my day in my digital bullet journal, pulling in appointments and my long wishlist of tasks for the day.
Prioritize the must-do tasks with a (digital) highlighter.
With the last 30 minutes or so, I publish the words I wrote.
Grab a second breakfast (usually a large spoonful of peanut butter).
Take a deep breath and open my work laptop.

By sharing my morning routine, my hope is that you are able to pull some tips here and there so that you can build your priorities into your days.

  
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Do you want to establish a morning routine that will bring you creative abundance throughout the day?
In this video, I'm going to give you tips to help you find your morning routine that will really set you off on the right foot. And no, I won't be telling you to get up and journal and meditate and read and exercise, et cetera. It's going to be really what works for you. That is the most important thing.
I know for a fact that my days feel so much better when I have a solid morning routine and I'm able to accomplish so much before my actual day begins and before anyone else wakes up, just because I have that sense of, okay, I took some time for myself to have self-care and be productive on the things that matter to me most, hence why this kind of points towards a minimalist morning, because it allows you to clear the space and time so that you can focus on what matters to you.
Hey everyone, I'm Jenny, I'm a minimalist mentor and I run Hello Brio, a community of conscious creatives and entrepreneurs. I hope that in this video, you can find some tips that'll help you with your morning routine. 
I'm so excited to be joining the minimalist group again this month, and the theme for June is all about routine. So whether that's a morning routine or a weekly routine or a night routine, et cetera, the playlist will be in the description. So make sure to check that out too.
First, let's get this off the table. Early rise is completely optional, and it's also very relevant to your lifestyle. Someone's 5:00 AM might be your 7:00 AM for example. And if you're not a morning person at all, don't try and force it. If you have the ability and the personality to make a morning routine, do your thing, then absolutely go for it. But if you know, it's not you again, don't force it. 
Some tips to help you wake up early is that you can set an alarm. And I know that is so cliche. You can put your phone in the other room, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. But let me show you what I do. I set up haptics on my watch so that I have the ability to get the alarm without waking anybody else up in the room. And I also set a timer on a light in the room so that it lets me know when I need to wake up by.
The physical gear up is really important. And I'm not going to say to do like 20 jumping jacks or something like that. It really just is as simple as chugging a large glass of ice water, and that'll just help wake you up mentally and physically and get you rehydrated and ready for your morning. Coffee or tea is completely optional for your morning routine. As you may know, I'm not doing caffeine anymore. And I actually, when I do have my cup of tea, I do it after my morning routine, simply because I don't want to sit there and wait for the tea to steep or the water to boil, et cetera. So just do what works for you. If you need to have your coffee, then get it set up and get ready to go. But otherwise it can be completely optional. 
This part is absolutely key and it is to avoid any inputs. Before you sit down to do your work or while you're doing your work, this means do not check your social media, do not check your email. If you can even help it, don't check your phone. Don't even pick up your phone until you absolutely need to. And if you need to reconfigure your settings so that notifications don't pop up on the home screen, or if you even need to turn off your wifi on your computer, whatever you need to do, just make sure that you're not having any inputs because that will influence the work that you're doing and make it more reactive instead of proactive, et cetera. You just want to make sure that this is the time for you to creatively output things.
To piggyback off of that, it is crucial to plan the night before, whether you do this in a digital bullet journal, a sticky note of regular bullet journal or planner, you know, whatever works for you, set an intention and read it down so that you know what you're going to be working on the next morning. Not only will this help you focus on the thing that you want to accomplish in the morning that you wake up, but it'll also help you get out of bed because you'll know exactly what you're going to accomplish that morning. 
If you want to read the 20 things that I do before I sit down to my nine to five, you can head over to my blog. The link will be in the description. 
I would love to know what are the things that you do in your morning routine that bring you an abundantly creative morning or help you feel really awesome throughout the rest of the day. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next week.

  
  