Some people may have their own morning routine, but some may not like to have their own routine.
There are also pros and cons to having a routine but my personal perspective is I am very into having a routine.
In this article, I would like to share the minimalist life tips "morning routine", and how the morning routine has changed my life in terms of mindset and time management.
Table of Contents
- Why do the morning routine?
- The morning routine can help you to manage time more precisely
- What happened to me after I started my morning routine?
Why do the morning routine?
I suggest you at least try out the morning routine because many of my friends who have their own routine told me that they feel comfortable and relaxed by having the morning routine; so do I.
I want to share with you one example.
According to the Japanese web article, the famous baseball player "Ichiro Suzuki
" is known as having a very strict routine in his life.
Before he stands on a battered box, he always does the consequences of movement that are exactly the same all the time.
He's also known for eating the curry rice that his wife cooks for him for every single lunch; he eats this every day for his lunch. EVERY DAY.
Now we want to consider why a successful person like Ichiro has his own routine.
According to the interview movie, Ichiro answered the reason for having the routine, he said that by repeating the routine every single time or every single day, he decreases the stress of the unknown or unexpected.
For example, the curry rice that his wife cooks every noon has the same ingredients.
Having the same ingredients every time for lunch makes it possible to avoid unexpected food poisoning.
He says that avoiding unexpected bad physical conditions is very important as an athlete, so he made curry rice as his routine lunch.
Also in terms of the consequence routine before entering the battle box, he insists that this routine can help him to reduce mental anxiety.
My case?
Yes, I have my morning routine, which starts with brewing a great cup of coffee.
Please refer to the article "Minimalist lifestyle tips: Coffee for your morning routine makes you amazingly comfortable" if you want to try the morning coffee routine.
To sum up, the morning routine can be a good trigger to reduce mental anxiety and make you into an "active mode".
Please do not forget that minimalism, by here I mean focusing on the morning routine, gives you a simple and wonderful life.
Another article of mine "Reasons why minimalism gives you a simple life" will help you to understand more about minimalism and focusing.
The detail of the beauty of digital detox is written in the article "Minimalist lifestyle tips "digital detox for well-being is so important to 21st-century people""
The morning routine can help you to manage time more precisely
In terms of time management, having a morning routine can help you to become able to manage the schedule or time in your life.
I would like to show you my morning routine.
- Wake up at 9 o'clock
- Do the chores and prepare the coffee before 10 o'clock
- Read books on kindle for an hour with a cup of coffee (till 11 o'clock )
- Quickly eat an apple (This has to be an apple, not other fruits)
- Focus on writing a blog and try to finish before 12 o'clock
For reading, I love to use Amazon Kindle (product link here) because it's light and the design is so simple that having Kindle does not bother my policy of minimalism.
This is how I managed to write more than 1,000 words of blog articles almost every day and also do my hobby, drinking coffee and reading, in just three hours.
For me, repeating this morning routine helps me to both utilize the time in the afternoon and achieve writing one blog article every day.
Since this is my morning routine which has to be done before 12 o'clock for me, reading and writing a blog article will never take more than two hours.
If you look at this fact from another point of view, I am controlling myself to manage the time to spare for writing the blog articles in a certain amount of time.
What happened to me after I started my morning routine?
After I started my own morning routine, I feel that my ability to focus on something has improved so much.
Also when I write the blog article, I use the stopwatch every single time to measure how much time I spend on writing, and I realized that the duration of time that I can focus on something has increased thanks to having the morning routine.
Having the morning routine is deeply related to minimalism because you don't spend extra time on something.
As I have written in other blog articles, minimalism is all about focusing.
A morning routine helps you to develop the ability and capability to focus on something, so you'll be able to space up some time by erasing the extra time that you're doing nothing.
Writing blog articles is one of my jobs, one of the ways of making money for me, so I want to focus on this task with a clear mind.
Of course, you can have an exception to your routine.
My exception is that if I do not wake up at my home, I will skip writing the blog in the morning and compensate by using other times from the same day or the other days; or sometimes I just skip.
The reason for this is that in most cases if I do not wake up at my home it means that I will be traveling without my laptop.
Where I'm traveling, I want to focus on enjoying the travel because I know I can compensate by writing the blogs beforehand.
How can I start the morning routine?
If you're not sure about how to start the morning routine, I suggest you start with meditation.
Close your eyes and try to think of nothing for a minute or two.
You can use the countdown timer to measure the time.
If you get used to this meditation routine, you can add your own; for example reading books for 30 minutes after meditation.
Soon you will realize that you will feel comfortable and relaxed after doing that morning routine every day.
If you can keep this habit, the next step will be uninstalling the unnecessary app from your phone.
Please refer to the article Why uninstall the app for a digital detox is essential? to know more about the concrete steps