YOUR CART
- No products in the cart.
Subtotal:
$0.00
BEST SELLING PRODUCTS
$2.00
In this BIT: What are the morning habits and wake up routine of top doctors and businesspeople? Unlock their guide to the best healthy morning routine.
Morning routines have become a competition. From emulating your favourite celebrity or influencer’s morning habits to following 12-step-guides involving cold plunges and smoothie diets. And when we fall behind, don’t achieve everything, or are just plain tired, we feel like we’ve failed. All before breakfast. The people who love their mornings do the opposite. They shrink them.
A client of performance scientist Dr. Andy Galpin once started going to bed at four in the afternoon. Dr. Galpin’s client would set alarms to wake up at midnight because “he actually had a five and a half hour morning routine” to complete before his drive to work. A good morning routine is important, but not when you start living your life to serve the routine, rather than establishing a routine that betters your own life. Dr. Galpin’s client had built a routine that overtook his own daily life.
Organizing expert Shira Gill has a simple healthy morning rule: “A morning routine that does not involve your phone.” She charges her phone in the kitchen overnight and insists on a short morning routine. Water. A few written goals. Movement. “If I have a big glass of water, write down my goals, and move my body, I’m already starting my day feeling like I’m winning,” she says. The phone stays away for a reason: “I’ve got to wake up and have my own thoughts and my own clarity first.”
Where you spend those first minutes of your day matters. Denim founder Paige Adams-Geller keeps it to one move: “I love to get up and get out into nature first thing.” The entire morning routine of this top businesswoman is to “wake up, go on a hike, get out in nature…it sets me up for the best day almost every day.” Sleep and light researcher Rafael Lazar backs her up: “If you can, go outdoors in the morning, have your breakfast outside if you live in a good climate, go for a walk and try to maximize your time outdoors in the mornings.”
One warning! The best morning routine is one that fits into your life, not anyone else’s life. In the conversation of ‘morning people’ versus ‘night owls’, sleep scientist Dr. Wendy Troxel says “most of us actually fall somewhere in the middle. We’re sort of ‘third birds.'” Don’t force yourself to adapt morning habits, just because your favourite doctor or influencer follows it. Dr. Troxel continues, “if your natural bedtime is midnight and wakeup time is 10 a.m. and you want to suddenly become a 6 a.m. waker going to bed at 8 p.m., that’s just not going to happen.”
Most of all, don’t let your routine override your life. Performance scientist Dr. Galpin refuses rules like “I have to have my morning walk in, or I have to have my breath work, or I have to have my coffee, or anything like that.” His test is blunt: “whatever routine you got, if you can’t survive in the woods without any of it, you’re no good to me.”
So tomorrow, before you touch your phone, do one small thing, ideally outside. A healthy morning routine has exactly one job: bring a sense of readiness to your day, then get out of the way.
For more happiness check out our Mood Boost page.
Featuring quick videos created for teens by teens.
Our thanks to the guests whose advice shape this piece. Their conversations on the Hack Your Happiness podcast keep paying off long after the cameras stop, and their books, research, and work are worth your time. Explore their work below.
Dr. Andy Galpin, human performance scientist and professor. Learn more at andygalpin.com
Shira Gill, home organizing expert and bestselling author. Learn more at shiragill.com
Paige Adams-Geller, founder and creative director of PAIGE. Learn more at paige.com
Rafael Lazar, sleep and light researcher at the University of Basel. Find his published studies by searching his name on Google Scholar.
Dr. Wendy Troxel, sleep scientist and author of Sharing the Covers. Learn more at drwendytroxel.com
