How you live your morning is how you live your day, and how you live your day is how you live your life.
Your morning sets the tone for your entire day. If you wake up feeling rested, then spend those first minutes or hours honing in on the kind of day you’d like to have, things are much more likely to go the way you want them to.
Even if you slept poorly or woke up to something stressful, a good morning routine could help you recalibrate and still have a peaceful and productive day.
Today we’re talking about minimalist morning routines–simple and quick habits you can implement to help you have higher quality rest, focus, and intentionality throughout your whole day.
Let’s talk about the core elements of a minimalist morning routine, look at an example of a super simple routine you can tweak to your needs and preferences, then go over the most effective strategies for sticking with it.
Core elements of a morning routine
Here are six important elements of a great minimalist morning routine.
1. Sleep
Practicing good sleep hygiene is the best thing you can do for your mornings. Here are a few key goals:
- Limit blue light exposure an hour before going to bed and an hour after waking up (put your phone away)
- Sleep in a cold, dark room
- Use aids like sleep masks, mouth tape, or white noise machines to limit sleep disruption
- Go to bed and wake up at consistent times
- Try to get out of bed soon after waking up
- Get sun exposure ASAP
Lifestyle adjustments to improve sleep might mostly relate to an evening routine, but it’s important enough to mention here!
2. Light exposure
Letting the sun hit your face in the morning has many benefits, like regulating your circadian rhythm (helps you get more restful sleep), signaling to your body to stop producing melatonin (wakes you up), triggering Vitamin D production, boosting your immune system, increasing endorphins, and more. So go get some sunshine!
Around 20 minutes of light in the morning seems ideal, with slight adjustments for cloudiness and skin color (darker skin will need longer exposure, for example). Source.
3. Hydration
There are a lot of opinions around how and when to hydrate your body, but the important thing is that you do it.
Warm water might be easier on your digestion, but if you hate warm water, just have cold water.
Electrolytes greatly aid in hydration, but if you know you’re more likely to lap it straight out of your bathroom tap than any other way, just do that!
Hot, cold, salt, lemon juice–whatever! Drink water!
4. Mindfulness
Mindfulness practices can sound intimidating, but they really don’t have to be! It can be as simple as counting your inhales for 20 breaths, doing a quick body scan before you get out of bed, or walking to the mailbox mindfully. (More on walking meditation here.)
You might use an app like Waking Up or Headspace, or just look up meditation practices on YouTube, but you can always practice mindfulness on your own without any other tools.
5. Movement
Many people swear by a first-thing-in-the-morning workout routine, but that can be too big of a commitment to stick, especially if you’re just starting out.
Instead, you can do some simple stretching, a quick 5-minute movement routine, or 10 burpees.
I like to hop in the mornings. For about a minute, I just bounce in place, flap my arms around, do a few squats. Just whatever movement feels good to get my blood flowing and wake me up. I’ll do a proper exercise later in the day, but in the mornings, I’m just trying to wake up and get started.
6. Self-care
All of the five categories above can also be self-care, but only if you’re doing them for loving reasons. If you try to implement a new habit to punish yourself, or to “fix” your life, it might not be coming from a place of self-love, and that’s an important distinction.
To incorporate self-care into your morning routine, you can simply move through the basics with love and affirmation for yourself. Try to be cognizant! Make life tweaks from a place of self-love and care instead of punishment or self-loathing. I promise it makes a difference.
Minimalist morning routine example
Those six elements considered, here’s what a minimalist morning routine might look like:
- Get out of bed at the same time every morning
- Get dressed (in clothes laid out the night before)
- Drink glass of water (maybe set out the night before, maybe warm, maybe with lemon–whatever works for you)
- Bathroom routine (brush teeth, wash face, whatever you do)
- Jump 100 times (quick and easy movement that releases endorphins, improves blood and oxygen flow, stimulates lymphatic system, builds bone density, strengthens heart, and sets the tone for a more active day)
- Get at least 10 minutes of sunshine on your face
- Write something down–this could be three gratitudes, an intention for the day ahead, or a quick brain dump
You could do the above routine within 20 minutes if you have to. It hits all six of our core routine goals while staying simple. You can start here and build on it as it becomes habit.
Super quick version
To make it even more efficient, have your water as you go, jump during your bathroom routine, and write in the sun. ☀️
Tips to maintain a morning routine
The perfect minimalist morning routine is the one you can actually stick to. If you’ve tried implementing morning routines and they’ve just never stuck, here are some tips to try.
1. Keep it simple
For those of us already living a minimalist lifestyle, we KNOW the power of simplicity. If you’ve tried and failed to keep up with your morning routine, keep simplifying it until it’s so easy that you can do it in your sleep.
We’d all like to be people who get up and jog ten miles, eat a whole-food breakfast, meditate for an hour, cold plunge, and read half a book, but that’s just not a reasonable schedule for the majority of us. So start simple—and, if needed, stay simple.
2. Remove friction
Put systems into place and prepare the night before to make your routine as easy as possible. This might mean laying out your gym clothes, filling your water bottle, keeping the dog leash by the front door, or meal prepping your breakfast.
When you’re trying to solidify a new habit, make it as easy for yourself as possible.
3. Choose activities that feel good
Your morning routine doesn’t have to be a list of chores you have to grind through. Try to add things that you enjoy! Be it journaling, reading, stretching, having coffee in the garden… These little moments of peace and enjoyment help set the tone for a day you want to live.
4. Start with one thing
My “one thing” morning routine that I’ve mentioned in other blog posts was taking my dog for a walk. It accomplished:
- Early sun exposure
- Hydration and nutrition (I’d bring a meal shake and finish it before I headed home)
- Movement
- Mindfulness (breathing practice and no headphones while I walked)
- Immediate enrichment for my dog so she had a good start to her day, too
- Starting my day with positivity
So my one-thing routine wrapped up a bunch of stuff, but your one thing could be as simple as drinking a glass of warm water. Make it something easy that you can stick to with virtually no effort.
You can always build on it later. Or, never build on it and still start your day positively with consistency and hydration. Truly, any little bit of effort we make can create real change.
5. Write it all down
If you have problems with your attention span or sticking with a plan, it might be because you just let the plan live in your head. Many of us need to actually write these things down for them to happen. You can keep a notepad by your bed (or a checklist in your notes app) that details EXACTLY what you do each morning.
When your mind is just waking up, asking it to think is rude. Having a morning routine that you can do on autopilot allows you to wake up and gradually find presence instead of slapping yourself awake and stumbling around all discombobulated.
I have a friend who literally included using the bathroom on his morning routine list. He left NOTHING up to interpretation, so the first couple hours of his days were fully planned and required no thought from him. That’s kinda the way to do it. Use your brain’s precious processing power for more important things–not reinventing your wheel every morning.
6. Define yourself as a morning person
The best way to implement a difficult new habit is to redefine yourself as someone who loves to do that habit. Our internal monologue directly influences our feelings and actions. If you want to be a morning person, tell yourself you are! It really can be that simple.
As humans, our default is to reinforce and justify our thoughts. It’s where the famous friend-making hack of “ask them for a simple favor” comes from–if we do something nice for someone, our brain wants to justify that action to ourselves. “If I did them a favor, that must be because I like them.” And then we ACTUALLY like that person more.
Hack your brain. Tell it you’re a morning person.
Want to simplify your whole life?
Looking for simplification beyond the morning routine? Here’s a free 30-day minimalism challenge that can help you clear out clutter and create a simpler life for yourself:
