Morning Routine Checklist Ideas

Morning routine checklist ideas to help you build healthy and productive new habits.

Your morning sets the tone for the entire day. When you start out on the right foot, everything flows a bit better. When your day gets off to a rocky start, then it can be hard to come back from that. If you are looking to build new habits to be more productive, less stressed, and more content every day at work, then this checklist is for you. It's our thirteen ideas for improving your morning routine.

How to use the morning routine checklist

You can import this checklist into your Taskable account (or create an account for free) by clicking on this link. Each checklist item is set to recur daily, so each morning you check it off and it will return the next morning. If some ideas don't work for you, then simply archive them and stick with the ones that do.

What's in the checklist

Here are the thirteen ideas and suggestions for your morning routine.

Check your calendar

Being on top of the meetings you have each day is critical for your morning checklist. This limits surprise meetings or calls that can cause stress, and take you out of your workflow. You might also consider making this part of your evening routine, giving yourself a night to sleep on what your next day looks like.

Plan your tasks for the day

Another critical item for a productive morning and rest of day. Once you have an idea of the meetings and calls, you can then plan for deep work and tasks to get done between them. Pick your 5 to 10 priorities for the day, and try to stick to them. Avoid letting your inbox or Slack dictate how you spend your time. Keep track of what you accomplish each day.

Note - this can also be done the night before.

Eat a healthy breakfast

Build a healthy morning routine, starting with breakfast. It's always good to start the day with something nutritious.

Drink plenty of water

Get your hydration in. Start early and avoid getting to the end of the day before realizing you haven't had a sip of water all day.

Do a meditation

Build a mindful morning routine. Apps like Calm and Headspace are great tools for this. Starting your day with meditation can help you be more focused, relaxed, and calm throughout your workday.

Get a bit of exercise

Try and get your heart rate going before starting work. There's no better feeling than starting your day with your exercise already completed.

Avoid screens

You are going to be on one all day - try to take your morning for yourself and avoid scrolling social media or emails.

Set your alarm earlier each day

Trying to become a morning person? Try setting your alarm a bit earlier each day until you get to your desired time.

Recite affirmations

Affirmations are proven to help improve your life. Pick an affirmation (here's a good list of ideas from Huffington Post) to recite every morning to help get your mind in the right place for the day.

Take a cold shower

Cold showers get blood flowing and release dopamine.

Slowly switch to decaf coffee

If you are a big coffee drinker, then consider switching to decaf. While caffeine gives you an early jolt of energy, it is a short term fix according to Psychology Today.

But giving up caffeine suddenly is hard, and could lead to headaches. Try slowly mixing in a bit more decaf each morning with your regular caffeinated coffee until you go fully decaf and wean yourself from full-on caffienated coffee. While there's still caffiend in decaf, it's considerably less (about 97% of caffeine is removed).

Read

Take a bit of time to read each morning

Avoid emails and Slack

If you are able to, avoid checking your communications like Slack and email first thing in the morning. This often means your priorities become whatever is at the top of your inbox, rather than what's actually most important. Plan your priorities each morning without letting your inbox dictate your day for you.