“Every morning starts a new page in your story. Make it a great one today”
Doe Zantamata
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It is hard enough to get out of bed, what we don’t want to do is distract ourselves with things we shouldn’t be doing in the morning.
One of the worst things to happen to us is thinking at 6 pm “I had a busy day but I didn’t achieve much”.
One thing that can greatly hinder your motivation is lack of progress, it can lead you to give up on our goals and dreams. Even though there are steps to take when you lack motivation, it shouldn’t be your daily struggle.
While we may have healthy morning rituals that help us start the day right, there are little things that may sabotage all that effort.
Here are five things you really shouldn’t be doing in the morning if you want to get more done and stay productive.
1. Hit the snooze button
Hitting the snooze button isn’t good for your health, it also keeps you foggy for a while and affects your productivity.
If you wanted to wake up early so that you can get a lot more hours in the day, going back to sleep after your alarm goes off, doesn’t help you achieve that.
So there’s no way to look at it that makes those few extra minutes of sleep worth it. If you need more sleep, consider going to bed a lot earlier, rather than trying to get that extra minutes of sleep in the morning.
I am sometimes guilty of this and the result is a foggy and tired day in comparison to days I just get out of bed at the first sound of my alarm.
2. Wake up at inconsistent hours
What you don’t want is a messed up Circadian rhythm leading to a variety of sleep disorders.
In addition, having a consistent sleep schedule helps you guarantee yourself a good number of sleep hours.
So do your best to go to bed at the same time each night, and wake up at about the same time the following morning.
3. Go through email or social media
This may seem slightly difficult because many of us use our phones as our alarms and once we pick it up, it’s hard to resist all those notifications.
However, what you want is to start your day in your own terms, placing yourself and your goals as top priority. Also, it is easy to get sucked into social media, 10 mins becomes 30 mins and you begin to lose precious time.
Unless you are urgently waiting for something and its absolutely necessary to check your emails, You may want to try your best to leave it for later.
When your day starts, you want to tick off tasks from your own to-do lists before you tick off tasks from someone else’s list.
4. Skip water.
Drinking a glass of water has a wealth of health benefits which include helping you re-hydrate your body and kick starting your metabolism.
You may consider keeping a cup or bottle of water by your bed for easy access. I would recommend this beautiful cup from Cotton on . It keeps cold water cold and hot water hot for up to 6 hours…based on my experience (it also has a 4.9 customer rating so i’m not the only one in love with it).
You can treat yourself by adding some lemon, this helps eliminate toxins and also gives you some dose of vitamin C, which is amazing for your skin.
5. Drawing up a to-do list
Now this seems like a stretch. You might be thinking “If I don’t draw up my to-do list what should I do then?”
Ideally, your to-do list should be put together the night before, this gives you a plan for the day and something to look forward to.
What you then do in the morning is review the list and make sure they are ranked according to priority. This will help you organize and take control of the day…and make sure to start with the task at the top of the list.
You can try these beautiful and functional planners by Day designer. Their planners are gorgeous and come in 2 different sizes, the best part is that you can get refills for them too. The mini weekly planner is my absolute best.
Waking up is hard but having a reason to wake up and function, makes it a lot easier.
Hopefully, taking away one or more of these habits from your morning helps you have a productive and successful day.
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Feature image by Andrea Piacquadio
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