perfect morning essay

My Perfect Morning Essay

A perfect morning is a cherished treasure, a precious time that is all my own. It’s the dawn of a new day, a clean slate for me to paint my aspirations on. It sets the tone for the rest of my day, and its quality can influence my mood, my productivity, and my overall wellbeing. In this essay, I will share the elements of my perfect morning, the routine that makes me feel more motivated, focused, and prepared for whatever the day may bring.

Table of Contents

Essay On My Perfect Morning | An Insightful Exploration of an Ideal Start to the Day

Waking up early.

The first element of my perfect morning is rising early. As the famous Nigerian proverb says, “The early bird catches the worm.” Waking up before the sun rises gives me a head start on the day, allowing me to take advantage of the quiet hours before the world is awake. It’s during these tranquil moments that I can reflect in solitude, without any interruptions or distractions, setting my intentions for the day.

Morning Mindfulness

The second element of my perfect morning involves practicing mindfulness. I dedicate a few moments to meditation or yoga, focusing on my breath, steadying my thoughts, and grounding myself in the present moment. This practice prepares my mind for the day, reducing stress and anxiety, and allowing me to approach the day with a calm and focused mind.

Nourishing Breakfast

The third element of my perfect morning is having a nourishing breakfast. This is a time not just to fuel my body with healthy foods, like a bowl of Acha (a traditional Nigerian grain) or a plate of scrambled eggs, but also a moment to nourish my soul. As I sip on my homemade Zobo (a Nigerian hibiscus tea) or a cup of coffee, I relish in the quietness of the morning and mentally prepare for the day’s tasks.

Morning Creativity

The fourth element involves engaging in a creative activity. Whether it’s journaling my thoughts, sketching a quick doodle, or playing a piece on my keyboard, this creative time sparks my imagination and gets my mental gears turning. It’s a form of expression that helps me start my day on an inspired and motivated note.

The final element of my perfect morning is exercise. Whether it’s a brisk walk around my neighborhood or a quick home workout, I find that physical activity in the morning helps to shake off any lingering sleepiness and gets my blood flowing, leaving me feeling energized and ready to tackle the day.

In conclusion, my perfect morning comprises of rising early, practicing mindfulness, having a nourishing breakfast, engaging in a creative activity, and exercising. It is my recipe for starting the day on a positive note, feeling more productive, energized, and focused. By incorporating these elements into my daily routine, I ensure that each morning is not just another start to another day but a stepping stone towards personal growth and fulfillment.

Hello! Welcome to my Blog StudyParagraphs.co. My name is Angelina. I am a college professor. I love reading writing for kids students. This blog is full with valuable knowledge for all class students. Thank you for reading my articles.

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20 Morning Writing Prompts to Jumpstart Your Day

by Joe Bunting and Sue Weems | 130 comments

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Julia Cameron's classic book The Artist's Way challenges writers to tackle morning pages each day as a way to clear the mind and set the day's intention. Today we have a few morning writing prompts to kickstart your morning journal time or writing any time of day. 

Ask people how they feel about mornings, and you're likely to get one of two responses. On one hand, you have the morning routine enthusiasts who get up early to begin their daily routines, say their positive affirmations, pump some iron or get a workout in, and anything else that contributes to their personal goals. 

For others, mornings come too early and just getting out of bed to make the coffee feels like a massive feat. 

No matter your personal experience with mornings though, my guess is that mornings themselves can be a source of inspiration. There are a number of ways to approach writing prompts for the morning. See if one of these prompts unleashes some creative potential for you!

Morning Journaling Prompts

If you're trying to start a daily habit of writing, you can use morning journal prompts as a part of your morning routine to help you tackle negative emotions, monitor stress levels, cultivate a sense of mindfulness, or just quiet the mental chatter.

1. Describe a small, daily ritual you can incorporate into your morning routine to promote a sense of calm and mindfulness.

2. Write about a recent experience where you successfully turned a negative thought into a positive one. How did you do it, and how did it make you feel?

3. Imagine starting your day with a clean slate, free from stress and worry. Write a brief journal entry about how you would design your ideal morning routine to achieve this state.

4. Write a short letter to your future self, reminding them of the importance of self-compassion and the practice of letting go of negative emotions.

5. Describe how quiet or calm feels in your body.

Life Goals Prompts

Mornings often feel like a fresh start, a way to begin anew your own personal growth. Use one of these prompts to explore your larger goals or explore a dream.

6. Describe a specific life goal you've set for yourself. What steps have you taken so far to work towards achieving it, and what motivates you to pursue this goal?

7. What is one way you've made a positive impact in your world, and how can you continue to cultivate positive change around you?

8. Imagine yourself ten years from now, living your dream life. Write a detailed journal entry about what your life looks like, the accomplishments you've achieved, and the personal growth you've experienced along the way.

9. Write a to-do list that outlines specific tasks to contribute to reaching your life dream. Nothing's too big or small to include. 

10. Write about one person who has played a pivotal role in shaping your aspirations and values.

Gratitude Journal Prompts

Research shows that gratitude has a huge impact on our overall wellness and sense of wellbeing. Incorporate a few gratitude prompts in your morning journal practice on a daily basis and see how you feel. 

11. Think about the natural world around you. Write about one aspect of nature that fills you with wonder or awe. 

12. List three people you're intensely grateful for and explain why.

13. Write about a simple pleasure you often take for granted—that first cup of coffee, the chatter of birds out back, a devoted dog curled up beside you.

14. Write a letter of gratitude to a previous year you experienced, whether in childhood or recent years. 

15. Write about a difficult time that ultimately you're grateful to have experienced. 

Creative Writing Prompts for Morning

16. Write about a morning gone wrong in a character's life (or your own). 

17. What inspires you about the morning?

18. Write about a memorable morning.

19. Choose a season and imagine a perfect morning in that season. Describe it. 

20. Describe in detail a sensory experience of a morning, either at home or during a travel experience. 

A journaling practice, especially first thing in the day can start your day right. Morning is the perfect time to take some quiet time for your writing, and I hope one of these prompts inspires you and gets your creative juices flowing. 

When is your favorite time to write? Share with us in the comments . 

Choose one of the prompts above or just take fifteen minutes to write about the morning.

Write for fifteen minutes . When you're finished, post your practice in the Pro Practice Workshop here , and leave feedback for a few other writers. 

Here's Joe's practice from 2012

The cell phone vibrates me awake. I reach for it, hold the bright screen to my squinting face, and set it for thirty minutes later. I hate mornings.

I-don't-know-how-many minutes later, I open my eyes to see the grey out my window. The field is murky with it, brown grass sticking up out of a swamp of fog. The trees are not trees but only pine. The oak and poplars have withered down to stalks, leaving the shaggy pine looking like remnants of a holocaust. The only ones clothed in a sea of naked and shaved. But in this fog, the trees never end, they float upwards, for all we know, limitless as bean stalks. My eyes shut.

The cell phone again. I turn it off. Talia makes a sound. I should get up. I should want to get up. My eyes close.

She slides up next to me. Her chin tucks into my shoulder. She gets up.

I actually like cloudy days. They are warmth, hot coffee. They are staring into grey, feeling soothed by it, letting it cover you like a blanket of introspection. Your whole world is what is right in front of you because everything else is consumed by fog. A veil over the world.

My eyes open again and I know they must stay open. I have slept far too long. I don't want to get up. Oh, I don't want to. I get up.

I look at the time, an hour of my day lost. A flock of crows fly black over the trees.

Talia smiles, says, “How did you sleep?”

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

Sue Weems is a writer, teacher, and traveler with an advanced degree in (mostly fictional) revenge. When she’s not rationalizing her love for parentheses (and dramatic asides), she follows a sailor around the globe with their four children, two dogs, and an impossibly tall stack of books to read. You can read more of her writing tips on her website .

130 Comments

Frigid night. Frigid morning.

I burrow into the comforter and hide my head. Indiana’s cold nose pokes through my shields to remind me it’s breakfast time. Beagles’ stomachs are more accurate than any alarm clock. I ignore him as long as he’ll allow, until he convinces Barkley the English Springer to join in the game of roust Mom from bed. Patient Chi waits at the door. The eldest of our three dogs knows she’ll get fed, eventually. I surrender.

The pack follows me from the bed to the bathroom to the utility room where the food bin is stashed out of their reach. We learned that lesson the hard way. Chi sits in the entry, drooling politely, as I fill the bowls. Three scoops for her as the largest, two for Barkley who wriggles and whimpers in anticipation, and a bit less for Indy, the smallest. He bounces up and down, from the dryer to the trash can – also locked away from their eager noses – and tries so hard to obey my futile “Sit” command. But he fights a losing battle. His eagerness keeps him in constant motion.

Full bowls stacked in hand, I park the trio at one end of the great room, repeating “Stay” in another futile effort to keep them at bay while I place the food by the water bowls. Chi still drools, Barkley waggles, and Indy flops into his odd half-sit half-lay position, never quite motionless. “You can eat,” is all it takes to release the hounds.

They race to the bowls, sliding in like a base runner stealing home, and in less time than it takes me to fill the tea kettle and place it on the stove, they’ve finished eating and are sniffing to be let out. We try the sit-stay combo again at the back door with varying degrees of success before they explode into the backyard to see what new odors await their morning inspection.

I have enough time for my morning yoga stretches before they’re barking and scratching to be let back in, especially in this morning’s nine degree temperature. Even hunting dogs prefer the warmth of my bedroom office on a day like this.

Only now they have the bed, and I’m at my desk, writing.

I swear Indiana is grinning.

I love the line about Indiana’s cold nose poking through your shield. Beautiful!

What a pack. I used to have dogs and they do like to get one up. Now I have cats, they like me to stay asleep.

I absolutely love Chi sitting there, drooling politely. It’s perfect.

My eyes snapped open, burning with fear. I grasp for air and, for an instant, I had forgotten entirely where I was. That ended quickly. The sound of ammunition weeping all around me was the thing that thrust me back into my instant.

Had I slept in the midst of such chaos, I thought.

Just hours earlier, I had made my bed in a shallow pit at the base of a large tree just outside of camp. I chose this spot because several large branches had fallen over and provided an amount of cover that I deemed sufficient. I packed my rifle close to my right side, placed my pack in a deeper spot near my feet, and pulled my helmet just slightly over my eyes. I mumbled a soft goodnight to my mother back in the states and closed my eyes.

Now, I find myself in, yet again, a position I had never hoped when I signed up for this war. I’m alone, cold, afraid, and knowing that at any moment my life could end.

I pull the branches slowly from my body and prepare for the worst. But, before I emerge, I take a moment and appreciate the luster of the morning. I look around and find myself smiling at the beautiful storm.

“Good morning, mom,” I whisper.

Oh, wow. Is this something that happened to you?

No, this isn’t something that happened to me. I just thought about the morning, not mine in particular, and this is what came about. I woke up in a warm bed, with my children safely sleeping in their rooms down the hall. There is too much comfort in my morning and not enough pain. That’s why I chose this concept instead.

“the luster of the morning” I like that idea that it rhymes with muster giving it kind of a military twang.

Thanks, I agree. The soft glow of the morning.

So strange – I JUST wrote about my morning routine on my blog on Wednesday, for entirely different reasons! Hope you’ll take a gander, Joe & Write Practice friends. 🙂

http://shewritesandrights.blogspot.com/2012/01/morning-new-routine.html

Love the progression of this piece. What an incredibly hard change you have to make – and you’re doing great.

“I pour a mug for myself, mom’s mug.” – Beautiful.

Hi Bethany, I peeked at your post and it was delightful in a hopeful, somber sort of way. I am so sorry about your mom. I hope your blog brings you comfort — writing soothes loss in the strangest way. I will plan to stop by and read more in the upcoming days. Thanks for letting us know about it here! With care, kati

A semitruck bounces down the highway not a hundred feet from my head. I can hear scuffling in the kitchen. If I opened my eyes, I’d see my roommate getting ready for her day, cat gnawing at her feet. But I don’t open my eyes. My day has yet to start.

I return to dreamland, grateful for this time. The old lightswitch flips, the door squeaks, and keys turn the deadbolt. She’s off for the day, meaning I am Hank’s new victim.

Morning means a kitten ready for a playmate. Morning means the smell of coffee and buttered toast. Morning means new mercies.

Morning means I must tear myself from these warm sheets and turn myself into something that slightly resembles a person. Maybe.

I’m not a fan of mornings. The routine never seems to be completed before the clock sreams, “Time to go!”

Getting out of bed is one of the worst times to live in an ancient house with poor circulation and drafty windows. I throw a polar fleece blanket over my shoulders like a cape as I search for the slippers that Hank borrowed during the night. He chases my toes as they search in vain for their jackets. The living room end table is fifteen steps from my bed yet still my feet feel like blocks of ice sliding across the sloped wooden floor. Kitty slobber doesn’t help.

Luckily this morning’s activities involve a good book and cuddle time on the couch next to the heater. It’s times like this that make mornings bearable.

I don’t dare look at the clock. I dove too deeply into Romans and now I must pay the consequences. Every other morning activity is only allowed half of its required time.

From his perch on the back of the toilet, Hank watches my fingers as I move around the bathroom. He tries to help. “Amuse” may be a more accurate term. He loves mornings for it is in the morning when his playmates, his subjects, awaken and do what they do best: be chew toys.

In a hasty panic I throw everything I think I need into a bag and head out the creaky front door, into the morning mist, and to the car that needs de-icing before it too may bounce down the highway like semitruck that served as my alarm clock all of those minutes ago.

Interesting how much our furry companions are a part of life –

Focus. It’s 6:50. What needs to happen right now?

Dishes need to be done, and a lunch made for Andy.

My mornings are about tasks. The tasks used to own me. But now I’m the boss, and I own them.

I run this place. But it used to run me. It used to feel like a prison cell made of dirty diapers and forlorn expectations. My to-do list was the fire-breathing dragon that never slept.

But one morning, as he turned to scratch an itchy scale, I shanked him down to size. I said, “This is the express lane, Smoky, and it’s 10 items or less!”

Now I own this place. I manage my time. I set limits and priorities. I own myself.

Love it! As a mamma, I can relate!

Thanks, Steph! It was a kind of triumphal piece. 🙂

Alright, boss, we submit! This is great. “I’m the boss. I own them. I run this place, Smoky.” Super fun! You went from a prisoner to the prison boss, the guy with tats up and down his built arms, gettin his people to ship in drugs and conning the guards. You’re kind of scary, actually. 🙂

HaHa! well…minus the drug running! I’ve transitioned my mindset over the past few months about being a full-time mom at home. I had to take ownership for the choices I made in becoming a mom, and begin to look at it as a vocation. As I started to view myself more as a professional, it was easier to manage my time/tasks/resources like I used to in a traditional job. Huge difference in quality of life!

Nice. I like that.

Wow, that was clean and powerful! As a mom I was right there with you, I felt the ire rise in my own chest!

Go get your dragon, Beck! 😉

Yes, Jen! Dishes can wait. (Diapers, not really, alas).

“Cleaning and scrubbing can wait til tomorrow…”

I have that monologue in my head everyday…the floors aren’t THAT bad. They’ll wait until tomorrow! 🙂

I love this Jen – freedom from the to do list – own your own day, own your own life. Very empowering. Have a great day.

Thanks, Nics! It’s what I try to do, some days more successfully than others. Glad to know that I successfully communicated the freedom – thanks for the feedback!

Sharp and snappy…good job!

Thanks! I had a little bit of “rawr” going on when I wrote it.

Loved this. Tasks aren’t going anywhere but attitude makes the difference. Going off to slay the laundry pile…

It makes all the difference. I’ve found that the attitude of ownership has made a huge change in how my day goes. It’s the difference between the laundry pile “happening” to me, and me taking out the laundry pile. You can call your dragon “Smelly.” 🙂

Wow! I love the energy as you take control. Powerful!

I’m sad to say that my energy waned by the end of the day, but today is always a new day! Thanks for the great feedback!

Love this. It’s a short passage with a long message. Good metaphor.

Thanks, Nancy! That’s exactly what I was going for – so thanks for the feedback!

I’m a stay at home mom by choice as well. I love how you describe your to-do list. I feel like I have one of those breathing down my neck as well. Our work is never done. I should be cleaning my floors rather than sitting here reading but the floors will have to wait. It’s actually quiet in my house right now. Kind of eerie 🙂

Joe- “My eyes open again and I know they must stay open.” So true. I love how your morning starts with a question about how you slept when really you want to still be sleeping. Katie

Thanks, Katie!

I’ve never been a morning person. I’ve often wished I was. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence, I suppose.

I grumble awake. My first thought most days, indeed this day, is, “I wish I could sleep longer.” The comfort and safety of my bed scream loudest in the mornings. Like Joe, the sharpness of my cell phone-turned-alarm clock pierces my pupils and I cannot read the screen clearly. There’s no need. My hand finds the snooze button instinctively, as if it needed no help from my brain. I’m not sure what good my brain is that early anyway. As I drag myself out of bed, because that’s what it takes these days, I head half-heartedly towards the day’s work.

There must be more.

It is lunch time and I still can’t see clearly. Why hasn’t the morning fog lifted? Why haven’t my eyes cleared themselves and been able to focus on the world yet? Why is my mind still groggy, as if I were only 5 minutes into my 9-minute-snooze; as if I have never fully wakened?

Someone I know once insinuated that a day doing something you hate can feel like years; and years of doing what you love can feel like a day. I have spent years doing that which I do not love. I am a night person who’s been relentlessly beaten by the morning day after merciless day.

But I have good news. My eyes are beginning to see clearly. Things are coming into focus. My mind is coming awake and the early morning fog is starting to lift. The beatings will end soon. It’s time to start my day.

(nods to Joe as the “someone I know”)

“5 minutes into my 9 minute snooze” – I like that!

Thanks Stephan!

Love it, Kevin. And I like this effort at narrative. I think you do it quite nicely. You’re in the moment, giving us good description and action, with a little spice of internal monologue. It’s great.

At the end you almost lose it though. I would have changed this, “But I have good news. My eyes are beginning to see clearly.” To something like this, “Later, though, my eyes begin to see clearly.” But overall this is a very strong practice, bud.

I also love the insinuation about my insinuating 🙂

Thanks Joe. What I tried to do there was describe a typical morning and then I shifted gears with your quote describing the fact that I feel as though I am living my life right now in the groggy, foggy, not quite awake feeling of the morning and at the end was hoping to make the point that the future is coming into focus and I’m about to truly wake up and stop the groundhog’s day of a morning my life seems to be and really start my day (which in your quote would equate to the rest of my life).

But I tried to do it without actually saying that is what I was doing, haha. I’m not sure if I was successful with that or not. Thanks for your critique. Meaningful as always.

Yeah, that makes sense. Also, it’s difficult to cover all of that in one paragraph, and usually when we’re trying to save space we summarize. It’s understandable. I think what you’re trying to do is fascinating and you definitely came close. Thanks bud!

Joe, in my brief time of knowing your blog, I’ve noticed you have an uncanny ability of writing timely posts, both for myself and others! When I checked your blog this morning, I had just finished working on a(nother!) rewrite of a “morning” scene in my WIP. Your post (in which I very much liked your “beanstalk” analogy!) made me think more about how to incorporate time into my text. I had a few minutes just now to spruce it up a little more in that regard. Here it is:

From his spot on the rear bench of his boat, Rex heard the church bells from town start up again. One , two, three chimes. He was anchored at the dock in front of the northern border town of Jack Pine, Minnesota, and had been for quite some time now. Eight, nine, ten. The morning train was officially an hour late. He rummaged beneath his seat, finally finding his metal thermal bottle lodged in the tip of the stern. He popped off the cover that did double-duty as a mug, pulled out the cork, and took a whiff. Strong stuff. If nothing else, he thought, let it be said of Phyllis that she knows how to brew a real pot of coffee: boiled black and thickened with an egg. Jet fuel, he called it, even though he had never flown in a plane. He poured the remainder of the sludge into the mug and, over its rim, stared down the town in front of him. Where could he go to kill time until the train finally came in? He had a bucket of silver shiners he could go sell to the bait shop on the shore. In fact, he used to be one of their top suppliers when he had lived in Jack Pine with Myrt. But the owner was also a man of God who wouldn’t do business with the divorced, unless they were the ones paying him. Not that Rex was properly divorced. Worse, in the eyes of the town folk -and quite possibly in those of the Almighty – he had wrenched a child from his mother’s arms and skipped town, leaving the helpless woman to fend for herself. Granted, he hadn’t strung their dirty laundry up to air along Main Street, but he had most certainly left a pile of it in his wake. At best, he could expect a proper Biblical stoning the minute he stepped into town. Christ, I’m was as crazy as old Mags, he thought. With a shaking hand, he rummaged in the storage compartment alongside his bench until he located the jar of mother’s milk he kept onboard for emergencies such as this. He sloshed it into his coffee, bringing it to level, and slammed it down. He closed his eyes, stretched back, and let the morning sun above wash over him and the waves below rock him until the drink found its way to his nerves. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Jack Pine, Minnesota, as just another port of entry, a necessary business stop, and until that morning train showed up for him to meet, he was going to the café to find himself a little lunch.

Perfect! I love serendipity (the concept, not the movie).

Ew: “thickened with an egg.” Do people really do that?

This character seems interesting so far, and you’ve got a great voice developed here. Lots of backstory, though. Like this, “Not that Rex was properly divorced.” I would try to put this “on screen” if you can. That’s an important bit of story that you don’t want to give away cheaply. And rather than having him thinking through why it’s going to be a pain going to this town, I would just show him having a pain going through the town. Does that make sense?

I really like this character though. Is he your protagonist?

Sadly, I can personally attest to this particular coffee recipe! (blech!!)

Thanks so much for your comments, Joe. This is the intro to my 4th chapter, which has been giving me FITS. As I commented before, backstory is starting to creep in and I’m not sure how to cope with it! You hit the nail on the head – I need to put it onscreen, which should work very well in this case. I’m just not sure how to transition from the previous chapter (change of place and a new day). Maybe I need to set the stage for that change at the end of the previous chapter better?

Sorry – I’m thinking “aloud” here. Thanks for your advice and time. I’m glad you like Rex. Yes, he’s the protagonist. Pesky SOB, won’t let me alone. Hence this crazy mess of a novel I’ve undertaken!

My life, in relationship to the morning, has shown signs of schizophrenic tendencies. My parents said I was a morning person at an early age. Up at the crack of dawn, I was eager to start my day with a bowl of corn flakes and a side of Romper Room on the TV.

But adolescence changed all that. During my high school and college years, there were summers I never even saw morning, unless we are talking about the front end of it. In my teen years I would greet the morning like a drunk anticipating a hangover. Daylight would have to work overtime peeling back my thickened eyelids. Finally, after most of the world had taken their lunch break, I was making my way to the bathroom for a shower.

Today, after parenthood and career have had their way with my aging earth suit, I have become rather chummy with a variety of aches and pains, and I must say, they are definitely night owls. They do their best work while I attempt a good night’s sleep.

This is pitiful to admit, but I think I burn more calories in my sleep than I do during the day. I am constantly tossing and turning and getting up multiple times to go to the bathroom. I recently came up with an idea for a new workout video, “Snooze till You Lose: Workout in Your Sleep.” I could make millions!

Now, my mornings are more like an act of surrender. I pull off my white pillowcase and wave it in the air. “I give up!” I shout to my nocturnal dynamic duo. Aches and Pains have won again. I rise like an aging wrestler getting up after the final bout of his career. My wife of 31 years sleeps soundly on her side of the bed. The alarm clock glows a dark green 5:00.

I shuffle stiffly toward the bathroom. Leaving the light off, I blindly take aim. Hello dear friend. Thanks for being there for me in the middle of the night. Thanks for putting up with my, well, you know. I flush in the dark.

I change into my workout clothes but plan to avoid the treadmill. I head downstairs to the kitchen for bran flakes and liquid energy. The dog is as perturbed as I am when I flip on the light. I settle into my easy chair and grab my Bible. Now my day begins. Now I am ready for the Light.

Great forth paragraph Tom, especially surrendering to the aches and pains. Now that I’m retired sometimes I just don’t get up.

“…my aging earth suit.” I dig that line. It’s something that each one of us can relate to in our own way. Well done.

I like the line, “I rise like an aging wrestler getting up after the final bout of his career.” It’s very descriptive and I can almost hear the bones cracking as he rises from his bed.

The “earth suit” is great.

I love your colorful description and humor. I think I chuckled most at “I pull off my white pillowcase and wave it in the air.” I could just see myself doing that! And the end, “ready for the Light.” I wouldn’t have a good reason to get up without him!

I really liked this line as well, I thought it was a good metaphor.

I love how you associate the light with being reading for the light of day – beautiful analogy. Thank you for your post I enjoyed reading it.

Love the term earth suit….and certainly can relate to nightly rousing, aches, and pains….caught my night life well.

Your hilarity strikes again! If you’d like to turn this into a more finished piece, say for your new newspaper job (which I’m still so excited about, for you), this should be your first paragraph, “This is pitiful to admit, but I think I burn more calories in my sleep than I do during the day.” That’s where you hooked me. I love the self-mocking tone, and mixed with the naive excitement. Everything after is great, too. Well done, my good sir.

Absolutely fabulous! I can’t even pick a favourite line! I really enjoyed this, and laughed at your visit with your old friend… really great piece!

I had the same thoughts as I was writing but I was afraid to admit them. Thanks for speaking for me.

A wonderfully honest telling of the hardship of the mundane. My mornings (and nights) are similar to yours, Tom. Thanks for not sugar-coating anything. I love how even after the worst of nights, the morning can still seem bright. Loved your redemptive outlook in this, while still acknowledging the struggle. (Btw, I kind chuckled at the bathroom scene. Guess I’m just a guy.)

I love to read things that make me laugh. I laughed a lot reading this. Hard to settle on one part as I liked the entire piece. The description, “aging earth suit” made me smile. Enjoyed this!

Joe that is exquisite. I can see it and I can feel the pocket of safety, warmth, life that is yours within the fog. It’s beautiful.

Thank you, Marianne 🙂

That’s supposed to say Steph (dang auto-correct!)

I liked the other as well – I think it would make a good character name! 🙂

The stars seem to fall or more like vanish to the coming day’s song. I hear the lock turn. Click. My front door opens and I walk out ready for the day. So I thought. My eye raise up to see a dreary but somehow calming morning.

The sky is a shade of black I had never seen before. A black that does not consume, but rather shine like a dawning day. I stare for a moment which in reality is nearly a full minute before shaking the spell it laid on me.

I walk briskly down the stone stairs. The ground feel cool even to the touch of my hard soled boots. The chill in the air covers me with the yearning to return to my warm bed that I had left not half an hour ago.

It’s humbling knowing I’m one of the few things that dare stir this long before the shining of day. Though most see the light as a sign of morning. The shining night that prepares it’s slumber is my vision of a true morning.

Happy Beginnings, New Day.

This is very beautiful. I should try to give writerly or readerish reasons why, but I won’t. Just lets say, it resonates in the way Silent Night does.

I know that shade of black. It’s almost impossible to describe and you’ve done the best description here that I think I’ve ever read. I tried it in mine but I kept to the sense of vision and couldn’t get it right. Bravo!!!

Ugh, my heart sinks to the tone of the annoying beep. I know it immediately, I’m going to pay. No longer a bounding youth, with bundles of energy and stamina, my body tells on me.

All nighters, or at least very late nighters, should be relegated to the twenty something years. Yet, there are nights when I struggle to relinquish the delicious silence, my solitude undisturbed by little ones lying quietly under the spell of sleep.

The growing sliver of light, slicing into the grayness of the room, announces my toddler. Silent as an Indian stalking game, she creeps up to the big bed. “Mommy?” a tiny voice questions. I giggle at being discovered, a simple game played without rules and ending predictably every morning.

Little hands reach out and I pull her up beside me. Tucked in close, her sweet breath caresses my face. We doze a moment together, tangled in the fuzzy cords of sleep. Sharply the alarm insists that the day be faced. In a toss of ringlets and kicking of covers, Maggie hops from the bed, answering the command. And so it begins.

I know this scene very well! Very well versed!

The morning light through my window is still gray. The baby is crying. He wants his wet diaper changed. I take it off and he curls back into a ball and falls asleep, naked. I hate to disturb him further, but I put a dry diaper on him, because I don’t want to have to change my sheets today. I lay down next to him. He nurses and I fall back to sleep.

An hour later I hear the recycle truck making its rounds. The wind had been fierce all night, and I have yet to take the trash out. I get up without waking the baby and pull an abaya over my pjs, and hurry the trash to the curb.

Since everyone is still asleep, so I take my kindle to bed to read the day’s news. I check today’s prompt, and wonder if I really want to write about morning. And when I do, it is 3:46 pm.

This was OK, but I didn’t really get the lat paragraph. The sentence, “Since everyone is still asleep, so I take my kindle to bed to read the day’s news”, was a bit awkward – you have to drop either “since” or “so” and then it would flow better.

The last line – I’m not sure I understood what it was you were trying to point out. Is it that you spent so long wondering about whether to write about the morning that by the time you did it was late afternoon? Or is the point that everyone else was still asleep at that time?

I think it means that she was trying to decide whether or not she’ll be doing the writing practice (which was to write about “mornings”). Though, by the time she was able to decide it was no longer morning.

The “so” was a mistake.

Fair enough, I take back what I said then 🙂

I loved your last line. I can relate. Maybe you had a long night with the baby. Morning came too soon and you weren’t really ready to think about it until 3:46 pm. Maybe between all the baby and kid stuff you didn’t get a chance to write about your morningn until then. And I’ve certainly had days when “morning” seems to last that long – you’ve just gotten back to that piece of bread you put in the toaster four hours ago, you’re finally grabbing a shower, making beds, etc. Not because you’re lazy, but because mothering children is a lot of constant work!

3:46 pm. I get it.

You say a lot about your day without saying a word here. I’m retired now but I remember those non-stop flight from dawn till dusk. I hope you take notes as much as you can. I wrote a horrible, really horrible, book when my daughter was about five and when I read it now I remember so much about her. It is the descriptions of the children in the book that I know I took from her, that bring her little girl self back to me. It’s better than looking at photos.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve never been a morning person. I never understood people who could bound out of bed, put on a pot of coffee and be instantly ready to face the day. For me, the lure of a cozy bed far outweighs that of a hot shower. I’m the guy who sets his alarm for 6.30, planning to get up, go for a run, and still have time to shower and make a fruit smoothie before arriving at work early to impress the boss.

But like all the best laid plans, this one never comes to fruition. Inevitably the snooze button is just a groggy swipe of the hand away, giving me relief from facing the reality of the day in 5 minute bursts.

When I was younger, I occasionally managed to push through these mental barriers. In high school I went through period of a couple of months where my morning routine was exactly as I described: up early, run, fruit smoothie. Even though it was mid-winter, pitch black and freezing cold, there’s something exhilarating about running that early in the morning. It gives you a feeling of superiority, pounding the pavement past houses full of lazy sleepers who can’t even be bothered to get up and experience what you do. “Lazy bastards”, I would think. “I can’t believe I used to be like that.” My iPod would provide the soundtrack to my life. Morning Glory by Oasis was my powersong.

Need a little time to wake up, wake up/ Well, what’s the story morning glory/ So well, but we need a little time to wake up wake up

But the best part about running at an ungodly hour on a cold dark December morning wasn’t feeling superior to those not doing the same – it’s the unspoken bond you have with other morning runners. The upwards nod, or raise of the eyebrows, as you run past each other, or even a quick “Morning” in between breaths, there’s an understanding that you’re all part of the same group: athletes committed to a cause, no matter how early you have to go to bed the night before.

Now, lying in bed with the alarm buzzing at 7am, I think of those people, that crazy club of morning runners, and I wish I were still part of them. I still could be, if I jump out of bed now, put my trainers on, and go, without a second thought.

I press snooze, and turn over. Maybe in another 5 minutes.

I open my eyes. I try to recall the dream I had but it keeps on slipping from my mind. I remember running. I remember my hands were bound in chains. I remember…nothing more aside from that.

Damn! I could have used that dream as story material.

I turn to the side and the clock on my bedside table has 4AM displayed on its digital face. Too early. I woke up too early. I close my eyes to try to go back to sleep. After a minute or two I give up. I sit up on my bed and stretch.

I pour myself a cup of coffee. I take the cup close to my face and I breathe in deep. I allow it to wash over me. I put down the cup without taking a sip—I don’t drink coffee. Is that weird? Every single morning I make myself a cup of coffee just to breathe in its wondrous scent. Everyone has their own quirks I guess. I tap on the touchpad of my laptop and the screen comes to life. A blank word document stares at me. I sigh.

Okay, time to go to work.

I’m about to place my fingers on the keys but then I hesitate. What to write? I try to recall my dream once again but I still find it elusive. I type in a couple of sentences. I read them once, then twice, and then I delete them. I turn my face to the ceiling and I spin on my swivel chair. It’s been a week already and I still haven’t gotten over my writer’s block. A minute passes by and I start to see patterns on the stains on my ceiling. I see a gnarled face of an old man. I see a skull. I see a spider sitting on top of the skull.

A skull-eating spider? No… An old man who loves to collects skulls. He has a pet spider. The spider’s not your typical spider though. It loves to eat the flesh off of dead people. Whenever the old man gets his arthritic hands on a newly found skull, he lets his pet spider eat the flesh off of it first—to clean it up, to make it look nice and neat. He then sets it on his wooden cabinet, along with the other skulls he had collected. He takes out a key in his pocket and he unlocks a drawer. Inside, another skull sits. It’s smaller than the others. It’s older as well. It has already turned yellow with age. He looks at it long. He looks at it with a smile. He doesn’t see a skull. He sees his son. The old man with the gnarled face starts crying, his pet spider sitting on his shoulder. I open my eyes and I start typing, the scent of coffee lingering in the air.

My body is tired, it fights for breath. I wake, reaching for the orange inhaler, that will ease the burning in my chest. Two maybe three puffs, and I sink back into the pillows. Breath comes easier now, not as jarred. What time is it? I reach for my phone, and bleary eyed try to focus on the small screen. 10.30am, I haven’t overslept that much, but I am still tired. Yet not sleepy.

Shafts of sunlight peer through my curtains. Bright light, that makes me want to get up and run. But not yet, I am still ill.

My morning pattern is disrupted. My brain feels heavy, my mind anything but mindful.

And, I am not happy.

I know illness cannot be overcome without rest. In the jumble that has become my morning, nothing is quite what it seems or what I feel it should be. Yet, I have to come to a place of acceptance, that without rest, I will not get better.

I long to return to the time of up, and out on the road. My breath hard and sharp again, but this time, because I am pushing, I am striding out. Several miles later, I return. I am free. I am ready for interaction. I can face my day.

In my head I am running.

In the dawn’s early light, when the only other souls up are farmer’s or doctors returning bleary eyed from nightshifts. My feet beat a rhytmn, my mind feels free, I am connected. I am within nature. A big sky stretches to the hills, clouds rest on her.

Several weeks now, without a run. Several weeks of weak breath, and tiredness. Of continual meds and higher doese. Several weeks of weakness. Several weeks please end today.

I slump back against the pillows, and dream for my morning’s, my running, my freedom – to return to me.

What are you up to this morning?

I’ve hooked up with the write practice this morning, pondering on their prompt morning, I’d love to know what morning means to you?

That’s it for now …

Salt and Sparkle = Life Remarkable

http://www.saltandsparkle.com/home/2012/1/21/morning.html

The room feels brighter than it usually is. I open my eyes wider and see the messed up blanket that my sister used. Oh, they already left for school. I grab my phone and check on the time. 07:10, it reads. I turn on my tummy and type a quick greeting as I do every morning, when I get up earlier than usual.

“Morning,” I typed and added a simple smile at the end.

I put it back on the bedside table and bury my face into my pillow. I can still sleep for an hour.

Eyes closed but mind wavering, I hear that familiar melody alerting a message. I turn, take my phone and read the new message. I smile.

Every morning seems like a routine already. A text message and a smile.

I lie back down on the bed, staring at the white ceiling as I think of the tasks I have to work on today. But I close my eyes again and feel sleepiness crawling back into me. There’s nothing much to do anyway.

Every morning, I battle laziness and sleepiness, since I no longer have classes, nor do I have a job.

I think about the things I could accomplish for a whole day, if only I wasn’t so lazy. More than one blog post would be ready for publishing. My crazy story – or maybe a short novel – idea could be planned out. I could finally memorize one song and play it on my recently repaired guitar.

So many things, so much time. And I could finish them too, if only I wasn’t so lazy. Eyes still closed, I feel everything growing dark. Everything around me quiet and still.

I’ll sleep for an hour and then I’ll get up and start working. But for now, I want to sleep.

Nice, Unisse. I want to know more about this, though: “I turn, take my phone and read the new message. I smile.”

It’s a message from someone special.

Every morning is the same. And no matter how many days pass by, it still makes me smile. 🙂

I love mornings….not one in particular, but all especially those early ones when I wake up in my cozy apartment, I look at the window and see no car,no people, nothing…like I am the only one on the Planet. Then I imagine myself so many things waiting for the sun to show up. I prepare my coffee and relax till 7 when I go downstairs to by the newspaper. I have a nice conversation with the old man at the newsstand and I’m coming back in my apartment. I check my email, read the newspaper, drink half of my coffee and take a shower. Then it comes the difficult part: I have to get dress!:) After changing my outfit 3 or 4 times, I put a little make up if I still have time, brush my hair and call for a cab. I watch myself in the mirror for the last time, I take a deep breath and then I run on the stairs because I realize how late I am:)

Well chosen details – I was immediately in your “world.” Cool.

As I open my eyes to another mist filled brisk morning, my first thought is that I have another day to enjoy life. I’m not quite ready to give up the reverence of the misty glaze that greets me, the warm mist rising through the rays of the sun. The sense of peace so completely overwhelms me. The quiet loudly fills my soul and I just want to revel a few more minutes in those first moments of the day, before the reality of life sets in and my day blossoms.

This was quite beautiful, Patty. I especially liked this, “The quiet loudly fills my soul and I just want to revel….”

The urge to roll over wins. Turning slowly I realize anxious little eyes jumping up and down next to the bed, begging entrance under the warm covers. I lift the duvet signaling admission and happy eyes enthusiastically crawl over me and snuggle in between toasty bodies.

My eyes glance at the clock – 4:something. Not time to get up yet. Scrunching my pillow, I nestle down for a couple more hours of sleep. Ahhh…

I’m awakened rather harshly by sheets of rain pelting against my window with curious force. Groping in the darkness, I reach for my cell and squint to see the time. It’s 6:30 a.m.

When a loud crash of thunder shakes the entire house with a thundering boom, all morning drowsiness suddenly disappears. The sheets feel cool and delicious, but an overwhelming urge to peek out the window at the storm overrides my desire to enjoy the comfort of the bed.

I pad across the floor in bare feet. The trees are bending low, their limbs waving violently as the wind whips about. Lightning bolts every few minutes, illuminating the world momentarily.

It’s extraordinary. We don’t get thunderstorms in January. And such an unusual occurrence on a winter Saturday morning calls for comfort. The type of comfort that can only come from warm, melt-in-your mouth goodness. Sugar and butter.

The hum-drum of falling rain becomes a comfortable, familiar rhythm as ingredients are measured and mixed. Dough is kneaded, rounded, and shaped into little rolls. Soon, the smell of cinnamon wafts through the air.

I open the window to take a deep breath of the fresh rain scent. Early morning hours are pure magic.

This is what I experienced this morning. I enjoyed reading your creative descriptions.

Thank you, Lea!

Very much enjoyed this today.

Eyes not yet open, I snuggle back and our bodies meld together as one. Sean’s arm is wrapped around me, protecting me from the world. One of my ear plugs has fallen out and the other has wiggled it’s way to the half mark and threatens to leap at any moment.

The morning used to be my favourite time of day. I loved getting up while it was still dark out and nobody else is stirring. I would sip my morning tea, enjoying the uninterrupted silence, and challenge the crossword puzzle. Alas, those days are now as rare as a hen’s tooth.

My last mini marshmallow has now fallen from my ear and my peace is interrupted. An irksome cacophony has commenced outside my window, likely a murder of crows, which I would ironically very much like to do away with at this moment. I try to jam my earplugs back in place, to no avail. My eyes have popped open and there’s no going back. Time to get up.

I put aside my murderous thoughts, and tenderly place a kiss on his wrinkled brow. And as I turn for my robe, he jumps up and is do and wn the stairs before me. I am envious of his astonishing agility as I hobble my w ay down with aching arches from overdoing it the gym yesterday. I should have listened to the doctor and bought those arch supports after all.

He sets the coffee to brewing, he has put the kettle on for my tea, and as I near, he turns towards me, with an impish smile. He sweeps me up in his arms, leading me around the kitchen, and our laughter takes the place of the lyrics to the marvellous melody that only we can hear.

And this beautiful day begins.. .

Wow. I feel slightly jealous!

That is beautiful, both the description “mini marshmallow”, “his astonishing agility as I hobble down with aching feet”, and the morning itself. I love “dancing to a melody that only we can hear”.

I love your writing, Joe. Your words are so perfectly descriptive and I can see the sights out your window. It’s all good but that second paragrpah is especially spectacular. Very well done.

Thanks so much, Shelley.

It’s four thirty. The ritual begins with the knowledge that I should get up and start writing. But I’m just so toasty warm. Maybe I’ll lie here and plan the next chapter from my pillow. Soon my head is overflowing with details. I stick one arm outside of the covers, braving the chill, and reach for my writer’s notebook. I fumble for the light switch and then my glasses. My husband grumbles and turns away from the light. As my tired eyelids slowly rise, I scribble down some notes, but I can’t read them. Oh heck. I need to be at my computer. I throw on some sweats and stop by the bedroom window. The street light at the top of my driveway illuminates a steady stream of rain. But no other lights are on up and down the street. I am the first one up. Winning! By the time I get to my office, Old Man McCarthy across the street has turned on his kitchen light. Whew. That was close. He almost beat me. For another morning we’ll make our coffee in sync. While my kitchen fills with the aroma of freshly brewed café Verona, I check e-mail and Facebook. I respond to all my night owl friends who wrote after I had gone to bed. After pouring my first cup of coffee, I google search for my novel. Then I do a fifteen-minute Write Practice. It’s a warm up, I tell myself. Lots of time has passed, and I need a break. So I get the newspaper and pour my second cup of coffee. And then I panic. Every day the same. It’s eight o’clock already. My husband is not on assignment right now. If he smells that coffee and wakes up, my writing is shot. He will arrive in my office with an ironclad plan for the day. I scribble madly on my notepad and then on my keyboard, nervously listening for the creak of hardwood under slippered feet. Will I ever finish this second draft?

I like the idea of making coffee “in sync” with the neighbor. The details here are simple but well chosen. I feel like I’m looking in and then at the end I feel the rush like it’s me trying to get finished before something makes me leave my writing. I’m watching and then I’m there. It’s like a good movie.

I wake up. But I was never really asleep. Not last night. Not most nights.

My days are busy, full of worry and wonder. And the occasional exciting event.

But today, I am aware. Of the emptiness and routine. I eat my oatmeal, swishing it around in my mouth before I swallow. I can barely taste the gritty mush. For a moment, I think of the Matrix, but the thought passes and I hear the kettle shriek.

I go to the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee. French press — the way I prefer it. I haven’t smiled yet today.

I sit in front of my laptop, with a blanket and dog covering my legs. And I begin to write.

The only sound in the house is the central heating (or air, I’m not sure) kicking on and off every few minutes. That, and the rapid clicking of keys. The world is still asleep.

I lean over the arm of the couch and type. An hour later, I feel the strain in my back. Time flies in the morning.

I say goodbye to Ashley. I didn’t even notice her getting up. Or showering and brushing her teeth. Or even getting breakfast. She kisses me as she walks out the door, and my gaze returns to the screen.

1500 words. It was a good morning.

Finally, I smile.

And morning begins.

A paling night sky glows through my high basement window. I turn into my pillow, I sleep again, and dream of a road into a house, into a room, into air.

I wake to a pink light diffusing into waning night. A winter-bare rosebush is revealed by the pink light. I turn back to the pillow, draw the covers around my shoulder, and dream about an elevator that leads to a ceiling, and beyond that a maze of vines.

I feel the warm sun from the window. I see a wren in the rosebush, hopping, cocking its head to look at me. I the song of another wren, and I throw off some covers, turn the pillow, and push my face into it’s cool side. My little cat curls close and we dream about a zoo, with tiny animals that keep getting loose.

The sun gets hotter. It’s no use, I wake up. The cat jumps to the hot window sill to sleep some more. I try to think back and untie the dreams, but they have curled up with the cat to sleep on the other side of consciousness.

Some really great lines… “I wake to a pink light diffusing into waning night.” beautiful… and that last line… so perfect!

The night is still awaiting the sun. They have always been aware of each other but could not ever meet. Soon the water will wake up and awaken all roots. Trees will break the slumber of birds to sing and wake up all the world. Soon from the other side of the crack in the mountains, light would flutter and rise above the earth. The earth will glow like a bride’s face. Thus, begins the awaking of another day.

Krishna Kumar

You’re a poet, Krisha.

Is it any Good or am I wasting your time and mine ?. I request your candid response.

It’s beautiful.

My body is warm and cozy under the weight of the blankets and, although I am awake before dawn, I do not wish to get out of bed. The thought of the chilly air colliding with my warm skin causes me to burrow deeper in to the bed and even closer to the warm body of my husband. I feel safe and at peace wrapped in my lovers arms.

“Good morning. I love you,” he whispers in my ear, then snuggles even closer.

What a wonderful thing to hear first thing in the morning. I respond in kind.

The wind howls across the lake. Tree limbs sweep back and forth over the roof. A low rumble of thunder in the distance soon becomes a lion’s roar, rattling the windows and shaking the house. The dark blue sky lights up as a bolt of lightning strikes nearby.

I lay there and think how our outdoor plans for today have just been cancelled and I smile.

I really like the “lion’s roar” bit!

The first thing that wakes me is my phone buzzing to alert me to an e-mail. I glance at it bleary-eyed. The address bar tells me some barbaric blog site called “The Write Practice” was active at 8:18 in the morning. The subject bar seems to mock me. “Morning,” it says, as if I were stupid and didn’t know that already. “No shit,” comes my muttered oath. I throw the phone back onto the night table, groan lightly and pull the covers over my head to keep out the unwanted morning cool. What seems like seconds later, the phone vibrates again. I give it a cursory glance, seeing my friend’s name this time, and know that I have to answer. With oodles of sweet, sweet sympathy and plenty of smiley faces to camouflage my case of morning bitch, I respond to her cry for help. 9:24, I read on the bright, bright screen that is then placed face-down under my pillow. I lie there for a moment, thinking that I really should get up. I have to vacuum the house. I have to clean my closet. I have to drink coffee and eat breakfast. I have to start building a responsible morning routine. Something must be wrong with me. I have no problem getting up at 5:00 in the morning to get to school, I think. Why can’t I get up at 9:30 when I don’t have somewhere to be? Something’s wrong. I snort at my own interior monologue and close my eyes again. My 10:00 alarm rings. Just a couple seconds of waking up time, I think, then I am really getting up. I hear my mother yelling at my little brother that he can’t just sit around all day – chores are to be done in the morning. I think to myself, yeah, I should get up and do mine, too. I fall back asleep. The vacuum cleaner turns on at 11:30. I drag myself out of bed and up the stairs to where my mother sits on the couch watching television. “Who’s vacuuming what?” I ask irritably. She looks at me. Her blue eyes glow with contempt at my disheveled appearance. “Your father is doing sanding work in our bathroom. He’s vacuuming the dust that fell.” “Oh,” I say stupidly. “Chores need to be done,” she reminds me. “Your brother did the bathroom already.” I splutter. “What?! I did the bathroom last night!” I explode in French. English isn’t expressive enough. “Did he not notice that everything was spotless and all the towels were changed and that it smelled like cleaner?” “Oh well, now it’s just doubly clean,” she states matter-of-factly. That’s not how it works! I am furious. I should have gotten up earlier, this wouldn’t have happened. Screw this. I’m going back to bed.

“The subject bar seems to mock me. ” Loved that and your response to it!

Whoops, sorry for double posting!

The Morning After Cats (Not The Musical)

My eyes are drawbridges, slowly rising, opening up to let the world through. I barely slept, my own wheezing keeping me awake half the night. Cats. Always the culprit. Sure they are cute in their own way. Furry, fuzzy, playful. Somehow they always find me. But waking up in the morning in a house where a cat lives has been the equivalent to the worst hangover of my life the several times I’ve done it. I’m always woozy, mostly from trying to inhale real air and failing due to that one piece of cat hair stuck precariously in the back of my throat. My airway constricts. I feel sick and panicky, wondering how I’m going to get out alive.

Okay, I lied. Waking up the morning after I’ve been in a house with a cat all night is worse than a hangover.

I swell. I itch. My eyes become narrower and narrower until I can barely see. Laying down is a death wish. If I don’t want to wonder how I’m going to make it through the night while reclining, I have to sleep sitting up. Imagine that. Being that close to the carpet of hair never works for me, although I’ve tried. I’m not the most allergic person to cats I’ve ever known, but I’m pretty bad. My dad could be worse. He’s just the most allergic person to most things I’ve ever known. He’s allergic to the sun. Breaks out in hives if he’s out in the sun for more than a half hour. So as a result he wears a lot of sunscreen. But back to the cats.

I remember the first time I was around cats overnight. I was in New Jersey, staying at my long distance boyfriend’s house. I was 17 and it was probably the first time I’d stayed away from home in a different state than the one I lived in with people who weren’t my relatives. It was really exciting until it was bedtime. Aside from the thick layer of dust infesting my teenage boyfriend’s bedroom (my sleeping quarters while he slept on the couch), there was my worst enemy: the central heating duct. Circulating air all night. Not clean air. Hot, cat air. The kind that makes me itch when it blows on my skin. The kind that is gross and musty and dusty and cat-y. Ugh, I didn’t sleep at all that night and from then on, whenever there’s been a cat in my midst, I cringe.

Sidenote: people who aren’t allergic to cats never know how hard it is to be allergic to something that they think is a part of their family. Imagine being allergic to someone’s baby. Sure you like the baby and would love to hold it and love it and give it attention but because you know you’re going to sneeze and convulse and not be able to breathe for the next day or two, you sort of want to avoid it. Like the plague. Then people get offended that you don’t want to play with their pet. To some they think it akin to ignoring their baby because to them, it IS their baby. Well, I’m sorry. I like your cat/baby, but I can’t help it! When I come over to your house, I feel bad because for some reason, your cat likes me. A LOT. It wants to rub against my pant leg (oh great, now I have to wash that.). It wants me to pet it and it will purr until I do. (Have to wash my hands now! Twice. And scrub). And sometimes it can sense my fear (not of it but of it’s hair invading my nostrils like a disease) and it runs away from me. Those times, I’m lucky. They say I could take allergy medicine. But can you imagine being told you need to take a pill every time you come over to someone’s house? A pill that makes your dopey and tired and silly stupid? That’s what allergy medicine does to me. So I’ll take it if I’m desperate, but otherwise, I’m just going to fake it and pretend that I’m not dying if I come over to your house when you have cats. Please don’t be offended. Your furry friend isn’t a friend to me. And for that, I apologize.

My cell phone rings. It’s the alarm clock. My arm goes sideways and turn it off. The rest of my body follows and immediately I’m back to sleep.

I always dream deeper after the first alarm sounds. This morning is different. I don’t stay in bed, I wake up, walk to the bathroom, pee, wash my face, dry it. I walk to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee on the stove. I turn around and walk back to the bathroom to take a shower that is warm but not too hot (that can elevate your blood pressure, did you know?).

I get dressed, do my hair, make up and choose what shoes to wear. I take my time organizing my bag and getting my lunch ready. After everything is done I go wake up Felipe so we can have breakfast together.

I go in to my room and sit on the edge of the bed, I stretch my arm to touch him and that’s when the alarm clock sounds and I really have to wake up, so I can start everything again.

*Sorry for any mistakes! I’m brazilian! 😉

The second paragraph here has the rhythm of a morning routine. I think if you leave off the last sentence of the second paragraph. it would be even plodding, with the over-learned cadence of a morning routine. The last sentence in that paragraph stands out as something all together different. It is interesting info but not necessary in this very spare and very well written little story about that awful dream we all have about getting ready. Boy I hate to do all that stuff twice. I don’t see any errors. Your English is better than a lot of native speakers for sure.

Great job, Joanna. You’re English is EXCELLENT.

I like this interjection here: “(that can elevate your blood pressure, did you know?).” I didn’t know that!

Besides that, I agree with everything Marianne said. Great stuff, Joana 🙂

An abrupt awareness of my position in the bed and my aloneness in the dark room signaled a switch in consciousness from asleep to awake. I closed one eye before glancing toward the digital clock to prevent overstimulation. 5:43. I shouldn’t bother using an alarm.

The list of verbs had begun to accumulate the moment my eyes opened. Stand up, walk, drink, heat, eat, drink, dress, drink. I had plenty of time to wake up but only 45 minutes to digest before I’d be forced to throw my entire body into violent action on the tennis courts.

I followed the kitchen tiles around the counter to the stove and jolted backwards the moment I lifted my eyes. An unmistakable cockroach perched threateningly on the kitchen cabinet. The urge to scream pushed its way up my throat, and I shivered it back down. We stood-off, the cockroach and I, each paralyzed in an unexpected break in morning routine.

At 7:10 my alarm clock rings out, I aggressively slam the snooze button for a few more precious minutes of sleep. I roll over and return to my slumber, until my persistent and noisy wake up call tries again. This time I listen, and open my eyes to a chilly and rather cluttered room. After laying there and pondering the day ahead I arise from my bed and begin preparations for school which begins at 8:30. I have 15 minutes until I need to leave. It takes me a few more minutes to wake up. “If I hurry I can grab some breakfast before I leave,” I say to myself as I put my jeans on. I then gather my books and place them in my backpack. I now have 5 minutes before I need to leave. “No time for breakfast.” I brush my teeth and say so long to my mom who is sitting on the couch chatting with a friend. I walk out the door and toward my car. I look down my street to see the sun greeting me just as he did the morning before. I start my engine and another day begins.

A thick gulp of water, darkness Swipe my I.D. badge, followed by job title “Beep”… “beep”. Beliefs crystallize to a steaming teacup The warmth never sweetens my interpreted poise Words in a vague structure An exposed connection with hazel eyes, mine Two more clear faces before a mistaken stranger’s hello

-Not really D.J., it’s Sarah

If I didnt see this writing exercise, I would probably have never written anything praticularly about the morning. Because actually, im not really a morning person, I usually dont wake up before noon. Its probably because I go to bed much too late. Dont know why my sleeping routine has seriously changed since im here, in Porto. Maybe im more relaxed? Could be.

My morning starts with snoozing the alarm of my mobile phone, like 5 times. So that gives me almost half an hour more of sleep, yay! I push of the blanket so I feel the cold air touching my skin through my pjama, which helps me to get out of bed. I open the curtains, slowly walk towards the bathroom and wash my face, which helps me to really wake up, because most of the time I feel like a zombie. But the funny thing is that actually Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day, I always enjoy it. A piece of toast, some olives, cheese, and ofcourse a boiled or preferebly scrambled egg. Thats how I start my day, if I have time. If I dont have time, its just yogurt or cereal, but thats also fine by me. As long as I eat something before I leave the house, otherwise I can not function. If I have a shower, a long hot shower, thats even better. It takes me about half an hour to get ready to leave the house. Put on my clothes, do my make up and prepare my bag. It wasnt so bad, the morning. Maybe tomorrow, I will snooze my alarm just 2 times.

At the sound of the alarm, I sneak downstairs in darkness to hit ‘Brew’ on the coffee machine, sneak back upstairs to steal a few more minutes of dark peace, waiting for black gold to gather in the carafe. Those moments nestled between sleep and waking, branded with residues of dreams cooked up in mental battle between emotion and reason, peppered with random thoughts not subsided float up to consciousness. I lay in the warm covers grateful for time’s in-betweens, a drifting meditational fuzz lazily selecting early focus. It’s well understood even by my floating mind that this is a warm-up, and as so nothing it stops and sniffs out really ‘counts.’ Once fresh coffee presents its warm comfort, the day can’t be denied entrance and I welcome my morning ritual and all its events, still folded tight like tissue paper origami.

Downstairs a private world of responsibility and discovery beckons me. After that first joyful cup of java, I march to. Given too much time to craft justifications to delay a workout, I might let the body’s temple decay or expand beyond its blueprint, so I’ve shifted to meeting the varying workout routines with excitement and interest. Amazing how quickly the temple’s alter is anointed when entered with reverence and joy. A timed shower, gathering of commuter’s armaments – lunch, backpack, reading and communication tools – and buttoning up the house for departure seals the morning as I step out into wooded surroundings. The best days are clear, allowing sapphire blue to seep through trees not yet adorned with leaves. Spring is here and I couldn’t feel more fresh and alive.

There are few things more sacred than the stillness, the newness of each morning. As the phone jostles me awake, silently, I groan at the thought of leaving the comfort of my warm bed, I struggle to push the memory of another kind of comfort that awaits me to the forefront of my mind. I stumble towards my closet, wiping the sleep from my eyes and in an almost robotic fashion, pull on a pair of shorts and a shirt- whichever is conveniently residing at the top of the pile.

While my feet still ache from the previous day’s work, the sight of my trusty running buddies begin to call my senses awake. I lace them up and head for the door. Along the way, I don the appropriate apparel, a reflective vest, a lamp to light the way and a spritz of motivation to keep me moving forward.

The double beep of the door ushers me into the still cold darkness and the burst of fresh air ignites my senses. I coerce myself to put one foot in front of the other, forcing myself into a rigid forward motion. I look around at the still darkened windows of my neighbors as I pass and I feel more together than alone.

While the rest of the world still delights in their slumber, I am accompanied by my thoughts, my dreams, and the increasing chirps of nature slowly yawning and stretching to greet the new day. I’m more alive than ever and surer of my place in the world. Right here, where I belong, I awake to find my place- one foot in front of the other in the stillness and newness of each morning.

I wish I could bottle up dawn. If I could, I would place them in a vessel of fragile crystal, and hide them from sight. I would tiptoe to my precious cargo, and take it out of sight. I would cradle it, taking care to delight in it.

Dawn is a release-yes, for us!- from the shackles of the night. It is the slow spread of vibrant colors of blushing reds, joyful orange, somber blues, and the golden lights of bottled laughter against an almost black canvas of the now lost yesterday. It is the frozen tabelau of a world still sleeping, and a break from an almost neverending motion of life. In my dawn, I feel peace.

After the slight struggle of the night’s shackles, I am tired and weary. My bed beckons me, but the day must begin. And after I wrestle my cotton clouds of comforts, and trudge to the room of cleaning, I see my world in a new light. The air is crisp, and fresh. My grateful lungs inhale it to replace the stale air of the night before. My brain is rested, and my body rejoices in a world of delightful silence. Even the birds seem to share my joy, chirping in absolute delight.

If I could bottle my dawn, I could trade the day’s chaos and noise for the wonderful world of stillness and peace. Dawn is a treasure, a gift sent from my Creator. Dawn is peaceful, and dawn is a delight.

I love the mornings. It is my time alone. To do what I want whether it’s watching TV., making cookies, or writing. The start of a new day. A fresh start. A new beginning. Yesterday is gone.

Hello, an extract from a story where the ‘morning’ theme applies in the most standard of ways (the fact that the story is set in the morning) haha. Hope you enjoy and any feedback is much appreciated. Thank you! P.S. Don’t be afraid to be harsh. All was still. The road hadn’t been used for hours, undisturbed sand settled inside the cracks and crevasses of the tarmac. The sun rose from the East, casting long morning shadows over the ground. The only sounds came from the distinctive flapping of bird’s wings as they rose for their morning flight. All was normal.

The events of the morning so far were no different than any other. It was seldom that cars ran past and on very rare occasions the thundering of cargo carriers could be heard overhead. With the exception of the long tarmac carriageway, the only man made object was the tatty, faded route 66 sign, the flaking white paint had largely been ripped off by the wind and replaced with the orange tint of sand granules, the two black number sixes still served their purpose however as they could still be identified through the windscreen of a passing motor. The 66th route lead in a straight line from the North to the South, when standing next to the dilapidated sign the black tarmac surface was no longer visible after two miles in both directions. Bronze canyons cast in light and dark shadows swallowed each point of the road and made it impossible to see any further. Apart from the birds, life was a scarcity along the orange plains that fell and rose in the East and West. Thick Cacti, rooted to the ground were dotted every now and again in random places for as far as the eye could see, their underground tentacles digging for the remnants of the wet seasons rain water. Survival of the fittest.

The faint hum of engines grew louder and louder until two cars were spat onto the road from the North Canyon. The sun’s rays bouncing back off the windows and silver linings of the vehicles. It did not take them long to cover the three-kilometre distance to the sign. But there they went no further, the two vehicles, now distinguishable as a lime green Jeep and bright red Buick, came to a halt yards away from the pole that supported the triangular sign.

I hear the front door of our apartment creak open and the accompanying clatter from the 5 small chimes banging against each other and the door. It is a startling awakening. It’s 5 a.m. my son has just arrived home from working overnight. I know that it is him for reasons beyond the fact that he is the only person that would be entering at that time of day.

It is the sounds that give him away. The first sound that you hear is the electronic key pad of the door lock. Each number keyed sounds a different pitch. So, in theory, to gain access the sounds would be the same if you or I know the combination. However, there is another variable to consider. Tempo.

Each member of the family marches, to a different drum beat. Or, when they key the combination into the front door lock some do it very fast, others slow. This drastically affects the sounds of the person entering the house and is also a clue to who might be entering. I tend to hit the repeated numbers faster in double time. Like dah tatta dah! Then there is the opening of the door.

The door makes a unique sound and is made up of at least three parts. The sound of the hinges of the door, the chimes and yes the tempo or speed in which the action is taken. My son usually opens the door quickly, and the creaking sound of the door is one quick, short screech. At that speed, those dangling chimes go to town and clash like crazy. It is loud.

My wife usually opens the door at a tempo that fully maximizes the potential of those chimes. They sound like the tiny bells in a hand bell choir. She really likes those bells, and I would give just about anything to throw them away.

Back to my morning. It is 5 a.m. and I am ready to rock and roll!

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The Best Morning Routine (Backed by Science)

November 2, 2016 By Taylor

Early in his life, Benjamin Franklin, one of the primary framers of the American Constitution, outlined his best morning routine:

“…I rise early almost every morning, and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing.” 1

In Franklin’s Autobiography , he elaborated he would “rise, wash, and address Powerful Goodness; contrive day’s business and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study; and breakfast.”

Franklin was not alone in having planned out his ideal morning routine. I’ve spent years studying the habits of creatives, entrepreneurs, and artists and have discovered it is a near universal truth that they each have a particular morning routine.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer, started by having tea, smoking, and reading from his Bible and philosophy collection.

Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables , was awakened by the daily gunshot from the fort near his home, had a cup of freshly brewed coffee while reading a letter from his mistress, Juliette Drouet, and then drank two raw eggs.

Philosopher Immanuel Kant started his day with weak tea, a pipe and meditation before an hour of writing.

Beethoven started his day with a cup of coffee. He believed that sixty beans per cup was the ideal dose and he counted them out one by one himself

Why take the time to craft your best Morning Routine?

The research by Steve Key, a professor of molecular and computational biology at the University of Southern California, shows that “[w]hen it comes to doing cognitive work, most adults perform best in the late morning.” 2 So what do you do during the early morning to get ready for when you’re at your peak level?

Standardizing the first 30-120 minutes with a routine lets you arrive at that peak in the best possible mindset.

Another reason that morning routines seem to be so common among creatives is that they create a rock in what feels like a raging river. Whether you have a project going badly, are moving cities, or are changing jobs, a morning routine gives you something to hold onto—a sense of normalcy to root yourself.

A morning routine also helps limit your wasted days. Do you ever have those days where you never get off the ground? You just sit around until 11am or noon “tidying up”, then you answer some emails, and before you know it, half the day is gone. Now you can’t get anything done because you’re too busy being angry at yourself for wasting the first half of your day.

Most importantly, a morning routine generates momentum.

Momentum is a fundamental part of human psychology.

Who do you think is happier and more optimistic? Someone who makes $5,000 a month or someone who makes $6,000/month?

The answer is non-obvious: It depends on where they are coming from. If the person who is making $5,000 just got a raise from $4,000, and the person who was making $6,000 just got a pay cut from $7,000, the lower paid person would be more optimistic about his future earnings. 3

This is called the endowment effect and it was discovered by research Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in their work on prospect theory.

According to the endowment effect, if you’ve already started the day by moving your life forward, you have established positive momentum, and are more likely to keep doing positive things.

This then is the purpose of the morning routine: You should get one “small win” to create momentum in each life domain that’s important to you.

A small win is anything which creates momentum.

Establishing a Morning Routine

The first step is to make a list of all the areas you want to move forward and list one “small win” you could do in each.

Here are some options for areas and actions you could start with in each.

It’s important to remember that there isn’t an ideal morning routine for everyone, but there is an ideal one for you.

To quote Bruce Lee: “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

Looking to build your own morning routine and stick to it? Download the free guide to building your own morning routine below.

Stay on track with the bonus habit forming checklist, so you can stay on track and take your morning routine from an experiment into a long-term habit.

A 2011 meta-analysis looked at the relation between physical activity and fat mass in children and found almost no correlation, meaning that your body composition is overwhelmingly determined by your diet.

A little self-experimentation generally makes this abundantly obvious. In the documentary Supersize Me , Morgan Spurlock ate McDonalds three meals a day for thirty days. In that month, he developed high blood pressure, cholesterol and early signs of fatty liver disease. He also gained 25 pounds, became depressed, moody, lethargic and completely lost his sex drive.

Potential Small Wins

• Drink a glass of water and make coffee –

In moderate quantities (1-2 cups a day) coffee increases performance including memory, mood, vigilance, energy levels, reaction times, and general cognitive function. 4 5 6 It can increase fat burning by 10-29%. 7 It may also lower the likelihood of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Diabetes. 8

Chronic dehydration may affect your organs and lead to kidney stones, cholesterol problems, constipation, and liver, joint, and muscle damage. It’s remarkably common and also remarkably easy to prevent by drinking water.

• Eat a Healthy Breakfast :

Increasingly, I’m convinced that health, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve met people that swear by juicing, others by protein shakes and others by a low-carb breakfast . The point is that you think it’s a small win so whatever you define as healthy works.

Intellectual

Reading has been shown to reduce the chance of dementia and Alzheimer’s, as well as reducing stress and anxiety.

I find that if I don’t read first thing in the morning, I won’t read all day. Once I’ve started working, it’s very hard for me to walk away from the “press of the day” and read for an hour. By the end of the day, I’m usually too exhausted to read anything other than light fiction.

If you read 30 minutes every morning, that will add up to about 24 books in a year on average, which would put you in the top 1% of Americans.

Read a book for 10 minutes

Read an article – If I am travelling or don’t have a book with me for some reason, I keep a list of articles I want to read in an app on my phone called Pocket .

Write down 10 ideas – James Altucher, an author and entrepreneur, has a daily ritual of writing down ten ideas. Not necessarily focused on a particular topic or project, just whatever 10 ideas pop into his mind. It could be topics for a science fiction book, or ten new recipe ideas, the point is to flex your ideas muscle.

Listen to a Book or Podcast – If you have a morning commute, you could listen to a book or podcast.

Fitness/Stretching

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, 9 the benefits of exercise include managing your weight, reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease Reduce your risk for type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, reducing your risk of some cancers, strengthening your bones and muscles, improving your mental health and mood, and increase your chances of living longer.

More recent research indicates that the amount of exercise you need to achieve this is astonishingly small. Even a few minutes of training at high intensity your maximum capacity produces molecular changes within muscles comparable to those of several hours of running or bike riding. 10

4 Minute Stretching Routine for Desk Sitters: I like to do a full squat (60 seconds), shoulder dislocates (10 reps, ~1 minute), and the couch stretch (60 seconds each leg) each day. I find these three stretches target the primary problem areas for people who sit all day. Squats open up your hips, shoulder dislocates open up your thoracic spine, and the couch stretch opens up your hip flexors. All three tend to contract over time from prolonged sitting, which is why you see old people at the supermarket who look like a curled over C.

7 Minute Morning Yoga for Flexibility  –

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRsC1YdXqOc” autoplay=”yes”]

I will sometimes do a few minutes of yoga. I find this gets to my hamstrings much better than the prior exercises, and also touches further on most of the stretches above. Usually, I will rotate between the two routines every few months until I get bored of one and switch to the other.

The 7 Minute Workout – A 2013 New York Times article outline a 7 minute workout routine. It is based on the research from 2013 study published in the American College of Sports Medicine.

Image source: Ben Wiseman

Meditation/Mindfulness

A 2014 study called Neural mechanisms of mindfulness and meditation showed that the practice of mindfulness changes brain function in areas including the medial cortex, default mode network, insula, amygdala, lateral frontal regions, and basal ganglia.

That is, it rewires your brain in the same way lifting weights or exercising rebuilds your muscles.

A regular meditation practice for the last five years has increased my ability to focus, 11 my creativity, 12 and most importantly, my ability to deal with stress. 13

If you’re just getting started, I strongly recommend using guided meditation. There are two easy-to-use apps that I recommend to get started on building this habit.

Headspace – Headspace is the most popular paid meditation app. I think it’s the best option, because it takes a lot of the complexity out of meditation and gives you a simple step-by-step entry point. They have a 10-day free trial, then you can upgrade for $12.95 a month.

Insight Timer – Insight Timer is a free alternative to Headspace. It has a larger variety of guided meditations (at the cost of being more confusing), and includes a simple unguided functionality.

Each morning, it helps to sit down and review some of your more foundational thinking and goals. By doing this, you are able to start your day focused on your core beliefs and plans, so that everything you do will align to serve them.

There was a study done by psychologists Sheldon and Kasser in 1995 that showed that “[p]eople who are mentally healthy and happy have a higher degree of vertical coherence among their goals, that is, higher-level long, term goals and lower-level immediate goals all fit together well so that pursuing one’s short-term goals advances the pursuit of long-term goals.”

Another study done in the 1990s by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow , studied different professionals to see which ones were happy and productive, and which were unhappy and unproductive. The most important factor was vertical coherence.

The happiest, most productive profession was geneticists, because all the participants involved respected the best science. Even though pharmaceutical companies were injecting a lot of money into the field, geneticists believed doing the very best science on a day-to-day basis led to more benefits for the general public, the pharmaceutical companies, their universities, and themselves—they were in vertical coherence all the way up and down the chain.

The least happy, and least productive, profession was journalism. Most of them had entered the field with high ideals about truth, making a difference, and the free press, but the decline of family run newspaper and rise of corporate media empires made journalism a profit center where all that mattered was sales. This meant good journalism was bad for business, and news reporting was replaced by scare stories, exaggeration, and scandal. Their values did not align with their day-to-day work.

Vertical coherence is the largest predictor of motivation that I’ve found. If I can see a clear line between the tasks I am working on today and a bigger future that aligns with my values, I find it much easier to get to work.

Create and Review a 25-Year Vision – My favorite thing to review is a 25 year vision document that I re-write every 90 days. While most people’s reaction to the idea of a 25 year plan is “I don’t even know what I’m having for lunch” (don’t get the tuna), it’s the most valuable timeline I’ve found. It lets you, actually forces you, think expansively. No matter how big your goal, 25 years should be plenty of time to accomplish it.

Script out and Review Your Ideal Day – Another document I’ve put together is a script of what my ideal day looks like. It can often be hard to set goals in the abstract, but doing it on the day level makes it much easier. How do you want to spend your mornings, your afternoons, and your evenings?

Determine and Review Your Operating Principles – A final document you could put together is your personal operating principles.

Note: I find all three exercises helpful, but you really only need one so start with. Choose whichever seems most interesting to you.

Journal and Plan

The health benefits of journaling are becoming evident . Journalling has been shown to:

• Reduce stress – writing about what you are feeling and what problems you are encountering will reduce how much they negatively affect you.
• Clarify your thoughts and priorities – If you ever seem all jumbled up, unsure of how you feel or your priorities, writing them down can help quickly clarify them
• Physical well-being – regular journaling goes beyond mental benefits to physical benefits. University of Texas psychologist James Pennebaker has research indicating that journaling actually strengthens your immune system.

There are lots of variants on daily planning and journaling, but this is a five minute version. All you need is a blank piece of paper and a pencil.

The morning journal consists of responding to these three prompts

• I am grateful for…
• What would make today great is…

Gratitude – I am grateful for…

The scientific research behind gratitude is exploding. Here are just some of the findings:

• According to a 2012 study published in Personality and Individual Differences, 15 practicing gratitude increase the quality of your sleep.
• A 2014 study published in the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology 16 found that gratitude increases self-esteem. Instead of becoming resentful or envious of others, people who practice gratitude are better able to appreciate others’ accomplishments.

So the first thing you’re going to do each morning is list three things you are grateful for. Mine are frequently family and close friends who I would otherwise take for granted. Even seemingly banal stuff is amazing, if you think about it. Can you imagine living before air conditioning existed?

Prioritize – The one thing I could do today to make everything else this week easier or unnecessary is…

The next thing you’re going to do is list the number one most important priority you have today. If you start the day with ten priorities, you’re likely to get none of them done. I find, if you start with one thing you absolutely must do, you’ll always get it done.

While I still keep a to-do list with ALL my to-dos for the day, I will always separately write down the most essential one. By putting it in writing, you get a certain sense of concreteness. Plus, I can now make sure the rest of my day is organized around accomplishing that key priority.

Affirmations – I believe…

Another effective technique that has come up in the psychological literature is affirmations. They are often referred to as “self-affirmations”, but “values-affirmations” is more accurate. Write a few sentences or a short essay about what’s important to you and why you value it on this particular day (examples are things like family, creative expression, or spirituality).

Affirmations have been shown to:

• Reduce the cortisol response (a stress hormone) and self-reported stress. 17
• Participants who have done an affirmation exercise have less of an increase in heart rate after being insulted. 18
• An affirmation exercise reduced relationship insecurity for four weeks after the initial exercise. 19

When people think of affirmations, they usually write as aspirational or motivational statement like “I am a great entrepreneur.”

But the actual research that has asked participants to do something quite different. 20

They write short essays (a few sentences is plenty) explaining what’s important to them, what their values are, and why. You want to write something like “I am working on becoming a great entrepreneur because I believe it allows me to reach people with an important message in a scalable way.”

How to Have a Good Morning Routine

Customize your best morning routine.

The most important ingredient to having a morning routine that works is to customize it for yourself. To reiterate Bruce Lee: “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

I’ve developed mine over years of trial and error. I found that I really liked to read first where other people prefer to meditate first. I don’t like eating breakfast or taking a shower in the morning, but know many people who can’t start working without doing both.

I like to workout in the afternoons, but have clients and friends who swear by doing a full workout in the morning.

There’s not a universally right answer so once you have a basic routine, start tweaking it to what works for you.

Life happens after all. You might spend an hour on their business and writing and working out and meditating, then you have kids. Suddenly making sure your child is nourished and ready for their day becomes a priority.

Make it adaptable.

While striving for optimal is great, it’s often true that the great can be the enemy of the good. It’s not easy to carve out an hour at the beginning of every day.

If I have an early appointment or if I’m travelling, I’ll condense it down to ten minutes: five minutes of meditating and then five of journaling.

Schedule Your Best Morning Routine

One of the biggest reasons people quit their morning routine is that it takes too much time and makes them late. I found that actually setting a timer for the different activities helped me get through them quicker.

Set up your routine in the 30/30 (iOS) or Loop Habit Tracker (Android)

Then all you have to do is follow directions.

Prioritizing a Good Morning Routine (A Personal Example)

I am going to use my routine as an example. I’ve spent almost five years crafting it based on research I’ve done and, more significantly, what I find personally suits me.

[Diet/Food] Consume Something Healthy (5 minutes)

[intellectual] read a book (30-60 minutes).

• [Fitness] Stretching/Yoga (2-5 minutes)

[Spiritual/Mental] Meditate (10-20 minutes)

• [Review] Review 25 Year Vision and Weekly Priorities (5 minutes)
• [Planning] Journal and Plan Day (5 minutes)

Total Time to Complete: Approx. 60-90 Minutes

For the past five years I have practiced Intermittent Fasting, which means I have a fasting period of about 16 hours where I don’t eat for about 16 hours, generally from 8pm at night to noon the next day. I like it primarily because it makes the day simpler (only have to prepare two meals per day instead of three) but it has other potential benefits:

• Life extension – A 1945 study found that intermittent fasting in mice extended life expectancy.
• Cancer prevention – Early research has found that fasting, in combination with chemotherapy, resulted in better cure rates and fewer deaths. Dr. Thomas Seyfried has proposed a metabolic mechanism for cancer that would explain this.
• It’s easier than dieting – If you’re trying to reduce calorie intake, studies indicate compliance to a fasting regime where subjects eat fewer meals is easier to maintain than one where subjects eat less food over the same number of meals..

If you’re interested in reading more about intermittent fasting, habits researcher James Clear has put together an excellent guide to getting started here . It’s worth noting that it typically works better for men than women for hormonal reasons you can read more about here .

Practically speaking, that means I don’t eat any real food  (just liquids, coffee and water) before noon.

I do have a small supplement routine. I’ve played with supplements on and off, and come to the conclusion that less is more. The dose response curve suggests that not only is more is often not better, and it but actually be harmful.

My supplement regime is based mostly on making up for major deficiencies I’ve found in my blood tests. For me those are:

• 5,000 IUs of D3 – Vitamin D is produced by your skin when you are in sunlight. If you are of the modern species homo officeus who sits in an office all day, you are probably deficient. Optimal levels are between 25-70 ng/ml depending on who you listen to. 21 22 When I get my blood test done every six months, I also ask for a Vitamin D test and have found that 5,000 IUs per day keeps me at around 50 ng/ml. Get your levels tested before you start, if you take too much, it can be toxic.
• Creatine – Creatine is basically the only workout/muscle-building supplement with a strong enough scientific backing to say it works. It’s been studied since the 70’s and almost always increases power output for exercising. It may even increase cognition if you’re deficient. There is no known downside. 23
• 1 Glass of Water – As stated previously, dehydration is remarkably common and astoundingly easy to cure.
• Coffee – Also as stated previously, I think the research suggests coffee is beneficial or at least neutral in low to moderate quantities. It also make me feel awesome.

Note: I am not a physician. I do not even play one on the internet. This is not medical advice. Use your brain and do research, etc. If you’re interested in supplements, Examine is a good place to get started and Smart Drug Smarts is a good place to level up.

You can choose something completely different, the point is something to get your day started on a healthy dietary note.

I have a friend that makes 2 eggs, sauteed mushrooms and tomatoes, and half an avocado. I know someone else that has an apple.

The point is that in their mind it is a small win towards eating healthy.

After I prepare my coffee, I sit down to read for a few minutes.

Mostly, I read first thing in the morning because I really like reading . It lets me ease into the day, and reinforces (in my mind) that I am the type of person who is constantly learning and growing.

I also find how much I read correlates very closely with how many ideas I have, and how good my ideas are. The more books I read, the more, better ideas I have. Sometimes I’ll spend a week banging my head against a problem with no progress, only to spend two hours reading a book which has the answer.

[Fitness] Exercise (5 minutes) – Stretching/Yoga

After I finish reading, I’ll do a very short stretching or yoga routine.

I talked to a high level performance coach a few years ago, and he said that given the choice between having someone lift weights, do cardio, or do mobility work everyday, he would hands down pick mobility work.

That’s always stuck with me, so even if I do nothing else, I at least make sure I do a light stretching routine. This can be as simple as just sitting in a full squat for a minute while I floss.

Ray Dalio, the manager of Bridgewater, which is arguably the most successful hedge fund in history, attributes “whatever success [he] may have had” to his meditation practice.

I was initially dubious as it struck me as both religious and woo woo, neither of which I am inclined to be. It clicked for me when someone explained meditation like doing weight-lifting curls for your brain.

I sit somewhere comfortable, usually the edge of my bed, put in headphones and use Insight Timer , a free meditation app, to time me. I typically meditate for 10-20 minutes.

[Review] Your Long Term Vision (5 minutes)

After I meditate, I pull out my phone and look over a document I keep in my Evernote with a 25 year vision.

[Planning] The 5-Minute Journal

I use the short journalling practice explained above where I respond to three prompts:.

This helps me start my day by being grateful, plan the most important activities, and remind myself of my core values.

After that I will open my laptop and loosely plan out my day in my calendar. I find that having to assign the tasks I’m planning on working on to actual times forces me to be realistic about how long they will take.

If I have a list of ten tasks, I’ll think I can get them all done today but once I start dragging them onto my calendar I realize that it’s easily two days of work.

How to Get Started Today with a Minimum Viable Morning Routine

One of the biggest reasons people fail with establishing a consistent morning routine is that they feel like it is a waste of time, an unnecessary indulgence. I used to not make my bed because I figured “what a waste of time, I’m just going to get back into it tonight;” but eventually I realized it had real implications. I would walk into my room and feel off kilter because the bed was in disarray.

That impacted my psychology in everything else I did for the rest of the day.

If you feel that way, what’s the best way to get started? Have a Minimum Viable Morning Routine.

BJ Fogg, the world’s leading habit researcher, has found that the largest predictor of whether someone establishes a habit will be if they start small.

If you want to start flossing your teeth, start by flossing one tooth at a time instead of your whole mouth, and you are likely to build the habit.

If you want to start exercising, just put on your tennis shoes, walk around the block and come back. Over time you can do more, but starting small means it’s more likely you will actually do, it.

I find the same with morning routines. If you have tried to establish a morning routine, before and it hasn’t stuck or you already feel busy in the morning and the idea of carving out an hour to go through a full ritual is laughable, start by just doing one thing.

It could be meditating for just 1 minute. Or just writing down your top three priorities for the day.

The purpose is to get momentum and even one thing for one minutes accomplishes that successfully.

The secret of getting ahead, is usually getting started. Once you get started, soon enough you’ll find that you’ve developed a morning routine that rivals the rituals of the creatives and entrepreneurs you admire most.

Last Updated on January 11, 2024 by Taylor Pearson

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• Footnote: (2013-04-23). Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (Kindle Locations 403-404). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
• Shellenbarger, Sue. “ Your Body’s Best Time for Everything .” WSJ. Wsj.com, 25 Sept. 2012. Web. 28 Oct. 2016.  
•  Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow . N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
• Huxton, C. H X. “The Impact of Caffeine on Mood, Cognitive Function, Performance and Hydration: A Review of Benefits and Risks.” Nutrition Bulletin 33.1 (2008): 15-25. Http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/. Web. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-3010.2007.00665.x/full>.
• Brice, C. F., and A. P. Smith. “Effects of Caffeine on Mood and Performance: A Study of Realistic Consumption.” Psychopharmacology 164.188 (2002): n. pag. Web.
• Lieberman, H. R., R. J. Wurtman, G. G. Emde, and Et Al. “The Effects of Low Doses of Caffeine on Human Performance and Mood.” Psychopharmacology 92.308 (1986): n. pag. Web.
• Acheson, K. J., G. Gremaud, and Et Al. “Metabolic Effects of Caffeine in Humans: Lipid Oxidation or Futile Cycling?” Kevin J Acheson, Gérard Gremaud 79.1 (2004): n. pag. Web.
• Gunnars, Kris, BSc. “13 Health Benefits of Coffee, Based on Science.” Authority Nutrition. N.p., n.d. Web. <https://authoritynutrition.com/top-13-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-coffee/>.
• “Physical Activity and Health.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 04 June 2015. Web. 28 Oct. 2016. <https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/pa-health/>.
• Klika, Brett. “HIGH-INTENSITY CIRCUIT TRAINING USING BODY WEIGHT: Maximum R… : ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal.” LWW. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2016. <http://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/Fulltext/2013/05000/HIGH_INTENSITY_CIRCUIT_TRAINING_USING_BODY_WEIGHT_.5.aspx>.See also Body by Science by Doug McGruff.
• Cloud, John. “Losing Focus? Studies Say Meditation May Help.” Time. Time Inc., 06 Aug. 2010. Web. 28 Oct. 2016. <http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2008914,00.html>.
• McGuiness, Mark. “What Daily Meditation Can Do for Your Creativity.” 99u. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://99u.com/articles/6314/what-daily-meditation-can-do-for-your-creativity>.
•  Corliss, Julie. “Mindfulness Meditation May Ease Anxiety, Mental Stress – Harvard Health Blog.” Harvard Health Blog. Harvard Medical School, 15 Jan. 2016. Web. 28 Oct. 2016. <http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/mindfulness-meditation-may-ease-anxiety-mental-stress-201401086967>.
• Personality and Individual Differences Volume 54, Issue 1, Pages 1-146 (January 2013)] people who practice gratitude experience fewer aches and pains and exercise more often.
• Robert Emmons , a gratitude researcher, confirms that practicing gratitude reduces depression and increases happiness.
• According to a 2011 study in Applied Psychology, 14 Effects of Constructive Worry, Imagery Distraction, and Gratitude Interventions on Sleep Quality: A Pilot Trial, Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, Volume 3, Issue 2 July 2011 Pages 193–206
• Chen, Lung Hung and Wu, Chia-Huei (2014) Gratitude enhances change in athletes’ self-esteem: the moderating role of trust in coach. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 26 (3). pp. 349-362. ISSN 1041-3200
•  Creswell, J. David, et al. “Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses.” Psychological Science 16.11 (2005): 846-851.
• Tang, David, and Brandon J. Schmeichel. “Self-affirmation facilitates cardiovascular recovery following interpersonal evaluation.” Biological psychology 104 (2015): 108-115.
• Stinson, Danu Anthony, et al. “Rewriting the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Social Rejection Self-Affirmation Improves Relational Security and Social Behavior up to 2 Months Later.” Psychological science 22.9 (2011): 1145-1149.
• Source: https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/values-affirmation-is-powerful/
• Mercola. “Get Your Vitamin D Levels to a Healthy Range.” Mercola.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2016. <http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/21/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d-to-healthy-ranges.aspx>.
• Kresser, Chris. “RHR: Surprising New Vitamin D Research, The Myth of Multi-tasking, and How The Internet Is Rewiring Our Brains.” Chris Kresser. N.p., 13 Oct. 2015. Web. 28 Oct. 2016. <https://chriskresser.com/surprising-new-vitamin-d-research-the-myth-of-multi-tasking-and-how-the-internet-is-rewiring-our-brains/>.
• Source: https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/

November 2, 2016 at 10:35 am

Well Taylor, you did it again. Exceed my expectations! This is definitely the most well rounded, in-depth and beginner-friendly article on morning routines on the interwebs right now. Absolutely great content! Enough flattery for now. Keep it up man!

November 2, 2016 at 1:25 pm

Awesome to here it was helpful. Let me know how you come with it.

November 2, 2016 at 10:47 am

Thanks for putting this together, Tayor. It’s great!

When I read your point about breakfast it reminded me of another article I recently read by Tim Ferriss in which he shares the 1st chapter of his new book, Tools of Titans.

From interviewing high performers across many fields he observed that many of the men (but not the women) skip breakfast entirely.

I’ve found this consistent with my own intermittent fasting experiences. It seems that not eating keeps the mind sharp.

But then again I know people who, if they skip breakfast, are totally useless. So it’s not a universal by any means.

November 2, 2016 at 1:26 pm

I read that and was surprised as well. I definitely find it preferable but I imagined that I was the exception rather than the rule. To our breafast-less future 🙂

November 3, 2016 at 2:10 pm

do you also exercise while fasted Vic ??

November 4, 2016 at 2:48 am

Sometimes but I’m not dogmatic about it. It’s mostly just convenient to skip breakfast because I’m not hungry and it happens to have health/cognitive benefits.

November 2, 2016 at 2:40 pm

I think this is the best article on Morning Routines I’ve ever read. Your point that there is no one right morning routine for everyone, but there is a right morning routine for each person is spot on. As a person whose best brain time doesn’t even start until 11 am (and can go on strong until 8 pm or so), I’ve found much of the other advice about morning routines to not fit me. Thank you for this.

November 3, 2016 at 9:23 am

Thank you Fancy!

I feel very strongly that the one-size-fits-all-wake-up-at-5am model is rubbish so glad to offer some other ways to approach it!

November 3, 2016 at 8:22 pm

For those who are interested in improving their mobility, I highly recommend this 15-minute stretch routine from physique 57 – Physique 57 15 Minute Stretch Workout . It’s really effective at opening the shoulders and hip. Now I do it everyday in my own morning routine.

Thank you Taylor for laying out the specifics on how to put up a morning routine. I find a morning routine sets up the context and mindset for a day so I can do better during the rest of the day. A focused and productive morning leads to a focused and productive life, indeed.

November 5, 2016 at 2:22 pm

Yo, great post. That little “My 50 people” note draw my attention. I

don’t remember you mentioning it in another post. Can you expand on it/on its concept? Thanks.

November 7, 2016 at 12:00 pm

It’s an experiment I’m running based on a new yorker article around Dunbar’s Number: http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect-math-dunbar-number-friendships

There are different “tiers” of connections that follow a multiple of roughly 3 besides the well known 150 friends. Something like:

5 best friends 15 great friends 50 good friends 150 friends

I found I was doing well at keeping up with 150 using social media and conferences and I called the 5-15 on the phone reasonably often but the middle ground of 50 were people I really like and I was doing a poor job of keeping up with them. So I listed out who they were and try to call one a week every week so I at least talk to them once a year.

December 22, 2016 at 4:58 am

Thanks so much for this. As I’ve revamped my schedule for this upcoming year, I get my mornings back. And I’m looking forward to putting many old and new practices back to good use.

December 22, 2016 at 12:28 pm

Awesome to hear Lani! 🙂

December 28, 2016 at 4:51 pm

Very well structured morning routine procedure. I agree with your thoughts on taking small steps at a time. Making a habit is much more critical than going full blown to follow all.

I myself started following meditiation (headspace subscription), exercise, breakfast and journaling for last one month. It really simplifies my entire day and keeps me focused. One thing I also found useful is hearing podcasts while commuting from home to office and vice versa.

Thanks for sharing the article.

February 3, 2017 at 7:01 am

Very helpful article indeed. And as echoed by others, this is the best one i have ever come across on the morning rituals. Thanks for the tips and ideas! Will definitely be incorporating them into my morning routine!

February 3, 2017 at 12:17 pm

Thanks! Awesome to hear you are using them 🙂

April 15, 2017 at 11:09 pm

The best article on morning rituals I found in google. Really.

You just summarized all the morning rituals I knew, tried and still use. Many thanks, I was writing about the topic and I’m gonna quote this site & link. <3 <3

April 16, 2017 at 10:10 am

Thanks Mara 🙂

June 6, 2017 at 7:17 am

So useful, realistic and motivating! Amazing article indeed! I join everyone saying this is the best article I’ve read about morning routines!

June 6, 2017 at 12:24 pm

thank you Angela 🙂

December 18, 2017 at 12:14 am

This is so thorough. Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for taking the time to share this.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Personal Experience — My Perfect Day: A Journey into Serenity and Joy

My Perfect Day: a Journey into Serenity and Joy

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The tranquil morning, a day of exploration, a culinary delight, afternoon serenity, an enchanting evening, reflecting on perfection.

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Writing In the Morning: How to Create Perfect Routine

Discover the benefits of writing in the morning and how to create the perfect daily routine.

Would you like to wake up early? For years, I was a night owl. I wrote in the evening or late at night. I enjoyed the idea of writing into the wee small hours with only Frank Sinatra, the moon, and the blank page for company.

But, a job and the demands of family life make it difficult to write at the end of the day or late at night. For me, it wasn’t practical to write past midnight and then get up the next day, go to work at my full-time job, and function with a family.

I struggled with rising early and wondered if I’d ever become a morning person. Then, I read about the daily routines of many creatives I admire. I found many of them like waking up early, including the composer Ludwig Van Beethoven, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and authors like Haruki Murakami , Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Vonnegut.

Famous Early Morning Writers

1. write down your ideal morning writing routine, 2. prepare your writing the night before, 3. pick a target time for waking up early, 4 . create your sleep schedule, 5. follow a wind-down ritual, 6. use caffeine… sparingly, 7. get into a state of creative flow, 8. track your progress, the final word on early morning writing habit, how can i force myself to wake up early, is it good to wake up early, is writing in the morning good, what should i write every morning.

Well-known early morning writers include Ernest Hemingway, Dan Brown and Kurt Vonnegut. A few years ago, I attended an event where Dan Brown spoke about his daily routine. He said he gets up at four am every morning to write his thrillers and fiction because that time of the day is free of distractions. Vonnegut and Hemingway both rose around five to five thirty am most days to work on their novels. Hemingway said about his early morning writing:

“When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.”

Julia Cameron famously advocates for rising early to engage in long-form stream of consciousness writing in her book The Miracle of Morning Pages . She writes:

“Each morning, as we face the page, we meet ourselves. The pages give us a place to vent and a place to dream. They are intended for no eyes but our own.”

The American philosopher and psychologist William James was another advocate of a consistent routine. He said:

“The great thing, then, in all education, is to make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and to guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague.”

Thinking through an ideal morning on paper will help you visualize your day and increase your chances of avoiding procrastination first thing

Here’s mine: meditate for twenty minutes, brew coffee, engage in a writing session for at least one hour, and record ten ideas. After that, I make breakfast and get the kids up for school.

Although your ideal morning routine may not look like this, it’s useful to consider what you want to accomplish after waking. Do you want to engage in brainstorming, write some early morning pages, edit an article, outline a book chapter or simply engage in writing practice?

The good news is it’s easier to make time for writing at the start of the day as you’re less likely to become distracted by email, social media, the news, work and other distractions. If you need help, consider free writing about your early morning routine.

Before bed, consider what you want to write the next morning. Read through the previous day’s work. Leave your notes, drafts and other writing tools. Open up your writing app and queue the day’s music. I sometimes also like leaving a Post-It note on my keyboard containing a prompt about creative work or what to write first.

When you get up, starting a writing session is much easier if everything is in front of you. Writing down what you will write the next day primes your subconsciousness to work on the idea even when you’re asleep. If you need some inspiration for your morning routine, check out the blog My Morning Routine .

If you set your alarm clock for four AM tomorrow morning, you may get up, but you’ll be exhausted and unlikely to repeat this heroic feat of endurance the following day .

It’s not much fun getting up at dawn and then fumbling through the day with only four or five hours of sleep. Instead, set your alarm clock for half an hour earlier than your normal time. The following day, set your alarm for 45 minutes earlier than your normal rising time. And so on.

Like pennies gradually filling a jar, these small incremental gains will help you reach your desired rising time and become an early riser. 

Pick an ideal time to wake up based on work and family commitments. For example, if you work a nine to five job, rising at five am or six could work. However, if you work shifts, you may need to adapt to this rising time.

My ideal rising time is half five. If I rise any earlier, I’m too exhausted to function during the day. If I wake any later than six AM, I’m running behind, or I don’t have enough time to write before the working day begins. My target rising time enables me to make time for distractions and interruptions.

You set an alarm clock for getting up, so why not one for going to bed? You can easily create the ideal sleep schedule with various apps including the inbuilt clock app on the Apple iPhone and Android phones. They’ll determine what time you should go to bed at to achieve the optimal amount of sleep, based on your target rising time.

I set an alarm clock for 21.30. Once this alarm clock goes off, I stop checking emails, using my computer, drinking caffeine, and doing anything else that will keep me up late. The clock app on Apple iPhone includes a setting that will give an ideal bedtime based on waking up early.

I also recommend using a sleep tracker, like a Garmin Watch, Whoop, or Fitbit, so that you can track your sleep cycle for a few weeks.

It’s hard for night-owls to get into the habit of falling asleep at an earlier time of day than usual. That’s where a good wind-down or nighttime routine can help.

When you receive a notification about going to bed, it’s time to reduce exposure to screens, avoid heavy meals and engage in relaxing activities like meditation or reading.

The blue light glare of a computer screen stimulates the brain and makes it harder to fall asleep. If you must work late in front of a screen, consider investing in a pair of blue light glasses. According to a 2017 study by The University of Houston, they can increase melatonin production by 58%.

I also like leaving an alarm in a different bedroom from where I sleep. When an alarm goes off first thing, I have to get out of bed and go into the other room to turn it off. The act of moving makes it harder to press the snooze button or roll over and go back to sleep. The simple act of moving will mitigate feeling groggy too.

I sometimes set a second quieter alarm clock in the bedroom to avoid waking others up. After a few days, your body will begin to adjust to this new routine and it should become easier to fall asleep and wake up in the morning.

A cup of coffee in the morning can jumpstart your day better than any energy drink . It’s tempting to start consuming more coffee when you first start waking early. However, avoid drinking multiple cups of coffee throughout the day, as you’ll find it harder to sleep.

If you drink coffee in the afternoon, trace amounts of caffeine will stay in your system until well into the late night and impact sleep quality. Switch to low-caffeine or caffeine-free drinks after mid-day. If you need to restore energy levels, take a 20-minute nap at lunch, at least until your body adapts.

Investing in a set of noise-cancelling headphones is a fantastic way of enjoying a writing session, particularly one at dawn. You can use it to listen to ambient or lyric-free music, which will help you get into a state of creative flow faster. In that state, all sense of time and effort fades away and it becomes easier to write a difficult first draft . You’re far more likely to do your best writing in this mental state.

For help finding this type of lyric-free music, check out the Flow State Substaack newsletter. Headphones (or earplugs if you’re on a budget) will also block out distractions like other people getting up and going about their day.

It’s easier to create a good habit if you know what works and doesn’t and how close you are to realizing this habit. Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day on your new early morning schedule.

For the first few weeks, I recorded when I got up, how long I slept, and when I went to bed. I found out that checking email and social media late at night is bad because I find it hard to sleep afterwards.

I recommend using Jerry Seinfeld’s Don’t Break the Chain system. It’s a good habit formation strategy that anyone can easily apply. Each day you wake up early, mark an X through today’s date. Your job is to build a chain of Xs and avoid breaking this chain. For more, check out our writing productivity guide .

Many writers wake up early because their mornings are usually distraction-free and quiet. These hours are also ideal for working on creative projects like a book, a blog or writing morning pages.

You don’t need to be an early bird to start waking up at dawn. It takes practice and some self-discipline. Maintaining consistent circadian rhythms helps. A circadian rhythm refers to your sleeping and waking cycle. Consistent early morning risers go to bed and rise at the same time every day, including at the weekends.

My morning routine varies. I don’t get up early every day , 365 days a year. I sleep late at least one day at the weekend, and there are times when it’s not possible or practical to get up at six AM because of the demands of the previous day.

I accept these days for what they are (a time to rest or sleep) instead of seeing them as setbacks on my journey towards creating an ideal morning writing routine. It takes a little time to shift a sleep cycle from working and rising late to rising early.

I told a friend once when you find writing time in the morning, “you give the best of yourself to yourself.” He laughed. I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s harder to work on what matters if you’re feeling physically and mentally exhausted from work or day-to-day life.

But what if you are more creative  at night? If you’re happy with your late-night writing process, stick with what works. Tharp sums this up in her book, The Creative Habit .

“In the end, there is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself.”

Writing in the Morning FAQs

During the day avoid caffeine. Stop working in front of a screen after your evening meal. If possible, go to bed at a reasonable hour and read for a little bit, ideally a paperback. Lay out your clothes and set an alarm in a different room from where you sleep. The first morning will feel challenging, but rising early will become more natural after a few days.

If you want more time to work, meditate, exercise, write or work on personal projects that cultivate your well-being, waking up early is a good habit to create. You’ll have more free time to work on what matters rather than other people’s priorities. Waking up early also means you’re more likely to feel energised and fresh.

Writing in the morning is good because that time of the day is usually quieter and free of distractions. Prolific early morning writers often say they can get their best work done before lunch as they have more physical and mental energy. It’s also an ideal writing time if you’re balancing the creative process with a full-time job.

Deciding what to write every morning depends on whether you’re a blogger, podcaster, author, or freelance writer. Usually, it’s a good idea to work on your most important creative project and hit a target word count or milestone for the day. That way, you’ll accomplish the hardest task of the day first thing. You could also try writing early morning pages, whereby you engage in long-form stream of consciousness writing by hand.

How to Write the Perfect Essay

06 Feb, 2024 | Blog Articles , English Language Articles , Get the Edge , Humanities Articles , Writing Articles

You can keep adding to this plan, crossing bits out and linking the different bubbles when you spot connections between them. Even though you won’t have time to make a detailed plan under exam conditions, it can be helpful to draft a brief one, including a few key words, so that you don’t panic and go off topic when writing your essay.

If you don’t like the mind map format, there are plenty of others to choose from: you could make a table, a flowchart, or simply a list of bullet points.

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Thanks for signing up, step 2: have a clear structure.

Think about this while you’re planning: your essay is like an argument or a speech. It needs to have a logical structure, with all your points coming together to answer the question.

Start with the basics! It’s best to choose a few major points which will become your main paragraphs. Three main paragraphs is a good number for an exam essay, since you’ll be under time pressure. 

If you agree with the question overall, it can be helpful to organise your points in the following pattern:

• YES (agreement with the question)
• AND (another YES point)
• BUT (disagreement or complication)

If you disagree with the question overall, try:

• AND (another BUT point)

For example, you could structure the Of Mice and Men sample question, “To what extent is Curley’s wife portrayed as a victim in Of Mice and Men ?”, as follows:

• YES (descriptions of her appearance)
• AND (other people’s attitudes towards her)
• BUT (her position as the only woman on the ranch gives her power as she uses her femininity to her advantage)

If you wanted to write a longer essay, you could include additional paragraphs under the YES/AND categories, perhaps discussing the ways in which Curley’s wife reveals her vulnerability and insecurities, and shares her dreams with the other characters. Alternatively, you could also lengthen your essay by including another BUT paragraph about her cruel and manipulative streak.

Of course, this is not necessarily the only right way to answer this essay question – as long as you back up your points with evidence from the text, you can take any standpoint that makes sense.

Step 3: Back up your points with well-analysed quotations

You wouldn’t write a scientific report without including evidence to support your findings, so why should it be any different with an essay? Even though you aren’t strictly required to substantiate every single point you make with a quotation, there’s no harm in trying.

A close reading of your quotations can enrich your appreciation of the question and will be sure to impress examiners. When selecting the best quotations to use in your essay, keep an eye out for specific literary techniques. For example, you could highlight Curley’s wife’s use of a rhetorical question when she says, a”n’ what am I doin’? Standin’ here talking to a bunch of bindle stiffs.” This might look like:

The rhetorical question “an’ what am I doin’?” signifies that Curley’s wife is very insecure; she seems to be questioning her own life choices. Moreover, she does not expect anyone to respond to her question, highlighting her loneliness and isolation on the ranch.

Other literary techniques to look out for include:

• Tricolon – a group of three words or phrases placed close together for emphasis
• Tautology – using different words that mean the same thing: e.g. “frightening” and “terrifying”
• Parallelism – ABAB structure, often signifying movement from one concept to another
• Chiasmus – ABBA structure, drawing attention to a phrase
• Polysyndeton – many conjunctions in a sentence
• Asyndeton – lack of conjunctions, which can speed up the pace of a sentence
• Polyptoton – using the same word in different forms for emphasis: e.g. “done” and “doing”
• Alliteration – repetition of the same sound, including assonance (similar vowel sounds), plosive alliteration (“b”, “d” and “p” sounds) and sibilance (“s” sounds)
• Anaphora – repetition of words, often used to emphasise a particular point

Don’t worry if you can’t locate all of these literary devices in the work you’re analysing. You can also discuss more obvious techniques, like metaphor, simile and onomatopoeia. It’s not a problem if you can’t remember all the long names; it’s far more important to be able to confidently explain the effects of each technique and highlight its relevance to the question.

Step 4: Be creative and original throughout

Anyone can write an essay using the tips above, but the thing that really makes it “perfect” is your own unique take on the topic. If you’ve noticed something intriguing or unusual in your reading, point it out – if you find it interesting, chances are the examiner will too!

Creative writing and essay writing are more closely linked than you might imagine. Keep the idea that you’re writing a speech or argument in mind, and you’re guaranteed to grab your reader’s attention.

It’s important to set out your line of argument in your introduction, introducing your main points and the general direction your essay will take, but don’t forget to keep something back for the conclusion, too. Yes, you need to summarise your main points, but if you’re just repeating the things you said in your introduction, the body of the essay is rendered pointless.

Think of your conclusion as the climax of your speech, the bit everything else has been leading up to, rather than the boring plenary at the end of the interesting stuff.

To return to Of Mice and Men once more, here’s an example of the ideal difference between an introduction and a conclusion:

Introduction

In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men , Curley’s wife is portrayed as an ambiguous character. She could be viewed either as a cruel, seductive temptress or a lonely woman who is a victim of her society’s attitudes. Though she does seem to wield a form of sexual power, it is clear that Curley’s wife is largely a victim. This interpretation is supported by Steinbeck’s description of her appearance, other people’s attitudes, her dreams, and her evident loneliness and insecurity.

Overall, it is clear that Curley’s wife is a victim and is portrayed as such throughout the novel in the descriptions of her appearance, her dreams, other people’s judgemental attitudes, and her loneliness and insecurities. However, a character who was a victim and nothing else would be one-dimensional and Curley’s wife is not. Although she suffers in many ways, she is shown to assert herself through the manipulation of her femininity – a small rebellion against the victimisation she experiences.

Both refer back consistently to the question and summarise the essay’s main points. However, the conclusion adds something new which has been established in the main body of the essay and complicates the simple summary which is found in the introduction.

Hannah is an undergraduate English student at Somerville College, University of Oxford, and has a particular interest in postcolonial literature and the Gothic. She thinks literature is a crucial way of developing empathy and learning about the wider world. When she isn’t writing about 17th-century court masques, she enjoys acting, travelling and creative writing. 

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