6 Key Habits for an Effective Morning

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I have never been a morning person both during my school/college days and in my professional life. Even the few times where I have been up early was only out of compulsion and it has never been by choice. This habit of being late to work had a significant impact on the early years of my professional life to the extent that my performance appraisal was totally wrecked!

After a disastrous performance appraisal, I picked myself up and started showing up on time to work, but it was never my cup of tea until I read these words from the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, a few months ago.

“Achieving lasting change in life is difficult, but it can be done by focusing on important keystone habits”

According to Charles Duhigg, a keystone habit is one by which a change of a key habit unlocks all those other patterns, which could give an overall significant positive impact. For Example - Exercising every day is a keystone habit which could improve your health, make you more productive, and reduce stress thereby improving relationships and so on. 

So, I chose to adopt waking up early as my keystone habit and tried doing it the Ninja way i.e. set up my alarm clock 5 minutes earlier every day or 15 minutes earlier every week, so that slowly by the end of the month, I was able to reach my target wake up time.

To keep up my keystone habit of waking up early, I also implemented suggestions from the book called The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod .

• I always keep the phone (alarm) across the room, so I will always have to get up to switch it off.
• I head to the bathroom immediately after getting up to brush my teeth so that I never snooze my alarm. After brushing, I drink a glass of water as quick as I can to freshen up.        

These habits sound simple, but if it’s harder to practice, here is an app in which the alarm doesn’t switch off until you scan the barcode of your toothpaste. I don’t use it but I liked the idea. If you are struggling to wake up early, why not give it a shot? Barcode Alarm Clock

Now that I suddenly have this extra bit of time each morning, I was exercising one day, reading another day and didn’t have a specific routine or a plan. At that time “Miracle morning” came to my help again.

Here are my personal adaptations based on the book….

1. Affirm: In all these years if someone were to ask, ‘What do you want to be in your life?’ I would immediately say,  ‘I want to be an Entrepreneur’.

But, then have I taken any steps towards it? Not really.

To build on the affirmation that I want to be an Entrepreneur, I ensure that I create small action plans that help me align my everyday actions towards the long-term goal.

2. Visualise: Most of the self-help books talk about visualisation. It helps us envision our journey towards our goal, several times before we actually go through it. While envisioning, we should not visualise success or the after effects of success; instead, visualise the process of achieving it. For Example: If you want to visualise about clearing an interview, visualise reading pages and pages of the book you want to read.

3. Meditate: Meditation plays an important role in keeping our anxiety in check and in giving clarity to our thoughts. It can be a short 3-minute breathing exercise or a detailed 30-minute one. I have personally benefitted from “Shambavi Mahamudra” practised through Isha Yoga.

4. Exercise: Exercise can be a few simple stretches, hitting the treadmill or exploring outdoors. You can also add some fun and competition to it by joining a fit-bit community. That’s how I have been keeping up with it for a while now.

5. Read: “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the Body”

                                                                              - Sir Richard Steele

If you are not a real fan of reading, it has been made effortless and accessible through services like Blinkist or Audible. You can read a book while commuting to work or even while cooking. I do enjoy reading self-help books via Audible.

6. Write: You can write about anything from Goals (Short or long-term) to Personal Mission statement or even a few lines to reflect upon thoughts and learning (now you know how I wrote this article).

If you need motivation, one suggestion is to try a buddy system. I personally practice this by having a daily activity tracker for the first 30 days. Once you do it for 30-45 days, it becomes a habit that’s hard to quit.

I would like to Signoff with a message from Thalaivar (Rajinikanth) in the movie Kochadiyaan…

“Sooryanukku mun ezhunthu kol Sooriyanay jeypaai” (Rise up before the sun, You will win over the sun!)