How your morning routine is ruining your day
Fix your morning, fix your day
A great morning sets you up for a great day and vice versa. The problem is that most people start their day of like shit.
Here’s why:
1. Phone immediately after waking
Most people go straight for the phone immediately after waking up. This is one of the worst things you can do for your mental health, physical health and just general focus and well being throughout the day.
First up, you start your day out with tons of dopamine right after a 8 hour “dopamine detox”.
Scrolling tiktok = dopamine. Watching the news = dopamine. Likes, messages, etc. = dopamine.
This makes it harder to actually complete slower, more meaningful tasks later in the day like work, exercise, reading, etc.
These tasks naturally give you less dopamine, so after you’ve made your brain used to these high dopamine activities like scrolling, it’ll be 10x harder to actually complete the meaningful tasks and you’ll have to use more willpower to actually do it.
Another bad thing about using your phone first thing in the morning is the stressful effect it has.
Your monkey brain is not made to instantly be bombarded with news from all around the world right after waking. This instantly drops you into these emotional states, stresses you out and just sets you up for a bad day.
Like I never understood the point of checking the news all the time. Someone got killed on the other side of the world, great, I needed that information to continue my life. A plane crashed, wow, important information that I absolutely need to continue on with my life.
Like I said, your monkey brain isn’t made to be bombarded with all this information, and in the end it destroys your focus and sets your day up for failure.
Actionable step: Keep your phone in another room while sleeping and don’t use it for the first 1-2 hours after waking. Ideally as long as possible.
Sometimes I end up not using my phone until well past midday because I kind of forget about it. This allows me to actually focus on the stuff I need to do.
2. No morning sunlight
Another detrimental effect from laying in your bed all morning is that you don’t get your morning sunlight.
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you’ve probably heard about morning sunlight on social media.
It’s become really popular after Andrew Huberman really started talking about it on his podcast, and for good reason. It has a ton of benefits.
Improved sleep, better mood and focus throughout the day. Better skin health, eyesight, etc. I made a full post on sunlight, also going over the benefits of morning sunlight, which you can read here if you’re interested:
But to get these benefits it’s important that you get outside ASAP after waking. That’s obviously hard if you’re laying in bed scrolling instagram.
Basically, morning sunlight just signals to your brain that it’s daytime which helps you wake up and not feel groggy and fatigued for the first half of the day.
Actionable step: Get outside ASAP after waking up and get sunlight, even if it’s overcast. In sunny weather, aim for at least 10 minutes, cloudy, 15-20 minutes and really overcast + low solar angle, 20-30 minutes.
3. Caffeine immediately after waking
Most people start their day with coffee right after waking up. Horrible idea for multiple reasons.
Most people say they need the coffee to “wake up”, but in reality they are just covering up their shit routine with a half fix.
The caffeine in coffee or tea (or whatever you drink with caffeine), acts on your adenosine receptors. This is a chemical in your brain that makes you tired. So in theory, it sounds like caffeine is goated here.
But the problem is that your adenosine system isn’t active in the morning. This is because adenosine gets broken down while you sleep and gradually builds up while you’re awake, creating a kind of “sleep pressure”.
So in the morning your adenosine is already at it’s lowest, which means caffeine just goes in and does a whole lot of nothing.
In fact it’s actually counterproductive, because when the caffeine eventually wears off later in the day you get hit with all that adenosine you’ve been blocking all morning, which is one of the reasons so many people get that “afternoon crash” from caffeine.
Instead, fix the underlying issue. The reason you feel so tired in the morning is because you’re laying in bed scrolling your phone and not getting your morning sunlight.
This in turn ruins your sleep, and just creates this negative spiral, where you feel like you need caffeine in the morning to function properly.
Actionable step: Delay caffeine consumption 60-90 minutes to allow your adenosine system to start up naturally. Instead, get morning sunlight which will increase your cortisol naturally, making you feel awake and ready for the day.
(btw, it’s good to have a cortisol peak in the morning. it’s chronically elevated cortisol that’s bad.)
Then after 60-90 minutes, you’re free to have that double espresso to get that generational locked in work session.
That’s basically it. Fix your morning, fix your day.
Thanks for reading and godspeed bruh.
— Kasper Veritas