Benjamin Franklin planned his mornings on paper. In his autobiography he set out a "scheme of employment for the twenty-four hours of a natural day", and it opened with a question: "What good shall I do this day?" He would rise early, wash, decide the day's business and take "the resolution of the day". In the evening came the matching question: "What good have I done to-day?" Two questions, one for each end of the day. It is hard to improve on.
It is the most quoted morning routine in history, and Franklin could not keep it. Why Motivation Fails — and What Keeps Habits Going After It Does has the rest of his plan, the thirteen virtues and the little book of black spots, and how it ended: Order, the virtue the schedule belonged to, gave him the most trouble, and he decided the attempt had left him better and happier all the same. "In truth," he wrote, "I found myself incorrigible with respect to Order." Which is a comfort to anyone whose own plan lasted about a week.
That is worth holding on to when we read about the morning rituals of high achievers, and the promise that if we win the morning, we win the day. The routine on the page is a wish. What it does for us depends on what we want it for, and on what kind of mornings our bodies have.
What a routine is for
The usual sales pitch is productivity. The better reason is quieter.
When 317 people were asked how much they liked routine, those who preferred it reported more meaning in their lives. Then 85 people were checked on through their ordinary days, 2,590 moments in all, and the more closely what they were doing followed their usual routine, the more meaningful life felt at that moment.
So a morning routine does not need to make us a high achiever to be worth having. The same chair, the same walk, the same five minutes by the window: repetition itself gives the day a shape, and a shaped day feels like it means something. On the mornings when everything else is chaos, the routine is the part we can count on. Even if it is only the kettle.
Routines come in every strength. Immanuel Kant's "rigorously scheduled habits" were called clocklike, and it was said that his neighbours set their watches by his daily walk, which is probably more legend than fact. Between Franklin, who could not keep his schedule, and Kant, whose walk became a local story, there is plenty of room for the rest of us.
And the routine that matters most may be a shared one. A review of family life found that regular family routines went with children's social, language and academic development, and that the meaning a family puts into its rituals went with how satisfied its members were with family life. The breakfast eaten together, the same walk to school, the goodbye at the door: those count.
Our best hour
"Win the morning" assumes the morning is when we are at our best. For larks it is. For owls it can be the worst hour of the day.
When younger and older adults were tested on memory, most of the younger ones turned out to be evening or neutral types, and most of the older ones morning types. Tested late in the afternoon, the younger adults remembered far more. Tested in the morning, the gap disappeared, because that was the older adults' best time and the younger ones' worst. Students who dread early lectures, it turns out, have a point.
The lesson is not that owls should give up on mornings. It is that the hardest thinking belongs at our own peak, wherever it falls. Hidden Habits Sabotaging Your Productivity—and How to Fix Them has the twist: problems that need a flash of insight were solved better at people's worst time of day, perhaps because a tired mind is less guarded and lets the odd idea through. So the groggy morning has its uses too, just not for the spreadsheet.
The morning may still have one advantage for all of us. In four experiments, students and American adults lied and cheated less on the same tasks in the morning than in the afternoon. Two notes of caution, though. The explanation offered leans on the idea that willpower runs down through the day, and Why Motivation Fails has what happened when 23 laboratories tested that idea again: the effect all but disappeared. And the finding was soon challenged in a paper titled "The Morality of Larks and Owls", with the first paper's authors replying under the question "Does the Morning Morality Effect Hold True Only for Morning People?" For now it is an interesting finding, and still an argued one.
Getting up
Here the old advice holds. Wake up at the same time every day, weekends included. Our body clock likes rhythm, and a strong morning does start the night before.
The snooze button gets more blame than it deserves. How to Fix Your Sleep and Wake Up Rested, linked below, has the test: people who snooze every morning did no worse on thinking tests after 30 minutes of snoozing than after a single alarm, and on some they did better. The snooze is less a crime than a clue. If we need it every day, the alarm is too early for our body or the night was too short. It is trying to tell us something, nine minutes at a time.
The body has its own reasons for a heavy working morning. The Invisible War Inside Your Body (And How to Win It) has the 196 British civil servants who gave saliva on waking and half an hour later: the morning rise in the stress hormone was bigger on workdays than at weekends, though they woke with the same level on both. The body loads up for the day it expects. A heavy feeling on a working morning is partly that, and not a verdict on the day ahead.
What does help is getting up into light.
Light and movement
Light is the body clock's strongest signal, and morning light sets it earliest. Reset Your Body Clock: Sleep Hacks, Tested has the plain rule: get outside early, even under cloud, without sunglasses and not through a window. Outdoors beats any lamp in the house by a long way. Even on a grey day.
The timing may matter beyond the body clock. When 54 adults wore light sensors for a week, the later in the day most of their bright light came, the higher their body weight, even allowing for when they slept. That is a link, not proof, but it points the same way as everything else here: bright light early.
A short walk does several jobs at once: light, movement, cool air and a few minutes to ourselves. A stretch on the doorstep counts. If we like training in the morning and it suits our body, that is a good time for it. If it does not, the evening is fine too.
A dog helps. Owning one goes with more physical activity, and among owners, the strongest predictor of actually walking the dog was the bond with it: the sense of obligation, and the support and motivation the dog gives. On a cold, dark morning, a dog waiting by the door is a better coach than any app.
Water, salt and coffee
How to Boost Energy Levels Naturally: Little-Known Remedies That Actually Work has why a glass of water early is worth it: when 25 young women lost just over 1% of their body weight in water, their mood dropped, tasks felt harder, their concentration slipped and headaches came on. A glass of water on waking is the easiest win of the day. No app required.
The salt is worth getting right. The same article is clear that salting the first glass of every day has no finding behind it as a ritual. Think You're Hydrated? Why Your Body Might Be Thirsty for More has when it does help: after heavy sweating, after a stomach bug, and in the first weeks of low-carb or carnivore eating, when the kidneys let more sodium go and the headaches and tiredness are a salt problem rather than a water problem. Then a pinch of good unrefined salt in the glass, with nothing added, is the fix. is one.
And the coffee. The popular rule is to wait an hour or two before the first cup so that caffeine and the morning stress hormone stay out of each other's way. 7 Ways to Make Every Day Work Better — Starting With What Your Body Is Doing has the review that went looking for evidence and found none. The same article has the less comfortable part: in daily drinkers, the morning cup mostly undoes the tiredness that a night without caffeine has built. The coffee is not powering the morning. It is paying off yesterday's. That is a hard sentence to read with a mug in hand. Read it anyway. Water is the drink to build the morning around.
A breakfast that holds
Protein first. Eggs, a piece of fish, leftover meat from last night: food that keeps us full until lunch without the sugar crash of a pastry or a bowl of cereal.
Breakfast is not compulsory, though. Why Snacking and Small Meals Can Sabotage Your Weight Loss has the honest picture: across 13 tests, people assigned to eat breakfast took in about 260 calories a day more than people assigned to skip it, and the skippers ended slightly lighter. If we are not hungry in the morning, a later first meal is a choice, not a failure. If we are, eggs beat toast. 7 Healthier Snack Swaps to Beat the Mid-Day Slump Without Sugar Crashes has the test: thirty overweight women ate either eggs or a bagel with the same calories, and after the eggs they felt fuller, ate less at lunch and went on eating less for the next day and a half. Boil a few the evening before, and the morning makes itself. A does it without a pan to watch.
Priorities before the phone
If the first thing we do is open email, the news and the messages, the day starts as other people's to-do list.
A small plan helps. Success Conditioning: How to Set Goals You Reach has the "when this happens, I'll do that" kind: "When I sit down at my desk in the morning, I'll write my three priorities for the day." Across 94 tests with more than 8,000 people, plans like these made people noticeably more likely to reach their goals.
The phone can wait until those priorities are on paper. Digital Overwhelm: Breaking Free from Phone Addiction and Information Overload has how to put the news on a diet: one or two trusted sources, once a day, and not first thing. Our attention is the most valuable thing we have in the morning. It is worth protecting. The messages will still be there in half an hour. They always are.
If there is a journey to work, it can do this job for us. When Sunday Night Feels Like Preparing for War: Emergency Workplace Survival Tactics has the three field tests with 1,736 people: those who spent the commute thinking through the coming working day were less worn down by a long journey, stayed more satisfied with the job and were less inclined to leave it. The bus or the train is a fine place for the three priorities.
Picture the obstacle
The usual morning routine includes a minute of seeing ourselves succeed. The evidence says to be careful with that.
How to Reach Your Health Goals Without Losing Your Sanity has the year-long weight-loss group: confidence that they would reach their goal went with more weight lost, while glowing daydreams of the slim result went with less. The women who daydreamed happily about arriving did worst of all. Daily Affirmations That Work (and the Kind That Backfires) has what works instead, a routine called WOOP: the wish, the best outcome, the obstacle most likely to get in the way, and the plan for when it does.
So the morning visualisation changes shape. Not "see yourself crushing it", but: what is most likely to go wrong today, and what will I do when it does? Less glamorous. Far more useful.
Cold, quiet and gratitude
Cold water. How to Boost Energy Levels Naturally has the fair test: in the Netherlands, 3,018 adults ended every shower with a burst of cold water for a month, and over three months they took 29% fewer days off sick. The benefit they mentioned most was more energy. That is a real effect, and a modest one. Start with a few seconds at the end of the shower, and leave it out if we have a heart condition. Shrieking is optional.
Quiet. Meditation is not for every nervous system. Why Your Nervous System Fights Some Stress Techniques has the figure: of 1,232 regular meditators, a quarter had at some point had a particularly unpleasant experience from it. If sitting still leaves us more wound up, a quiet walk does the same job.
Writing. End Your Day Right: How Gratitude Before Sleep Can Help You Rest has the tests of gratitude and of writing worries down with a next step for each. Both belong at either end of the day. A line in the morning about what we are looking forward to, a line at night about what went well.
The best-known morning version is longer. Julia Cameron's 1992 book The Artist's Way, first sold as typed copies in a local bookshop, made daily "morning pages" of free writing famous, and it has since sold millions. It has never been put to a fair test. It does not need one to be worth a try.
A small win. Making the bed, opening the curtains, clearing the table: no test shows these change the day. They are still a satisfying first tick, and that is reason enough if we enjoy them.
Leave room
The rushed morning has a cost that does not show up in any productivity chart.
In a famous test, people were sent from one building to another and passed a shabbily dressed man slumped by the path. Those who had been told they were running late were more likely to walk past without stopping. Some of them were on their way to give a talk about the Good Samaritan, and it made no difference.
A morning packed so tight that every minute is spoken for leaves no room for the person at the bus stop, the child who wants to show us something, the partner who needs five minutes. The best routine has slack in it. Five spare minutes is a kindness, to ourselves first.
What good shall I do this day?
Franklin never kept his schedule, and he still thought the attempt made him better. That is the honest promise of a morning routine. It will not separate us from the rest. It gives the day a shape, a few good habits we can count on, and a moment to decide what matters before the world decides for us.
Keep the parts that suit our body and our hour. Drop the ones that are only there because someone successful said so. Franklin, of all people, would understand. His own account, , is short, and still good company over breakfast.
Tomorrow morning, before you pick up the phone, ask Franklin's question, "What good shall I do this day?", and write the answer in one line.
Still groggy after a full night? How to Fix Your Sleep and Wake Up Rested: Complete Guide to Better Sleep — why the grogginess after a good night is normal and how long it should last, waking up unable to move, why an alarm is a call to arms and the snooze lasts nine minutes, what an artificial dawn does, and what a partner does to your dreams.
Is the routine the part that never sticks? The Real Reason Your Habits Never Stick — how a habit is stored, the tired weeks when good and bad habits both get stronger, the moving day that opens a window for change, and the spouses who quit smoking together.
Know someone whose morning routine has more steps than their day? Send them this, and Franklin's question.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional, especially before cold showers if you have a heart condition, or if you wake exhausted most mornings for weeks.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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