An effective routine helps us to start, continue, and get the most out of our day; all while helping us find our purpose, drive towards our goals, and achieve our personal and professional success. The goal of this article is to both breakdown, and constructive an ideal summer morning routine for a productive day.
While everyone has a different way to begin their day, this article will show some ideas that have worked for many successful individuals; to further increase productivity and help begin a day the right way. Numerous studies, and scientific data have proven these methods to be an effective way to not only jump start your morning, but to improve your health as well.
Why is a Summer Morning Routine Important?
We are what we repeatedly do. Our habits and routines are the “ingredients” that add up to our overall output as people. A summer morning routine is simply a step-by-step series of actions that we do on a daily basis that help us begin our morning. Having a morning routine that jump starts your day supports your ability to improve your health and productivity.
The problem many people have is that their morning routines have little to no deliberate plan of action, and they aren’t consistent enough to realize the results that come as a part of having a good morning routine—so they end up quitting or going back to their old, less productive, way of doing things.
The summer is an ideal time to get focused on your goals, establish a rhythm to support day-by-day progress, and set the tone to finish out the second half of the year strong. The summer can be a wonderful opportunity to get back on track and really take advantage of each day.
Here is a high-quality, 10-step morning routine for a productive summer day:
10 Step Summer Morning Routine
With warmer weather, longer days, and shorter nights, summer can be your inspiration to become an early bird. Here are some steps you can add to your summer mornings and fill yourself with energy and productivity.
1) Complete an easy task first
Ever heard the saying: “always make your bed right when you get up”? There’s actually truth to it! By making your bed right when you get up you are actually accomplishing a simple task that initiates momentum to accomplishing another one.
In other words, each consecutive task you complete becomes a trigger to complete another one. This momentum can be extremely valuable to help begin a day, and allow you to be more productive throughout it.
As this momentum builds, you will find it easier and easier to accomplish harder and more time consuming tasks throughout the day. A great way to go about this is to gradually make each consecutive task harder until you get to the big projects that you need to spend a lot of time on.
2) Hydrate
Starting off your day with a glass of water, a glass of water with lemon, or if you’re really motivated, a glass of lemon water with some Himalayan pink salt or sea salt can definitely provide a big boost in your health, awareness, mood, and cognitive performance first thing in the morning.
Every cell, tissue, and organ in the body needs water to work properly. So starting off with something as small as a glass of water can provide huge benefits considering the 8-9 hours you just went without any.
3) Take a shower
Some say that both a hot and a cold shower can be beneficial at waking you up, boosting creativity, and etc. Which one should you do?
Warm showers increase your core body temperature, and cold showers offer life-changing benefits as well. So doing a combination of both might just be the answer.
My recommendation is that you try a warm shower first and then end in cold for the last 30 seconds or so. You may even find that building up to a minute in the cold water at the end can provide even stronger benefits. Ultimately trying both and seeing which one works best for you is the most ideal approach for each person.
4) Eat breakfast
Conclusive scientific research shows that eating breakfast is an absolute game changer not only for your health, but for your mental health, your performance as a person, your habits, your productivity, and etc.
“In addition, infrequent and/or frequent breakfast skipping was associated with depression, lower happiness, posttraumatic stress disorder, loneliness, short sleep, long sleep, sleep problem, restless sleep, sleep problem due to traumatic event, and poor academic performance.”
As you can see, breakfast is pretty important, and it only scratches the surface of why you shouldn’t be skipping it. But what should a breakfast include?
The ideal breakfast should be made up of some lean protein, healthy fat, and high-quality carbohydrates. As an example, having a smoothie with some protein powder, almond butter, banana, and blueberries would be a simple breakfast for someone on the go. A more extensive breakfast such as eggs with lean ground turkey, a sweet potato and onion skillet hash, and some avocado on the side is also a fantastic option.
Feel free to mix and match but the trio of protein, healthy fat (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat), and high-quality carbohydrates (from real foods) is essential for a healthy breakfast. We have a guide on Plant-based protein benefits for you to dive deeper into this topic.
5) Get some coffee in
Caffeine in coffee can provide many health benefits and can give you an extra boost of concentration and energy to help jump start your day. Awesome Coffee can be a perfect addition to your breakfast as it does include protein, coffee, and other ingredients that support your health. You can check out the benefits of mixing protein powder with coffee in our detailed guide on protein coffee.
How does caffeine work? Caffeine is something called an adenosine antagonist. It basically blocks adenosine receptors in the brain which are responsible for making you sleepy and drowsy. This blocking effect gives you increased mood, concentration, and energy to help you begin your day, and be productive throughout it.
Awesome Coffee is also packed with antioxidants which help fight free radical damage, and it even has adaptogenic ingredients to help improve our bodies ability to respond to stress. I personally don’t drink a ton of coffee, but for all the coffee lovers out there, this is a great option.
6) Try adding in a workout
Depending on the person, a moderate to vigorous workout can be super beneficial for cardiovascular health, be a natural anti-inflammatory for your body, and promote increased endorphin release which are those “feel good” hormones in the body that improve our moods dramatically!
The secret is to work out in the morning, get the energy-boosting and increased endorphin releasing effects, and then enjoy the rest of the day knowing you’ll be more productive, feel better, and continue to feel the benefits of the workout as you work.
As a professional athlete myself, it’s pretty insane how beneficial working out in the morning can be; definitely give it a try!
Bonus Tip: if you can get outside and workout in the sun, that’s even better. Vitamin D is created in our body when our skin in exposed to sunlight. It provides huge benefits to our health, and is absolutely essential for all of us.
7) Get yourself ready (physically & mentally)
Getting yourself ready by doing small things that prepare yourself to be presentable, and to be refreshed can be an important cue to mentally switch into “work mode”.
Brushing your teeth, putting on work clothes, and preparing yourself to look presentable goes a long way in mentally preparing to be productive. These little daily actions that you do before your day even starts can be real game changers. They are important to help clear your mind, and reduce stress before starting your day.
8) Plan out the day
Establishing a plan of attack for your day is pretty crucial to ensure you are prioritizing the correct things in order to make the day as productive as possible.
For some people, writing things down works best as the visual cue of reading the tasks/activities is necessary to begin and stick with them. For other people, just make a mental note of some non-negotiable things that you need to do. If you don’t write them down, make sure to follow this process to make sure you have a specific implementation plan to get important tasks done:
I will do (task) at (specific place) at (specific time).
Studies show that this type of deliberate plan of implementation results in a higher percentage of action and execution.
9) Set up your environment
Environment plays an important role in our ability to get things done. Did you ever want to finish something but you found yourself always getting distracted by things around you? That’s exactly what I am talking about.
The environment we live and work in can become “cluttered” with distractions that reduce our productivity and give us the inability to effectively do focused work. Removing some of these things or moving to a different environment can benefit us a ton when it comes to our productivity.
Changing work rooms or environments, removing surrounding objects, or creating environmental boundaries are some of the “hacks” I have used to dramatically improve my overall productivity. That may mean changing the place that you do your work if you are a remote worker. If you aren’t remote, then maybe it’s removing objects in your environment such as a cell phone, books, and food to make sure they are aren’t distractions that take away from your focus. Lastly, environmental boundaries are for people who have a hard time keeping their life separate from work. You should find a designated location for work and never let personal stuff enter than area or room.
These all work magic in increasing productivity and can benefit your morning routine by giving you the ability to set up a proper environment to allow you to do meaningful work.
10) Get to work
After you’ve gotten everything taken care of; your body, yourself, your plan, and your environment, it makes it easy to begin working for the day.
I recommend starting off with the easier tasks first to continue building off of that momentum you started with making your bed this morning. Then after you’ve accomplished some small to medium sized tasks, jump into the larger ones and see how much different your ability to focus on them is.
Beginning your day like this can put you in the right frame of mind, allow you to be mentally in tune with what you are doing, and also ensure you are well taken care of personally.
You can also check out our Winter Morning Routine checklist to be more productive in this other season.
Tips for Maintaining a Summer Morning Routine
Firstly, the best way to maintain a summer routine is to be consistent long enough for it to become a concrete habit. The problem is getting to that point. Here’s what to do:
Part of the reason for the first point, complete an easy task first, is to help make the start or the initiation of your routine that much easier. Once you start, it’s more likely that you will keep going and follow through; half the battle is just starting. The purpose of the first point in this article is to help you in that aspect, so just focus on starting the routine in the morning and I can almost guarantee you’ll find yourself following through more often than not.
Notice how the first points are all focused on taking care of YOU. Then after you’ve taken care of yourself, the focus then shifts to the responsibilities of work. This is intentional to make sure that the most important aspect of the morning routine, self preparation and care, is taken care of to reduce friction and make it more sustainable long term. Make sure to take care of yourself as that builds a foundation and impacts the quality of work you do.
Takeaways
The key takeaways of this summer morning routine are to take care of your body first as that creates the foundation for everything else, and create a deliberate plan of action and environment to support focused and meaningful work to optimize productivity.
The ultimate goal is to take advantage of the summer as a means of increasing our health and output as people.
