The Ultimate Morning Routine for Productivity & Self Care

1. Morning Routine Introduction: What does your morning to look like currently, is it You jumping out of bed and frantically scrambling around, trying to get ready for work? Is it pulling out your phone to seal things that you might have missed to check emails? Well, if it is, you're definitely not alone. The thing is that the way we work is changing. More people are working remotely, starting up their own businesses or having a more flexible work schedules in the traditional 9 to 5. And with that were given more freedom to be able to structure our mornings and our morning routines. Intentionally. Productivity is a tricky thing, especially in the morning time when it can be so easy and tempting to start our days distracted. I decided to put together this online course about being able to structure your morning routine for increased productivity as well as self care because the to really go hand in hand. If you're not taking care of yourself, then you're gonna be less productive and not be able to get us much done in the day that unfolds. My name is Nature Burton. I'm the co founder of Reflective Brands, a creative agency in Portland, Oregon, where we specialize in virtual and augmented reality experiences for businesses as well as digital marketing. I build websites. I do branding. I'm a graphic designer and I'm a professional filmmaker as well as in my free time. I like to dance. I like to do macro May projects. I like to do art. And so, as you can see, I've got quite a lot going on with all of these things. I've had to learn how to structure my time appropriately, how to set goals. And I found in that that my morning routine and how I start the day is so important. I know that you also have a lot on your plate and a lot to get done, And one thing that you might be overlooking that could be a really important part of your daily routine is the morning time and how you started off. Now you might say that you like toe have focused intentional morning, but you just don't have time. Well, to that, I would ask, Is there a way that you can make time? Does it mean getting up a little bit earlier? Does it mean asking the people in your life to give you space in the morning so that you can focus on yourself and your well being. How could you re arrange your day so that you can be able to carve out some time? And it doesn't even have to be a lot of time? It can be an hour. It can be 15 minutes. They could be 10 minutes. But carve out time to be able to put forth your morning routine and really prioritize your own well being for the rest of the day. If you're able to start off the morning peacefully, if you're able to start off the morning intentionally, if you're able to start off the morning with focus on your goals and priorities for the day , the rest of the day that unfolds will be filled with those practices. The practice of taking care of yourself, the practice of focusing either goals and actionable ways and actually getting them done. Thank you so much for joining me in this online course. We're gonna have a great time, so let's begin 2. Why set an Intention?: So now we're gonna begin with setting the intention for your personal morning routine Setting an intention is super important for really sticking with this morning routine and for really following through with the why behind why you're wanting to restructure your mornings so that you can increase your productivity So a lot of us start our mornings unintentionally. We start by looking at our phones or jumping into work first thing. And while it may feel like by jumping into work, you are being productive. It actually can derail your productivity for the whole day and make you feel more stressed out. It causes undue stress. When you look at your phone first thing, you're overloaded with messages, emails to do's and current affairs. It's no mystery that being plummeted with all of these tasks and worries first thing in the morning will make you feel a little bit stressed out next, they can actually make you depressed more than just stressed. Study at the University of Gothenburg and Sweden measured the effects of smartphone usage on people in their twenties and over, and they studied this over a year, and they found that the high mobile phone usage actually directly correlated to increase reports of depression. So it's more than even just feeling stressed in might depress you, which then makes you less productive. Your attention is also being hijacked by the phone. Going onto social media as soon as you rise takes you directly into the world of other people's thoughts and opinions. And when you first wake up, your mind is in a more open space between the dream time and waking reality. When you look at your phone, your brain is flooded with outside stimuli and you get preoccupied with what others and also what advertisers wants you to be thinking about, rather than setting this boundary of what you want to be thinking about first thing in the morning and what you want to be thinking about throughout your day. Next, you set the precipice of distraction for the rest of the day by starting off preoccupied and distracted by a jumble, thoughts and duties. You are on the path to continue to spend the rest of your day in that head space of having a 1,000,000 things foot into your head and not being able to focus on the present tasks at hand. well looking at your phone. And so she checking social media email. It also releases dopamine, which is a neurochemical responsible for making you feel rewarded, and it releases us into your brain. And your brain loves dopamine. Since your phone is basically a jackpot of instant gratification of dopamine, your brain craves the fix that it provides. So by starting off your day in this dopamine loop, you are setting yourself up for attachment to the distraction that your phone provides, which isn't a great way to start the day, you know. A former design on person at Google, Tristan Harris explained that looking your phone first thing in the morning frames your waking up experience as all of the things you missed since yesterday, a k a. Foma, and this can actually make you less productive for the rest of the day. Fishing goes on to explain how phones nowadays are designed to make you feel like you need to be notified about everything. They do this by setting sending updates for every little thing. For every application you have, there is the option to get notifications from the application, and these notifications are distractions that derail your focus and what actually needs to be accomplished. It's because of implants, the idea that you are evidently missing out on something when you're not glued to your phone. So when you start day with that attachment than throughout the rest of the day, you're gonna feel that you need to be constantly checking your phone, which we all know needs to distraction and leaves Teoh a lack of focus on the present task at hand. So intention is everything. The five day challenge that I have created is a way to supplement healthy morning routines and rituals in place of getting started by jumping directly in tow. Work by starting your morning rushed by looking at your phone, you can start off your day in an intentional way, prioritizing your own well being, your success and most important leader. Inner peace. So see if you can rewire your brain to find rewards and these activities rather than a quick dopamine fix, and these activities are actually going to lead to the focus and calm in your inner worlds that are going to help you to become more productive because you're gonna be able to just focus on the task at hand and getting it done 3. Journaling you Intention : So now we're going to take a moment to do a journal exercise. We're really focusing in on your intentions for this course. So how do you normally feel when you wake up? And how would you like to feel? What positive activities do you already do first thing in the morning because you might already have some pieces in the morning and in your morning routine that you really enjoy doing already. What negative habits do you have first thing in the morning? Can you relate to jumping right into work toe looking at your phone? Maybe not eating the healthiest rushing out the door feeling stressed my down Some of those habits that you see already What typically are your first thoughts in the morning? And what would you like to be thinking about in the morning? Do you wake up and start thinking about all of the things you have to dio in a stressed out overwhelmed way and feel like you just want to crawl back into bed and go to sleep and not wake up until all of your tasks have been done for you by some magical Jeannie? What would your ideal morning look like if you could set up the most ideal morning possible . What would that look like to you? And how much time in the morning do you have to yourself and furthermore, other ways that you could clear out more time? Like I said in the introduction, it doesn't have to be that you're able to clear out three hours in your morning. But can you get 15 minutes to yourself? Can you get 10 minutes to yourself? Can you find some way to clear out enough time that you can really take on this morning? Routine practice. And what is the number one thing that you would like to get out of your mornings? Is it peace? Is that presence? Is it focus? Is it feeling great? Is it productivity right down that one thing that you'd like to get out of the Marnix. So from these journaling questions, once you've taken time, Teoh reflect on them and write down. Go over all of your answers and summarize and a few words how you'd like to feel and what type of morning you'd like to have. It could sound like I want to feel grateful each morning and have a peaceful start to my day or I want to wake up refreshed and excited about all of the creative tasks that I'm gonna be doing throughout the day. So make your morning intention statement and this will be your intention for the five day challenge. So write it at the top of your principal work sheet in the space provided. So each morning when you go to fill out that printable and to check off how you did with your morning routine, you can look back at that intention and remember why you are doing this. And again, if you don't have that worksheet, it's in the link below. So make sure you download that for this part of the course. So with all of these things, we have done the first section of setting our intention for the morning and next we're going to be moving on to unlocking our subconscious is through the dream time. So proceed to the next module after you've done the journaling questions about setting your intention 4. The Importance of Dream Recall: all right, so now you're going to work on unlocking our subconscious through dream recall and the context of living a more productive lifestyle. Understanding how you really feel about situations is vital. It's tempting to let the opinions of others fear of change and a desire to keep the peace keep you from admitting when a situation is bothering you or when you have a task at hand that you're feeling really blocked towards. There might be some subconscious reasons and triggers that air coming up that are keeping you from completing that task. So respecting your dream world by giving time and energy to remember it will open up a world of insight into your desires and therefore goals as well as blockages and the things that are stifling your creativity. In this section, I'm going to give you information about dream practices. Ah, little teaser for lucid dreaming, a link to my dream journal that I've created to help you write down and remember your dreams and journaling questions for the subconscious around productivity that you can work with through your dream time. So, first, if you don't think your dream time is important if you feel like it's just a jumble of, uh, input from the day before. I'm gonna give you some reasons that it's actually really good and important to remember your dreams. Number one is that a large amount of self healing and insight can take place by working with your dreams and especially nightmares or highly emotional dreams. By working with in your dream world, you can start to shift self defeating patterns that undermine your progress. So by working with challenging dreams and with challenging situations that come up in your dream, time that might directly reflect or symbolically reflects situations happening in your waking life, you're actually able to start healing yourself and moving past stuck patterns that you may have been in for a long time Now. Secondly, dreams help you uncover how you feel about yourself and those around you so they can provide a foreshadowing and intuitive hits into upcoming events into certain people into certain tasks. In understanding the guidance that your dreams air given you, you gain more self confidence and trust in your own intuition. I've been many times or have had dreams that have seemed chaotic or just like I wanted to discard them, but I wrote them down instead. And then I looked back on them a few weeks later and saw how profound, how intuitive, how insightful they were, around the situations that I was currently in, and even upcoming situations that I didn't know what across my path. So you have a strong amount of intuition, and also your subconscious is taking in a lot more information than you may realize. And so, from really tapping into an understanding and giving importance to your dreams, you are able to uncover these subconscious emotions and hits and intuitions that could really help you in your work life as well as your personal life. When you recall dreams, you strengthen your memory, which is super important for keeping track of your goals, keeping track of all the tasks at hand that require a considerable amount of memory, you know. Research, uh, recently carried out by Douglas Mental Health University Institute at McGill University and the University of Bern, used state of the art option eugenics to confirm a causal link between rapid eye movement REM, which is the part of sleep that you dream in and the part of sleep that memory formation happens in, and they found that they were able to prove prove for the first time that REM sleep is indeed a critical component for normal spatial memory formation. In mice, REM sleep is how we learn to master any sport art, musical instruments, surgery, etcetera through daily practice. So rent sleep is a fundamental part of mastery. You know, some people, very smart geniuses in our world who have come up with innovative new ways to do things, scientific breakthroughs. They all credit their dream time and actually getting a insight in the in between time of transitioning into dreams or actually in the dreams themselves. If they're able to bring the memory through of what they were trying to accomplish and waking reality and try it out in the dream time, they're actually able to gain insights that they were stuck on or couldn't touch upon in their waking reality alone. So you not only strengthen your memory, you actually tap into this deeper, insightful space within yourself. Your nighttime visions can help you work through challenging situations, interpersonal interactions and relationship troubles. And so, like we've talked about before, the Dream Time conserve as a practice space free of waking life consequences. This is especially true if you can access the power of lucid dreaming. And so I just want to give a little shout out toe lucid dreaming, you know, First, you really have to remember your dreams. You really have to give importance to the dream time before you can regularly have lucid dreams. It's been a long time practice for me to cultivate my dream time and then work in the world of lucid dreaming, and I teach a further course on how to really get into that. But just to say now for productivity. If you are able tohave lucid dreams, you're able to even further bring consciousness and awareness into the dream time. And then, like we were saying before, you can tap into problem solving within the dream time, working on dynamics in the dream time, facing nightmare and challenging characters in the dream time in a conscious way and doing a deep level of self healing. So just to put that seed in your head that there's possibilities in the dream time that are even more expansive than just remembering your dreams. So no matter what self knowledge within productivity is key. Self inquiry is a massive part of productivity, and procrastination often stems from internal blockages to the task at hand. The more you understand yourself, the easier it is to break through stagnation and inertia in relation to your creative work . Remembering your dreams indeed can take you to a new level of dedication and determination to do so. And sure, you might not remember your dreams every night. But with a little practice and intention, you can remember your dreams at least three times a week. So some people do have challenges around remembering their dreams and might even feel like they don't dream at all. Well, it's been proved that everybody goes into a REM state, and so everybody does dream. But it might be the piece of remembering your dreams that's challenging. And if that's true, don't get discouraged. In this next part. We're gonna talk about tools to help with your dream recall, so there are ways that you can enhance it. 5. Tools to Remember you Dreams: here they are first. Most important is to get enough sleep because of your not sleeping enough. You're not dreaming enough. And also really, the sleep that happens in the later chunk of your dream cycles are the ones that you're most likely to remember. So say that you wake up to go to the bathroom at four. In the morning, and then you go back to bed for a few hours before waking up to start the day. You are more likely to remember that chunk between, say, four and six. Then you are the chunk between when you first go to bed and are sleeping for a couple hours . And so making sure that you are not depriving yourself of sleep increases the probabilities of actually remembering your dreams. The next thing you can do is stay in the same position when you wake up or return to the position you woke up and it can be easy. Teoh jump out of bed or to leap up, or to try and get just started. As soon as you wake up from your dream time, go about doing all your things, may be looking at your phone, maybe going and rushing off to start getting ready for the day. But if you can stay in the position that you woke up in or even just turned back, so you were sleeping on your right side turned back to your right side and close your eyes for a few minutes, you might at first feel like, Oh, I'm not remembering this. I can't remember my dreams. But then slowly, little pieces might start coming back through. And so what's important is to catch those pieces and then go to writing in your dream journal In the link below, You can find a dream journal that I've created that helps in his formatted, specifically for remembering dreams and in a focused way, understanding the dream signs that are coming up and the different feelings you're having around these dreams and really tapping into the intuition and the insight that your dreams maybe giving you. But no matter what type of dream journal you have, the most important part is keeping one, because even if you write down one sentence, even if you can only remember a flash of the dream, it signifies to your subconscious that you are interested in listening to it and that you're interested in remembering your dreams. And by signifying that you'll find that over a few days of writing down just the faintest little snippets of what you can remember. Your dreams become more vivid, and you're memory of them becomes more and more clear. So if you don't have time to write down the full dream cause dreams can be elaborate in the morning. You can take notes in the form of key moments significant and mystery etcetera to trigger your memory later. So I find that it can be tempting to say, Oh, I'll just remember that dream. There's no way I'm gonna forget that, so I'll write it down at the end of the day. But then the end of the day comes and you're like, Wow, what if it that dream go? I I have no recollection whatsoever of any points of the dream. So if you can even take a few moments just to jot down, you know, walking my dog or purple sky, any elements or visuals that will trigger that dream and bring it back to you, it's really important to just get those notes down because chances are you probably will have the dream fade out quite a lot by the end of the day, if you're saving it to right then or if you're saving to write that the next day. So I know you don't always have time in the morning to write down your dreams. But if you can even just jot a few notes, you're gonna have a lot easier time remembering them when the time comes to write them all the way down. Another big part is silencing the self defeating talk. I find this even for myself at this point of working with my dreams for so long that I will wake up many mornings and say, I cannot remember my dreams from last night and if I just go with that, then, yeah, I don't remember my dreams. But if I lay in that position for a few more minutes, if I closed my eyes again, if I try to catch even the tiniest little hint of what the dream might have been, I find that all starts flooding back into me. Slowly but surely So don't let yourself think. Oh, I can't remember my dreams and just write it off because when you say that you're making that a reality. But if you stay with it, if you try to remember even one little detail, you'll be amazed how much more of the dream might unravel and unveil itself to you. So now we're going to do some journal questions for your dream self. The 1st 1 is, How often do you remember your dreams in a week right now? So think about that. Do you remember him once a week? Do you remember zero times a week? Do you remember him seven days a week? How often do you remember your dreams? And when you first wake up, do you have a vivid recall, a hazy recollection or no memory whatsoever of your dreams? Do you immediately get out of bed without taking time to remember your dreams? What is your morning and teen look like right now surrounding your dreams? Look at one recent dream that you remember. How did you feel when you are thinking about the dream? Was it reflecting anything about situations in your waking life? Did it contain any insight? So think back to that dream and try to remember how it felt and then what is your goal for the relationship you have with your dream world? What are you wanted to work on and what kind of relationship where you wanted to create with your subconscious self through this stream work. So this encompasses the full dream would recall practice. We're tapping into your subconscious for productivity. As I said before, you can dive way deeper into this world of dreaming and lucid dreaming. But for now, just starting the day with remembering your dreams is so important. So make sure you take time to answer these questions and to really think about how you're wanting to interact with your dream world and how you're wanting to work that into your morning routine. 6. Healthy ways to Wake Up your Body: So now we're gonna lick at healthy ways to wake up your body as we know caffeine screens, anything that gives you a quick surge of chemicals to your brain. As tempting as they are, always make you feel like you're on a roller coaster of hits and like you need this external substance to be to function properly. That's not really what we want to be doing in the mornings or throughout the days. We want to feel at peace and imbalance that sticks with us throughout the day. And that comes from an internal source rather than a dependence on external sources. In this section, working uncover beneficial tools that you can include into your morning routine to wake up and feel excited about the day ahead. We're gonna look at ways to wake up your body that actually help with the health of your body and your overall well being. So this is a funny little a name about coffee and productivity way all think that yeah, coffee is totally gonna raise my productivity levels throughout the day and feel like when we're first drinking it like woo Yeah, we're doing it. But then we can start feeling anxious or we can start feeling stressed or we start feeling tired. I know for myself I have a really hard time with coffee. I love the way it tastes. I love drinking it. But then when I do, I feel so many side effects, like a sick stomach or system or anxiety or stress over on overcharged type of energy. So really finding ways that are gonna give us energy that aren't gonna make us crash that are gonna make us feel anxious is the goal here. So instead of coffee, what if you drank water? I know it doesn't sound as delicious or tempting or exciting as coffee, but water is super important for your health, as I'm sure is no secret to any of you. And starting the day with water and especially warm water actually increases the benefits of hydration tenfold. First off it AIDS and digestion, drinking water and especially warm water in the morning, a sister body in flushing out the residual toxins of the day and the day before it breaks down the food in your digestive tract that may be having a hard time breaking down and flushes it out and as a bonus. If your body is having a hard time digesting something, the warm water will dissolve it and flush it away. It also has laxative effects. So if you're susceptible to becoming constipated, water provides the lubrication to get things going. When you sleep, your body is going to a really deep level of healing. And so in the morning, by drinking warm water, you help your body to get rid of what might be clogging it up and bogging you down. And those things can actually be. What makes you feel so groggy in the morning, So constipation is often caused by dehydration and water since stimulates your bowel movements and helps you to go so that you can feel really not bug down starting day, but clean the how and ready to get productive and get moving. It also ups your metabolism and curves unhealthy cravings. So it helps you to increase your body temperature, which increases your metabolic rate. And by increasing all of this, you can burn more calories and curb unhealthy food and drink cravings, cause a lot of times we're craving sweets or we're craving really let starchy things because we want energy. But in fact, when we balance our metabolism, we have water. And when our system is running smoothly, your body won't feel the cravings for those is strongly. And so instead of turning to orange juice or other sugary drinks first thing in the morning or coffee with a bunch of tablespoons of sugar import into it. Give your body the nutrients that it is authentically looking for by keeping it hydrated. It also calm is your central nervous system and improves your circulation. So by lubricating your body, your nervous system is calmed, which results in less pain throughout your body. And just as warm baths help your arteries and veins expand. Better carry blood through your body. Drinking warm water does that on the inside, so by common you're nervous. Assume you're able to again find that piece that balance, that you can move through the day with being fully hydrated and just like looking at the phone or looking at screens they're drinking. Coffee sets the tone for them, doing that throughout the day to re up by drinking water. First thing in the morning, you're setting the tone for staying hydrated throughout the day, which will help with brain fog, which will help you to stay focused. Well will help me to feel really good so that if your body is functioning well, then you can get stuff done really well, and you won't be distracted by body and balances, and it also detoxify eyes. So, like we said before, warm water raises your internal body temperature. And if you combine this with light exercise and you can get sweating, then you're able to move even more toxins out of your body, which will make you feel lighter and more able to function throughout the day. If it's hard for you to drink warm water in the morning, you could think about adding little enhancements, which I definitely do myself. You can add some lemons and ginger peppermint. I also like to add some chlorophyll to my water, which gives it a pretty green color. It tastes good. There's minutely would coral Phil, and it also increases the health benefits of the water and that we can look at it like it's a little special. Treat this special water drink the swarm lemon ginger water, but resist the temptation to add a lot of sugar to it. Try not adding honey to your warm water. Um, just first thing in the morning, at least to let it be truly water as the base and not trying to make it this sweet treat that you're getting after you've hydrated with your warm water. If you need some extra assistance continuing to wake up, you can go for a walk or a jog. Light exercise, especially out of nature, helps to boost your circulation and metabolism. It releases tension and tight muscles, and it gives your eyes of break from staring at screens, especially if your work requires you to sit a lot or be very sedentary. Starting your day with some light exercise to get your body moving could be super helpful for your overall well being. It releases endorphins, which are the chemicals produced in your brain to minimize pain and discomfort and help you feel good so they also reduce the stress hormones in your body, these endorphins, and so they maximize your sense of peace. So it's really a great way to release the natural endorphins within your own body, to feel awake and alive and to decrease the pain of sitting every day and really get your body moving and other things. That sunlight first thing in the morning sets your internal clock to wake up mode. And so, instead of having to start the day looking at the screen, which also kind of simulates through blue, light this outside natural light. Why not get the source and set your circadian rhythms to be attuned with sun and with the natural world? It also signifies that it's time to stop producing melatonin, which is the hormone responsible for sleep. So sunlight tells your body. Okay, stopped. It's time to stop producing melatonin, and you're automatically going to be feeling more awake because that's happening within your body. It gives you more energy overall. So when you take on a light exercise routine you up the levels of oxygen in your body. This improves your endurance, your stamina, your cardiovascular system. It might feel like a push in the morning to get out of bed and start exercising. Start moving. You might feel like you don't have the energy to work out, but ironically, you get the energy by working out, so don't think of it like I need energy to work out think I need energy, so I will work out so I will go outside and it's gonna help you be more focused. Throughout the day, in a study published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine, they discovered that exercise improves visual learning, decision making and attention. So for productivity, exercise is really helpful. If you can't get outside because of weather or any other reasons, then you can still do. Little. Exercise is within your house, jumping jacks, running around your house a little bit. You know, the hit style of doing quick, high intensity movements and exercises and then taking little breaks. This could make it so that it only takes 10 minutes out of your day, five minutes out of your day to get your blood pumping to get your energy moving and up. And it's like we said before it leads to more energy, so it will wake you up and make you feel like you can get going, even without the chore of having to go to the gym or having to go somewhere special to exercise. You could even just put on some good music and dance around your room for 10 minutes. You know what should be a funding. It doesn't have to feel like this huge tour to go exercise. Let it be a part of your morning routine. That's just a fun, exciting little way to get your energy going to get waking up and to get feeling really good. 7. Journaling about your Wake Up Techniques : Another thing you can dio is stretching, and I put this photo here because I have a seriousness of humor. I'm not flexible at all, and you don't need to be like this guy, either. If you are, that's amazing. I give you mad props, but you can stretch your body in non extreme ways and still feel the benefits of it. Gentle stretching is a great way to wake up your body and feel good in it. And it's a vital component, especially if you're sitting down and sing in front of your screen for a lot of the work day. I know for me a big part of my work and a big part of my day is sitting down, and I feel it on my body getting tight and my joints and muscles getting sore from that constant sitting. And so it's so vital to stretch your body even just a few minutes or a few seconds in the day can help you to get your posture aligned for the rest of the day could help you feel more loose and encourage you to take stretch bigs throughout the day. So starting your morning with a little bit of gentle stretching could be a really good way to set the tone for prioritizing your posture and your body's well being amidst all of the work that you have to do and amidst the tons of sitting that we do nowadays in our culture . So how can you wake yourself up? Now? It's time to journal a little bit about this. How do you currently wake up in the morning? What do you use to help yourself wake up? Coffee is screen time. Is it? You know, jumping out of bed and taking a quick shower. What are the ways that you wake up currently? And how do you feel after waking up this way? Does it give you energy for the rest of the day? Or do you crash? Do you feel sustained by it? Do you get anxious? Try to notice and track the ways that your current modes of waking up make you feel throughout the day. How would you like to feel in your mornings waking up? Would you like more energy? Would you like to feel more clearheaded? What would you if you could have any feelings in the morning? What would you like them to pee. Which of the wake up techniques in this section most appeals to you? It's not that you have to do all of them, but it may be one or two or a few of them really sound like Okay, it might be a little push it first, but this is something I could do. This is something I could take on. I could definitely put a glass of water by my bed and night so that when I wake up first thing, I drink it or I could definitely do a few stretches in the morning. So just think about what you could work into your morning routine. That's reasonable, but could also give you a bunch more energy and productivity and leave you feeling really good. And where in your morning routine, would you like these wake up techniques worked in? So think about which stages of your morning which he will begin to start thinking about structuring our morning routines, which we're gonna go way more into. But think about which parts of your morning you could fit in these wake up techniques to wake up and feel really excited and livens about the day. So next we're going to go to morning mindfulness and how you can start your day in a mindful way. But first, just make sure you take time to journal around these questions and start thinking about which of these morning wake up routines you work in and maybe even brainstorm other ones that I haven't mentioned, but other ways that feel really helping to wake up and to start your day. 8. What is morning Mindfulness?: being mindful, meditating. It doesn't have to look like any one thing in this section. We looks for ways to incorporate an element of mindfulness into your morning routine without forcing it. If sitting on a cushion and meditating with your eyes closed is what works for you, that's great. But if you can't get there with that techniques, um, there are other techniques out there, and there are so many ways to bring yourself into presents and mindfulness in the day that no one is better than the other. It's about getting into that space of peace. It's not about how you get there. If you could be present throughout the day, it will help you get into a flow state with all of your creative tasks. And that state of being in the flow is essential for getting stuff done effortlessly. So we're gonna go over some ways that you can bring a mindfulness practice into your morning that aren't just meditating in silence. It's the first thing that you can dio is when you get up to spend some moments, spend some minutes looking out your window rather than letting yourself said come to the monkey mind of endless looping thoughts, worries and all of the things that you have to get done. You can clear your mind off, is a blank slate and allow the true inspiration to enter The active. Meditating causes the pituitary gland in your brain to release endorphins, which endorphins again like we talked about before in the exercise section, make you feel good both emotionally and physically. And when you feel good, you're more prized to want to get things done and to be a creative person. You, when looking out the window, should try toe watch life from a nonjudgmental space. So without passing judgment about was going on outside of your window, Try to just look at it from the space of awe and wonder like you're watching it for the very first time. Notice what people are doing outside notice what nature is doing. If there's any animals playing, watch them for a while and just let yourself see how it feels to just be an observer from a nonjudgmental space. So again, just be present with the natural world, especially notice how the trees air swaying in the wind, notice what the brothers like outside and how that makes you feel internally and just take it all in and reflect on your place in the world. Reflect on your place in the day, reflect on who you are in relation to the natural world and all surrounds you watching nature. It really does help you to mindfully start the day. And here are some reasons why that is, first of all, like I was touching on the last light. It helps you remember your connection to the world. It helps you remember that there's so much around you and you're not alone in this experience called life. Secondly, it simultaneously is calming and entertaining. So unlike your phone, which provides a fast pace overload of information, nature is simple and yet vastly fascinating. When you let yourself relax into it, the feeling that you're doing that what you're doing is boring, especially if it's with this practice of watching. Nature is most likely in resistance to not having the high level of stimulation that your phone provides. But practicing settling into a relaxed level of stimuli will help you to carry that throughout the day were so bombarded by so many things grabbing for attention nowadays that it can feel like if we're not having that level of simulation, life is boring. But actually, toe, let your nervous system settle back into a more calm pace of stimuli is going to be really beneficial for you throughout your day. It also increases gratitude when you realize how you are a piece of this whole symbiotic Weber wife. So take time to reflect on that, and you might not be able to help. It feels a little grateful to be alive and be a part of it all. Natural light like I talked about in the previous section is a great way to wake up, and it's a mood booster. And so the phone, like we said, it creates this man made source of blue light. But the sun is the best way to start your circadian rhythm. So if you can't go outside, if you can't go on a walk outside, at least let yourself get that suddenly by looking outside and by watching the day pass by . The next thing that you can do while looking outside. If just watching is a little bit too much of a push for you or if you've been watching for a while and want to engage a creative element into it. You can draw, but you see outside, or that's what you see in your environment at home. You know, in your living room, whatever, but just take some time to get into a present flow state as well. Start to get some of your creativity flowing and let yourself draw without judgment again. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece that you're drawing. It can be things that you imagine or C in the real world. And again, don't make it perfect. It could just be a free flow. It doesn't have to be good. Just let yourself effortlessly scribble and doodle, and in that you can kind of zone out, so to speak. But really, it's just the practice of becoming president. With the activity that you're doing, letting your creativity flow and wander in a non structured, it has to be perfect. It has to be this way take of way, and when you let yourself get into a flow state with your doodles, you might be amazed by how present you are. In fact, you might want to set a timer for this exercise that you don't wind up spending all morning doing it because it could be easy to get carried away in a doodle and then look at your clock and realize you're late for work because you've been doing so long. But definitely give yourself time to enjoy this practice. 9. Mindfulness Techniques: another thing that has become a big practice for me in my mornings and I would encourage you to incorporate to is having tea time tea session for yourself? It could be a super mindful act and the meditation of sorts, so there's a lot of different types of tea ceremonies all around the world. There's the Chinese gongfu style. There's Japanese tea ceremony. Even the British have their tea. Time and T is a wonderful way to bring a present, especially if you treat it as a practice of presence and meditation through the act of preparing your tea, sipping it, you can become present with the subtle energies of the tea and how it is affecting you. If it's a herbal to you, feel the herbs and how they are awakening and supporting your energy to to stimulating or caffeinated tea. Feel where in your body and how you're being awakened by that T. It's quite healthy for you. Many types of teas have anti microbial and free radical reducing properties. There also ricin into accidents and many other supportive herbs and compounds that really help you to prevent diseases and help your cardiovascular system become healthier and it's a much better source of caffeine than coffee, while the most he's don't have as much caffeine as coffee. The smaller amount is actually better for you Overall. In fact, T has l feigning which, along with other amino acids, help to slow down how quickly your body absorbs the caffeine and so it doesn't hit you in the same way, and it's more sustainable. It's not a roller coaster, but it's a slow rise and gentle way to wake you up. It also regulates your blood sugar. So rather than having orange juice again like we talked about after you had your water, if you'd like a little treat, so to speak of a nice type of drink, why not go for some tea? Because it is been shown, especially green tea, to actually regulate your blood sugar so even more when you drink tea after Millikan, help reduce the blood sugar levels. So rather than spiking you up and giving you a jolt again, it will help to calm those sugar and unhealthy cravings because it's regulating and balancing out your system, and it reduces inflammation. So this is the ability to help your intestines and throughout your body just produced information in your body, which leads to less pain, less negative symptoms with throughout the body and just an overall sense of well being and feeling great. So, uh, great thing to do while you're drinking your tea is to do a little journaling to become even more present with teeth. So what does the T look like as you pour water over the leaves, Notice that reflect on it, write about it a little bit and see how the different teas look in the different teas feel . How did you feel as you get ready to take your first sip at anticipation that excitement before just going mindlessly into doing it? Take a time to be present with the feeling of anticipation. What are the flavors of the first set? How does it taste to you? How does it feel in your body as you take that first cope And how did the colors change as you drink it, watching the progress of the tea, watching the passage of time through the teas, darkening and laid it lightning. And then how do you feel energetically as you drink the tea? Do you feel energized? You feel calm, so you feel balanced. Really? Come in. Tune with the substance that you're taking into your body and be present with your physical body through that, and where do you feel it in your body? Do you feel it going to a certain space? Do you feel the energy is moving and increasing your circulations or your hands or getting warmer? What are you feeling inside of your body as you drink tea? Another great way to meditate, one that I personally love is movement. Meditation, now sitting still, is not the only way to meditate. And it doesn't mean that it's the best way to meditate just because it's the one that's been closest linked to meditation in the media and in the way that we perceive meditation again, there's so many different ways and a great way to become present, grounded and in your body can be through movement. So try putting on some gentle music, closing your eyes and clearing all the thoughts from your mind. Let the music move. You set a certain amount of time that you will do it for and then close off all externals extractions. Do it somewhere that you'll be uninterrupted and notice your body completely. What moves you, Where you moving from? What do you notice in your body as you do it? This could be another way to start stretching and getting into the tight places of your body and just letting the music move you and be fully present with that. 10. Setting Actionable Goals: Okay, so now we're getting into how to set actionable goals. This is really the heart of productivity. Is being able to set goals and format them in a way that you can actually get them done? I think that it's important to take a holistic approach to your productivity, looking not just on what needs to get done, but all the elements that surround and support you getting those things done. So having virtual around setting your goals in the morning for the rest of the day is a great way to set the tone for productivity as well. A self care If you think that you can just keep all your goals and tasks in your head, and it's easier that way, there are actually really good reasons why you should be writing your goals down rather than just trying to keep them all in your head. The first thing is you can get more organized with what you want to achieve. By breaking your goals into actionable chunks, you can get focused and make it happen rather than just reviewing them in your head. Writing them down is a powerful way to actually get them done. Getting them all down on paper lets you Uncluttered your mind and free of your mental capacity for actually going about doing what needs to be done rather than stressing about it. So once you written it down, don't keep thinking about it. Just move on to the next task when he needs writing down. It also makes your progress easier to track when you write them down. At the end of the day, you'll be amazed to see just how much you were able to get done. Not feeling of accomplishment, and positive emotions associated with that provide a positive reinforcement for getting even more down the next day. Reviewing that list and seeing all that you were able to check off shows you that you are able to get a lot of stuff done in a day, and it allows you to really appreciate all that you've done Vividly. Describing your goals is strongly associated with success. In fact, it's been proven that if you can picture your goals vividly your anywhere from one Teoh four times more likely to accomplish them. So that's an amazing, uh, fact that you're actually a lot more likely accomplish your goals if you actually vividly described them as your writing and writing down actually satisfies two levels of mental activity both your external storage and your encoding. What this means is that the external storage aspect is about you storing the information and your goal and an external location your piece of paper, your notebook etcetera. And it's easy to access any time, whereas and coating is a process in your brain, where your hippocampus analyzes the things that we proceed, it's in charge of what gets stored in your long term memory and what gets discarded. Writing improves the encoding process and therefore leads to you having a better chance of actually remembering it. There's also the generation effect, which has been named by neuro psychologist is the fact that people who generate materials themselves have a better chance of remembering those things. So when you write down your goals, you have a twofold advantage and that you are producing the content once and when you create a picture of it in your mind and then a second time when you write it down. So you have a twofold way of remembering that information. If you write your goals down your 42% more likely to actually achieve them. You get clear on what you want to accomplish. You begin to strategize on how to get those things done, and it tells again your subconscious mind that meeting your goals is a priority in your life. By focusing on in your solutions and achievements, you create more success in your life rather than worrying and focusing on the problems. One system of goal setting is the smart goal setting system, and it's very popular in the business world because it ensures that the goal you set can truly be achieved. Now. Smart goals are specific, meaning they keep in mind this specific thing that you want accomplish. So if your goal is to write a book, that's a pretty general goal. So get specific about the type of book you want to write, how long it is and who it appeals to. The next is that it's measurable. Staying with the example of reading a book, how do you make your goal measurable? Do you have the golden right? A certain number of pages a day, Or perhaps you have a deadline for when the whole book needs to be complete. Make sure you can measure your progress as you go so you can both see what you're accomplishing. And also I understand how the progress is happening and how you can measure that progress. A really important part of a goal is that it's actually achievable. So what are the skills that you need to reach? Your goal is a realistic goal to begin with. If you're trying to write a book, but you've never written more than five pages, maybe you need to start with a smaller target and then work up to writing a whole book. What a first rate goal was to write a block post once a week for a month, getting those writing muscles and the flow of doing it working and moving for yourself. And then you set the goal for writing a book. If you set a goal that's too large in the beginning and you try to go at it too quickly, run the risk of getting discouraged and then just giving up on the whole goal altogether. So by setting smaller, achievable goals to begin with, then working your way up to the big ones each time, you're positively reinforcing that you have the ability to get it done. The next piece of the smart goal is that it's relevant. So if ical isn't important to you, the chances are that you're probably not gonna be that motivated to get it done. Why is this go important to you? Why do you feel you need to get it done? Make sure it's a goal that you care about rather than something you think you ought to dio . What is the motivation behind meeting your goal? This is gonna be a massive indicator of if you will actually accomplish that goal or not if it's not really a miracle. But it's somebody else's goal that they set for you. Chances are that your motivation isn't going to be there, and your heart's not really gonna be in it. Lastly, your goal should be time bound somehow. If you just say you want to write a book someday, that doesn't really give a grounded reason to start working on and start getting chunks of the book written. So have your goal focused in time, be able to new trickle in a certain amount of time rather than telling it are letting it be some open idea that someday you're gonna accomplish it. Having it bound to time gives you accountability with yourself. So here's an example. Taking it back from the goal of writing a book. Like we said, maybe that's a really big one to start out with. What if you had a goal of writing an article or a blogged by the end of the day on one day , So to keep it specific, you're gonna have it be one article to make it measurable. How long of article be will it be? Five paragraph split, only one page. Haven't be immeasurable amount of written material. Next, is it achievable? Are your proficient writer Do you need help? Do you need to watch or take some courses on how to write great blogged articles? Do you already have the skills you need to make this an achievable goal? Or do you need to go out and get those skills in order to be able to make this an achievable goal? Next? Is it relevant? Does this article help you propel your business, or is it just kind of a distraction? Is it something that you think you ought to do because you saw a YouTube video somewhere that said, writing blog's is a good way to drive traffic to your business? Or does it really feel like a relevant piece of content that getting it out there is gonna help you to become more energized and help attract the customers that you're looking for? So just make sure your goal is relevant, and then time pound. So for this goal example, if you want to write the article by the end of the day, that is your time bound goal. So then you can be accountable to yourself. At the end of the day, if you were actually able to get that gold met or if you didn't, you can look at what got in the way or what skills you were lacking to be able to do it. And then you can reassess and be able to rework your goal. If you didn't need it by the end of the day, you can rework it and figure out how to make it achievable for the next day. So now we're gonna go and write a smart goal for ourselves, so this could be depending on what time of day you're watching this course, this could be either you writing one in the afternoon or evening for tomorrow or if you're watching this in the morning, and this is a great time to write your goal for the day. So what is the goal that you have? Is there a way you contract progress on it? Do you have the skills you need to achieve it? And how will it help you with your broader goals? And how much time is it gonna take you to Dio? So take your one goal and start writing and answering these questions about your goal to make sure it's a smart goal and to make sure it's achievable for yourself. 11. Time Management Tools: another big piece of getting your goals reached and getting your tasks crossed off. Your list is by managing your time properly in the day. So again, let's take one goal that we have. It can be the goal that you were just working with or a different one, and make a list of that goal that you have and start to break it down into all of the elements that go into achieving it. So if again it's the blogger article. Maybe some elements are research. Blawg writing research block platforms Get my website up, you know, get some kind of marketing plan going so that people will actually be directed to this block. So looking at all of the broader pieces that surround your goal and all of the elements that you need to do in order to make your goal achievable, as well as relevant to your bigger goal that you're trying to accomplish, and under each element that you've broken your large goal into estimate how much time it takes to finish that part of it and be generous with how much time it takes. Another example is if you're trying to create an online course think about how much time is gonna take you to record each video. How much time is gonna take you to do the research? How much time is gonna take you to outline it? How much time? It's going to take you to find music to put behind it. How much time is gonna take you to upload? That way you'll have a a better idea of how many days you need to schedule out the bigger goal for and what parts in what order you need to put the different chunks into. And so then you don't bite off more than you can chew. And one day and end the day feeling discouraged that you didn't get it done thinking, Oh, I'm going to create a whole online course in one day probably isn't realistic thinking. Oh, I'm going to write a whole book in one week unless you're really fast. Writer probably also isn't realistic. So really, understanding how much time each element is gonna take is gonna make it so that you can schedule them out in a way that will make it so you can actually get him done and also understand, if the goal that you're setting is worth how much time it's gonna be taking. So that's the next part, which is adding up the total amount of time it's gonna take to achieve your bigger goal. And if it's a goal for your work, does the amount of time it will take Make sense financially? If you own your own business and you're taking, say, two weeks to achieve the school and putting eight hours a day into the goal? Will it pay off for you in the long run? And if it's a personal goal, does the amount of time it will take make sense energetically if you're trying to get something done in your personal life, like learn the piano or learn a new skill? If it feels like something that you're very passionate about than the time it takes to do, it might feel like of course I want to do that. But if it's something that you think you ought to dio or might be fun to do, just make sure that how much time you will be putting into it you have a realistic idea of how much time that will be and so you don't just give up on it. Once you see that it actually does take practice and time to develop that personal goal, and is there any way it could let take less time and be more efficient for work goals? Do you need to bring in or higher certain contractors or ask for fellow employees for support in certain parts of the goal? That might be hard or a challenge for you to get through. If it's a personal goal, do you need to hire a teacher? Do you need to get support by taking an online course? Are there ways that you can cut out the parts that are gonna take you a really long time and make it a more efficient goal so that you will be more likely to actually do it? Now we're gonna go into the full picture of productive goal setting, and again I created a journal workbook for this specific thing. It's called the Central Book of getting stuff Done and taking care of yourself while you do it. And I created this primarily because I was working with a lot of productivity gold sitting books, and I didn't find any that really touched on all of the elements that I was morning in a productivity book. So in this book, it gives you achievable goals that you write down each day, and it helps you track your goals from the previous day's to. It's a big self inquiry to where you're looking at your goals over a course of five days. And then at the end of those, you do an assessment about how you did meeting the goals. You work on getting things done while they're easy. So you take the goals that air the quickest and easiest for you to get checked off of that list and do those first and at the same time you take care of your body. So this, um, book covers both how to get your goals done as well as you tracking how you're doing with yourself. Care because again, self care is such a big part of having the energy to actually get what you want to get done . Done. And so it gives you sections that you contract how you're doing, taking care of your body, how you're doing, moving your body, how you're doing, staying productive on the relationship with that and how you are focusing on yourself care . It focuses on ways that you can nurture yourself and tools you can do to encourage and congratulate yourself along the way as you've been meeting your goals. It also has you every day, track your gratitude and really see what you're grateful for to build a mind and a outlook that is optimistic and a grateful perspective on life, which helps so much with productivity. Because when you expect the best and when you see all of the little gifts along the way, you can feel like you have a great chance of achieving accomplishing everything that you want to get done. And another big part of it is that it helps you to track your habit patterns like caffeine screen time, how much water you're drinking, how much leisure versus how much work time you're spending and over the different sections you're able to see and track those habit pattern in relation to your productivity and perhaps pick up on patterns that are defeating your ability to get stuff done as well as patterns that are supporting you to get symptoms. So by no means do you have to get this book to be productive. Um, it's just a tool that can support you if it's something you want. But no matter what, look at these different sections of how to set your productive goals and make sure that you're tracking these things and assessing how yourself care is playing a role in your productive ity as well as your habit patterns. Just take a holistic view and a survey of how the different things that you're doing in your life into play with one another and lead doing more productive or less productive way of being. 12. Start your day with Self Care: So now we're gonna look at self care in the morning. Like I've been saying throughout this course, taking care of yourself is a big part of being a productive person. So we're gonna look at some different rituals and routines. You can work into your morning routine that I just little moments of nurturing yourself. First thing that you can dio is take a shower, which you might already do is a part of your morning routine. But in this square can add in extra element of doing a brock dry brush and taking the shower from a place of looking at it as this way to nurture yourself rather than just this thing you jump into to get clean really quick and then jump out of. So as you started to flush out the toxins from the previous day through drinking water, doing some light exercise, stressing now you're gonna be able to rinse them off with a nice shower. Um, another thing that I would encourage you to do is again treat this like a spa day and for an added bonus, just really taken time to nurture yourself and to enjoy the shower time so dry brushing is really nice because it's able to wake up your nervous system a bit to get off that skin cells, and how you do it is. You get a dry brush and you start with your feet brushing the bottoms of your feet and moving up your legs and smooth and steady strokes While you're brushing. You want everything to be going towards the center of your body, and while you're doing this, just take time to really enjoy it. Don't have a beauty rushed brush first fresh pressed breast, but take each moment each stroke to be a little mini massage for yourself and rush towards the center of your body. All of the stroke should be going to your heart chest area. Move on to your arms again. Brush towards the centre. Enjoy it, and brushing your back can feel especially amazing because you're able to scratch areas that usually you can't be through their hands. So make sure, really just get in there and get in any areas that might be extra itchy or sore and finished by brushing your abdomen and chest very gently, and then you don't have to dress. Brush your face cause skin on your face is more sensitive. But if you do decide to do that, just be sure to be extra delicate with your face. And while taking a warm shower can be really luxuriating, an amazing but cold shower has some added benefits, so you can even start with a warm shower and then just end with a few moments of cold shower. It increases your circulation by incorporating the cold water because it causes the blood in your body to rush to the surface of your skin. And this improves the blood through flow throughout your body and especially your limbs. So if you have cold hands and feet, this could be really helpful to increase circulation there. It's another national way to wake yourself up, and stays have shown that cold showers hope to stimulate the adrenal glands, which wakes you up and boost your energy. So again, instead of drinking coffee instead of looking your screen, maybe just jump in the shower and turn it too cold the last few minutes. It also keeps you from getting as many colds because it has been shown that morning showers that are cold can help produce more white blood cells in your body and user vital to staying healthy and to fighting off any colds or flu is that might be around. You can also help stimulate your lymphatic fluids, which helps you to, um, turned these channels on that cleanse out the toxic buildup in your body. So cold showers air. Great way to get those little Batic fluids and your limps moving and feeling energized in the ability to cleanse out your body So we may be. If you don't want to go from hot to cold just one time and you can go back and forth, have it be a warm shower and then turn into cold and then back to warm and cold. It's a great way to wake up your body than to just feel very alive and charged up. And after you get out of the shower, make sure to moisturize and again treat it like a little massage that you're giving yourself to. And while you're doing it, just feel and tap into loving your body exactly as it iss and taking good care of it. Next. A great thing to Dio when you're waking up in your morning, your teen is to cultivate gratitude, thinking about what you're grateful for. You can even do this while taking your shower. But having an optimistic outlook like I've been saying really helps you to get more done because it helps you appreciate all the wonderful things already present in your life. In our culture, we can be so forward in future focus that we forget to appreciate what is, I mean, a black to be a compliment accomplishments we've already achieved. We missed the blessings right in front of us, and furthermore, our focus on problems that need to be solved similarly to starting the day with work can leave us feeling overwhelmed and hopeless by turning that attention to the good things and the things that we feel a sense of optimism about. We set ourselves up for success because even when hard times and challenges come across your path, you're able to handle them. You can. You really can't control anything that's outside of you, but you can control your internal way of looking and reacting to situations, so that is the best thing toe work on is your inner reactions and that state of piece that you can maintain within yourself. So to cultivate this gratitude, we're gonna do a little journaling around it first. What do you have to be grateful for today again, In the productivity workbook that I created, this is a focus of each day writing down three things at the end of the day that you're grateful for. And so you can start by just thinking about one thing that you're grateful for. What are you grateful for? In regards to your body? We spend a lot of time focusing on the things we wish were different with our bodies. The things that are feeling imbalanced, unhealthy. This ease. You know, we focus on a lot of the problems with their bodies, but it's really important to take the time to be grateful for even little things grateful to be breathing, grateful to be feeling well in certain ways, we pull for the ways that you are able to move through the world, really focusing on that you were blessed to have a body to be experiencing this life and all of the ways that you're happy with it, and that goes into the cells of your body and really helps yourself to feel more at peace with the body that you're in next. What people in your life are you grateful for? It can again be easy to focus on the interactions we've had in the day that are frustrating and ways people have annoyed us or not showing up for us or betrayed us. But really, it's also important to think about who we're grateful for. If it's, you know, the smile that you got at the post office. If it's the person that supports you day in and day out, there's always something to be grateful for. And by expressing and showing gratitude that we have for other people, we build on that gratitude. We build on that love in our lives. What are you What about your work? Are you grateful for again? There could be things about our work and stresses out making me things about our work we wish were different. But what about your work is feeding you? What about your work? Do you enjoy? And are you thankful for? What have you recently achieved or accomplished? And how did that feel? It could be easy to settle these goals and to meet them and then just move on to the next school without even feeling that sense of joy and pride, and that we have accomplished that big hole. So taking time to really appreciate what you have been able to achieve thus far really set your mind up for wanting to get goals done, because you give yourself that congratulations after you finished it. Did you take time to celebrate the goals that you've accomplished? If not, what could you do to celebrate? Now? Can you give yourself a little special treat? Can you do something that you enjoy doing very much? Taking time to celebrate our goals makes it so that we want to achieve and accomplish even more goals. 13. Decluttering Your Life: another thing that I'm gonna propose. As so Care Act is cleaning and organizing your space as an act of self care. It might feel like self punishment rather than an act of self care. But your inner experience is deeply affected by your outer world by your surroundings, even if it's on a subconscious level. Cleaning your space first thing in the morning sets the tone for the entire day. If you can switch to looking at it as a way to take care of yourself and how you feel throughout the day, it'll feel less like it. Sure and more like a joy. And as a bonus, if you start each day with a cleanup reset of your space, you'll never have to face the huge, daunting task of cleaning after your space looks like a tornado headed. You'll do it a little bit each day and keep it at that small level so you can think about it this way. When you have a party and cleans last, get your guests to help you clean that night. How does it feel? The wake up in the morning knowing that the place is all clean. First, the feeling of having to clean up the next morning after a big party. How about doing your dishes as soon as they get dirty instead of letting them pile up in the sink cleaning each day, it gives you the peace of knowing that you don't have a huge mess to clean down the road. Furthermore, when you clean, you start your day off feeling accomplished, because the first thing you do is accomplishing a task that you might not necessarily feel compelled to dio. So this starts off a chain reaction of achieving other goals. Less clutter makes everything cleaner, and you strained up your room. First thing, your room automatically feels fresh, and furthermore, studies have found that people with clean houses are healthier overall than those with meth messy houses. So your cleaner and everything feels cleaner. You can also focus better. The reason for this is that researchers at Princeton University have discovered that the visual cortex is overwhelmed by task relevant objects. So this makes it harder to give your full focus and attention to a task at hand because other objects are distracting from that task. If your room is in chaos, then you're gonna have a harder time focusing on the task at hand because visual you will have so many distracting elements in your space. It also helps you to save time and energy. When your space is clean and organized. You know everything is that makes getting tasks done that much easier because you can effortlessly navigate to any tools you might need to finish your job any elements and pieces that you need to get the task done. When you, on the other hand, spend time searching through clutter for a central piece of paper to complete a task or in a special element, you burn yourself out before even starting on that tasks of keeping yourself in your space neat and clean. You can enjoy all the free time and energy that comes with it because you're not spending that time searching for things, taking it a step further beyond the physical space. You can also look at the clutter in your digital space. Do you have thousands of emails in your inbox? I am definitely guilty of this one. And does your desktop look like files just exploded onto it? Do you have notifications turned on for every little Instagram and Twitter Post and like Well, if that's the case, these elements can cause a digital clutter overload. And they have a very similar effect on your psyche, as the physical clutter does. When there are copious amounts of digital clutter, your ability to perform a creative task is eroded in your brain has too much on its plate. It becomes harder to filter information, switch between tasks and keep your memory strong. So, really, making sure to de clutter your space is a great way to take care of yourself and thus get more productive. 14. Finding Inspiration: So now we're gonna work on getting our creative slow going, getting your creativity flowing. There's lots of ways to start feeling more creative in the morning and then carrying that out through the rest of the day. There's this concept of found time, which was getting really popular right now, and it's when you're able to utilize your time wisely and take moments like driving or cooking toe. Add in task that you might not have time for otherwise. So when you're getting ready in the morning, you may feel like extra time is the last thing you have. But by using his little found moments, you're not only doubling your productivity, you're actually realizing this spaciousness and each moment so you can really use this. Found time to get inspired. You can listen to podcasts while doing your breakfast cooking or doing with stretching and having a being able to multitask evidence. An extra motivation your day. In multiple studies, they found that podcast stimulate mint mental imagery and the listeners imagination, thus leading to higher levels of emotional involvement in the information presented. I've recently just gotten really into podcasts, and it's amazing how many different types there are out there similarly audio books that are a great resource. They're a great way to stimulate your mind while doing other tasks. Another thing you can dio is read a relevant and inspirational book each morning, perhaps while sipping your tea or sitting peacefully in a meditative state than you can. Once you've done that transition into stimulating your mind with things that you want to be excited about, inspiration is a key to productivity until living a very successful life. There's so much information out there this day and age that you can educate yourself on almost any subject matter for a very low cost. So this isn't about overwhelming yourself. It's about creating and cramming a bunch of things into every moment. It's about doing multiple things. You enjoy it once and getting inspired first thing in the morning. Another thing that you can do like we talked about before, is to drive a looking out the window, and by doing that, you're getting in a creative flow that's not judgmental, not perfectionistic, but just enjoying the active. Creating a great thing that you can also dio in the morning time is to learn new skills and take online courses like this one. Maybe that's even what you're doing right now, and warnings can be the perfect time to participate in online course, even if you just do one model, Um, a morning. Even if you just do a few minutes each morning, you're starting off the day, setting a importance and value on yourself education. So if you lack when you're setting your goals, if you lack a skill that you need to actually achieve that goal in the smart goal structure , you can take a course on that goal in the morning and be able to then develop and get the skills that you need to take your packs. Passions to the next level the information for pretty much any skills out there. So take time each morning to get a bit more knowledge about something that excites and inspires you. They could be courses that lead to new personal growth goals as well. They don't have to just be work goals. So if you want to get more flexible, maybe take a online yoga class or if you want to learn how to do woodworking or if you want to learn how to invest in stocks. There's so many things that you can stimulate your interest in, and there's so many resources out there, So take time in the morning to really get yourself inspired. So now I want to ask you, What do you want to learn? Make a list of 10 skills or areas of interest that you have currently. And then from this list, pick one item to start with. Start searching for books, podcasts and online courses about this skill, and then pick your favorite resource is out of that list and decide how much time each morning like to spend listening to reading or watching this resource. And when you've done this, then you'll have a great way to piece by piece. Start finding little things that you're inspired about. You want to learn about and go about really learning and taking the time to educate and inspire yourself 15. Take the 5 day challenge - Printable : So we've made it to the final module of this course for your morning routine. And the last step that you're going to take is to fell out this morning routine printable for each day of the five day challenge. Now, of course, you can use this printable and reprinted and reprinted and carry up far beyond the five days. But I would really implore you to at least try and do the five days and really stick to it to start rewiring your habit patterns around your morning routine and getting into a good flow. And through this you'll be able to see what you like, as well as what you might want to shift and change, in which of the suggestions from this morning routine course really work for you in the morning. So with this principle, you can, of course, print it. But it's also available on your computer so you can just open up the pdf and what you're going to do is take your first day and over here in this section, where it says activities done and you take the abbreviations from this chart over here so you don't have to write in all the time. Those long words You have an abbreviation for it, but say that in the morning I was able to do my dream journal. I did my outside meditation. I didn't get to drink warm water. I forgot about that. But I did drink tea and I reset my space. And then I did some exercise through going out on a walk, and I listened to a podcast, so I had my motivation for the day. So here is where you keep track of all of the different things that you did during the day in a nice and easy way, an abbreviated way. And then in this section, just write reflections. After you've done your morning routine, How did it go? So you might say, You know, I felt really energized by my morning and how I spend it, or I felt really productive. Or maybe it was challenging for me. Just see how you feel each day and fill it in there. Over here, this is a place to set your overall goals. So even before you get into the day today, you can go in here and say how you want to feel each morning so I want to feel peaceful. I want to feel joyful. I want to feel creative and so you can fill in the different emotions and the different feelings. Maybe it's productive, but fill in what you want to feel each morning. So then you can reference back to that. And over here in the reflections, see if you're meeting that, See if those emotions are being generated through your morning routine and then down here is a great place to write any distractions that you noticed while you're doing this five day morning team. So maybe looking at my phone was a big distraction. And then I got down on this whirlwind of having to start work in all of this. Um, you know, there's tons of distractions that we can have checking Facebook. Just write down what might have been a distraction for you in your morning and taking you off course of this productive morning ritual and gotten you off track. So do this for five days and see how you feel. See if you're able to shift some patterns and then let me know in the comments how it went for you again. This principle as well as the full morning routine course and the product linked to the productivity workbook, which is a great pairing with this whole course, are all available in the class. Resource is section, so definitely download those. And I hope that you have a wonderful, beautiful, peaceful, creative, self care morning routine that you're able to establish and carry out for the rest of your days, months, years. So here's to all of the great things that you're going to be creative.