Establishing a productive morning routine can be a struggle, especially for students. Whether you have university or work, it can be hard to get out of bed and start your day with clarity.
However, these 3 hacks will make waking up productive for everyone – whether you’re a student who needs to start coursework early, attend a morning meeting, study for your exams or if you just want to start the day right.
You don’t need to have a perfect morning routine, just a solid morning ritual that will get you up and moving. So my 3 hacks will give you a much more productive day.
Why Are We More Productive in the Morning?
Research by Nolan G. Pope (2016) found that morning classes have a positive effect on student’s performance. While the study is not definitive, it has been shown that students who are enrolled in morning classes have higher grades for math and English than those who attend afternoon classes.
Pope couldn’t isolate the exact cause, he speculated that students have a higher learning ability in the morning, class attendance is higher in the morning, or that teachers perform better in the morning.
What could be the cause?
It is likely that students are more alert in the morning because of heightened dopamine production. Dopamine levels peak at around 7am in primates, making mental faculties sharper and clearer, according to one study.
Dopamine is the chemical in the brain that is associated with motivation. In a sense, it’s what keeps you going and motivates you to do your best work.
Do dopamine levels fade through the day?
Yes, but more slowly than other chemicals. Its levels may decrease from around 30-50% by the time lunch rolls around and then it declines steadily after that as you move through your day.
Another factor in morning superiority is melatonin production rate. Melatonin is a hormone released at night which tells the body it’s time to sleep.
Melatonin influences your circadian rhythm, or your body’s internal clock. Melatonin levels are at their highest in the evening and lowest in the morning.
So it’s clear that a productive morning routine is essential to success.
Most successful people follow the same morning routine. That includes waking up at a regular time, drinking plenty of water or tea, and exercising.
So today I will share 3 hacks to help you create a more productive morning routine.
Getting Out Of Bed
The first step in an effective morning routine is to get out of bed. Easier than it sounds, I know.
In my previous article, I gave you a strategy to help you stop hitting the snooze button, and get out of bed in the morning.
To recap, there are three methods:
The first is to put your alarm clock or phone inside wooden drawers at the other side of the room, forcing yourself to get out of bed to turn it off.
The second is to put a sheet of paper in the drawer that present two choices, ‘Go back to bed and nothing changes’ or ‘Go to the bathroom and improve your life’.
The third is to put everything you need to start the day inside the bathroom, so you have to go in there if you want to get ready. This reduces the chance that you’ll return to bed.
So now that you’re up and out of bed, what do you do to keep yourself motivated and productive?
I’ll share my 3 hacks for a productive student morning routine.
Student Morning Routine Hack #1: Nutrition
The first one is nourishment and nutrition, so this isn’t just a throwaway term nutrition, we don’t just use it because it sounds fancy.
This is a crucial part of your morning routine because if you’re not getting enough nutrients, it will be hard to focus on anything else.
You’re going to be working at a really high level studying at university, so you need to sustain your body first thing in the morning.
Think of it like this; if you were driving a car or going on a trip across the country, maybe driving 300 or 400 miles, you need to put sufficient fuel into the tank because otherwise you would cause a lot of damage to the vehicle and it wouldn’t get you to where you want to be.
So you need to get into the habit of looking after yourself, and you need to see your body as the vehicle that’s going to get you to where you want to be and get you to perform to the level that you want to perform.
To do that, you need to eat a healthy breakfast and you need to build breakfast into your routine. Many students go without breakfast. They say breakfast the most important meal of the day for a reason.
Try to eat a couple of slices of toast, a bowl of cereal or a breakfast bar. Fruit is particularly good because it’s high in fibre and good for your gut.
You need more than just coffee to keep you going, even during a very early morning start.
Student Morning Routine Hack #2: Exercise
The second morning hack is to exercise.
Get out and do something, even if it’s a ten minute walk or even a run or stroll. Exercise is really good for the body. It creates endorphins within the body, the feel-good biochemicals that help us get through the day in a more positive way.
This means that you’ll be more likely to feel happy and excited for the rest of the day. It also makes it easier to get through difficult tasks without feeling overwhelmed or frustrated during them.
It also has a positive influence on your state of mind. Exercise can help to combat depression and anxiety, or keep them at bay.
It’s also good for your physical health too; it helps with weight loss, sleep quality and boosting the immune system. It will make you feel healthier in general.
Exercise is a definite must if you want to have a productive morning routine.
It also builds a sense of achievement, which is something that can be lacking in student life. This also leads into my third hack which is…
Student Morning Routine Hack #3: Achieve
Now that you’ve eaten, and you’ve exercised, next is to achieve something.
While this could be something significant, like the completion of an essay or it could be something that might feel quite insignificant, like making a phone call – and perhaps even just to a relative or friend. It could be to pay a bill.
These sort of things can seem very small, but they have a massive impact on our sense of wellbeing.
Humans love routine, and we benefit from exercise and nourishment. We also benefit from being able to know that we’ve achieved something, and it helps to deal with depression.
You see, depression is sustained by feelings of not achieving, not being self-satisfied.
Summary
To become a successful student build these 3 hacks into your morning routine; nutrition exercise and achievement.
You bring them into your daily routine to give yourself a really good kick start the day. Treat them like a ritual.
You don’t have to eat the same things. You don’t have to exercise the same way. You don’t have to achieve the same things. But you know, that’s on the agenda. You do those three things and you give yourself a really positive start to the day and you can take that with you to the rest of the day, week, month, and year.
Eventually your routine becomes very stable and becomes something you can rely upon and you have a good morningroutine that you can benefit greatly from for the rest of your life.