PPI #168: 12 Things You Should Not Do In The Morning

Hey everyone, today I'm going to share with you 12 things that if you're doing, you should stop doing in the morning. Because if you win the morning, you win the day and everything else falls into place.

Hi, my name is Eric Partaker and I've been recognized as one of the top entrepreneurs in the country. And I'm also the author of two best selling books including the three Alarms. So number one, stop hitting the snooze button. If you're hitting the snooze button in the morning, it's not setting your day up for success. You know how it goes, you hit the snooze button once, then twice, and then when you finally do get up, you're feeling a little bit rushed, you haven't had enough time for yourself and it just puts your day in a kind of bad, you know, position. And so what I recommend that you do is to things one is incorporate, and this is from Mel Robbins, incorporate the five second rule into your life. Mel Robbins came up with this technique called the five second rule, where by the moment that you have the urge to do something that you know you should do like, like the best version of you would do, like get out of bed, for example, at the right time, you have five seconds to take action before your brain will try to convince you otherwise. And the funny thing is, is that Mel uses this idea in all situations now throughout her day to kind of fight procrastination and to keep working on the things that matter most and keep being a producer. But the idea originated because she was hitting the snooze button because she was not getting out of bed. And then one day she had the idea, you know, when that alarm goes off, I'm going to be like a rocket ship. She had watched a space shuttle launch recently on TV and apparently she was really taken by the whole, you know, 10, 9, 8, 5, all the way down to the blast off. And so, so she's just simply shortened that and she practiced that. And when her alarm went off, she literally said to herself, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, take off. You know, blast off. And she, boom, she got out of bed. She made sure that she got out of bed within those five seconds, within that five second countdown. So that's one thing that you can do is to start incorporating that five second rule to help you combat the idea of hitting that snooze button. The second thing that you can do is put your alarm clock on the other side of the room out of your arm's reach so that you have no Choice but to get out of bed and shut it off. So stop hitting the snooze button. That's the first thing. Number two, stop going straight onto your phone and onto social media. Now you may say, well, that's a little bit challenging because I actually use my phone as my alarm clock and I talk totally get that. But then stop using your phone as your alarm clock. Get an old school alarm clock online or from the shop and use that instead. I recommend that you actually shut your phone off. Don't even put it on airplane mode. Shut it off when you go to bed and don't have it there as an alarm. And don't have it there as this temptation when you wake up to grab and to start scrolling through things. Why? Because, well, one, it just sucks up a huge amount of time. You can easily spend 10, 15, 20 minutes in your bed on your phone before you've even gotten up. And then you can once again end up in that situation where you don't feel like you have enough time for yourself. You're starting your day feeling stressed out. Instead, phone off, you're using an alarm clock instead and do that. Do not start your day going straight into social media or you know, checking your email and all that while when you do that, it's sort of like, sort of like somebody's like dropped you into, you know, those old school pinball machines and you've been dropped into one of those pinball machines and you're just being bounced around from, you know, one person's agenda to the next and you're not kind of setting or starting the day on your terms. Number three, stop eating unhealthy foods in the morning. They do you no good if you eat unhealthy in the morning. If you going to weigh you down, it's going to depress your mood. If you eat healthy foods, it's going to make you feel light and give you a bit more energy for the day. And you can even try what I try. I don't eat any breakfast. So I do something called intermittent fasting where I have a period of each day where I'm not eating any food and then I'm eating. The majority of my food comes in my lunch and my dinner. So I actually skip my breakfast and I get this fasted start to the day, which actually after a few days of doing it allows your day to start with even, even more energy. But of course you have to choose what works for you. But bottom line is do not put unhealthy things in your body. To start your day, you're starting your day off in the wrong way. Number four, stop winging it. You need a schedule and a plan for your day. If you haven't planned out your day the day before, which is when I actually tend to do it, well, at least spend five minutes in the morning or just two minutes reviewing your day. See meetings you have, when and where, where do you need to be? And look at that free space that you have and think about, well, how would I best use that? How would I use that to further my goals? How would I use that to further my learning? How would I use that to create some mean to me time or some downtime or some time with loved ones, family or friends? But have some kind of schedule and plan to your day. Don't just wing it. Number five, not having a productive routine in the morning, not a great thing. It's not a great way to help you start your mornings out very, very successfully. And a productive routine is simply a routine that allows you to rely on doing certain things at a certain time or perhaps in a certain order that you know will fuel your productivity. So, for example, the prioritization and scheduling that I recommended before that you do as part of your day could be part of that routine, as could reading, as could some other personal development or meditation or visualization. Visualization. It's up to you, but put something together that works and that you think promotes productivity in your day. Next up, leaving yourself and your household a mess or dirty doesn't really help. You know, you want to make sure that you leave time so that you can properly groom yourself and look after yourself and equally that you can tidy up after yourself before you leave the house. You know, it's not very refreshing to come home and see like, oh, yeah, there's where I was eating my cereal and the, the bowl still there, and there's some, you know, bits of cereal around it and some breadcrumbs from a piece of toast, perhaps, and, you know, a dirty coffee cup. Make sure that you have enough time scheduled into your day to clean up after yourself. Because those simple acts of cleanliness for yourself and for your surroundings actually help promote a sense of discipline and structure and. And help promote a better day. Next up is consuming negative or uninspiring content. Kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier about not starting your day by flicking through social media or going into the news. You got to be really careful. You know, the majority of what you see in the news is not positive. It's quite negative stuff. That's unfortunately what kind of sells news wise is stories about conflict or sadness or things happening that people didn't expect often which aren't great. The ratio of positive to negative news stories unfortunately isn't in the favor of positive. So you have to be very careful with the news and with just consuming anything that's going to be negative first thing in the morning because it could really affect your mentality in ways that you don't even see. Number eight, not adequately hydrating. We need lots of water. I think the human body I think can only go about a couple of days without water, whereas you can go up to weeks without food. But water is absolutely essential. And if you think about it, when you've been asleep, you've been kind of having a water fat, you haven't had any water for eight hours. So your body is so thirsty in the morning. And one of the simple things I do every single morning is I just have two kind of big glasses of water, about.

12 ounces or so. Sounds like a lot of water. But I'm trying to replenish all those liquids in my body to give my day, you know, a well hydrated start. Number nine, this might sound super simple, but not making your bed. This kind of relates to the cleanliness point, you know, that I made earlier and picking up after yourself. But very specifically it's so simple when it comes to your bed. When you get out of that bed, make it back up again. It also helps fight the chance that you might use the toilet or go to the bathroom and then you go back to the bed if you've already made it up. But, but that simple act of making your bed every single morning helps foster a sense of discipline and structure in your life so that you can get your day off to a right start. Next up is don't have an inconsistent wake up time. If one day you're waking up at 8am and the next day 7am, and another day 6:30am, next day 9am it gives you nothing to rely on. You know, the end caps of your day, the bookends of your day, your morning and your evening, they are the parts of your day where you can exert the most control. Everything in the middle you can have some control over, but you're a lot more reactive as well to the things that are happening outside of your control. So my point is, is that you should try to put as much control and structure to the start and the end of your day to kind of give you the stability and the foundation to handle that Middle part of your day. A consistent wake up time is one way of doing that so that you can, for example, do the productive routine, whatever you create for yourself, as I mentioned earlier. And the best way to create a consistent wake up time is to go to bed consistently and to make sure that you sleep well. So I have a very consistent time that I go to bed. Granted, it's more consistent Sunday through Thursday than it is on Friday and Saturday, when we have tend to have more social things going on in our household. But Sunday through Thursday, it's very, very consistent. And that means that I'm going to bed around the same time every night. And the same sort of thing, you know, happens to promote that deep sleep. I get into bed. For me personally, I like the room to be a little bit cooler. So I have a fan that I turn on and then I actually use a sleep visor to sleep because it blocks out all of the light. And I find if you haven't tried this, you got to give it a try to see what I mean. But when you block out all the light and it's completely black, I fall asleep within minutes. Like literally two, three minutes, I'm out cold, no tossing and turning, trying to get to sleep. And all of that helps me wake up more consistently every day so that I have the time to do the things in the morning that I want to do to make sure that I start my day off in a winning way. Number 11 on the list. Do not start your day complaining. If you start your day complaining often to other people in your household, it creates a negative energy. And that negative energy reflects back to you, and it creates just a sense of negativity in the house. So bite your lip before you go to complain. Pause, pause between whatever is triggering you and pause and ask yourself, how would the very best of version of me respond to what's happening right now? And it's probably not a negatively emotionally fueled complaint. It's probably some other kind of response. And practice doing that so that you could start your day in the right way. Last but not least, number 12 mistake that people make in the morning is not taking any time at all for your personal growth and development. And I don't mean creating like an entire hour or two, although if you have the capacity to do that, great. And if you think it can work, use that time to read and study or learn something new. But at least taking five minutes, for example, to think about your day ahead, to maybe visualize how will you show up with excellence throughout the day and at the same time, perhaps meditate a little bit. Even if it's just two minutes, eyes closed, use your phone, set the timer to 120 seconds, 2 minutes, and just repeat the word. Relax, Relax. Relax yourself as you breathe in slowly through the mose, through the mose, slowly through the nose and exhale through the mouth. And doing that, having at least some time for your personal growth, development, stability, puts your day on a much, much stronger foundation. And I'd love to hear from you. So don't forget to leave a comment and a rating as well. And if you'd like to get a copy of my new book, the Three Alarms, please head over to my website at ericpartaker.com that's E R I C ericpartaker.com where you can pick up a free digital copy of my new best selling book, the Three Alarms.

Sam.