My Morning Routine in a Bullet Journal: 3 Things I Do in the First Hour of Waking Up

Hey everyone, this is Matt, back with another Bullet Journal productivity video. Hope you're having a great week, and in this episode, I'm gonna be talking to you about how I use the Bullet Journal in my morning routine, and just a little bit more information about how a good morning routine can set up the rest of your day for success. It's been a huge part of the things that have made me more productive in the past several months, and I wanted to share that with you, because I think getting into your morning with intention, being mindful of your time, and just a few very specific things can help you set up the rest of your day for success. So, a couple of things that I want to tell you about before we get started. I just started a new, like, little mini website. It's bulletjournalguy.com. So check that out. That's where you're going to be able to find 3 different printables: the 10 Block Method, the Monthly Planner, and the Time Tracking Grid. So check that out. Again, bulletjournalguy.com. Thank you so much for watching all of these videos. It means so much to me. Give this a thumbs up and a subscribe if you like it. If you're here for the first time, go ahead and watch the rest of the video. Check out the other ones that are gonna be linked in the description and in cards up to the right on your screen. Let's go ahead and jump into what a morning routine and a Bullet Journal together look like. Starting out today with our trusty Baron Fig Confidant notebook. I also have our Staedtler Triplus Fineliner pens and a bunch of wonderful Pigma Microns to use as well. So, got the gear, got the tools, and let's go ahead and hop in. So, when I wake up in the morning, I normally get up around 5:00 AM, sometimes earlier depending on when I'm going to the gym, but usually between, usually between 4:30 and 5:00. Now when I get up, the first thing I normally do is make myself some coffee. I use a Chemex, and then I'll jump right into journaling. For this, I'm normally using the— you've seen this before, but normally for just the morning journaling, I'm using the Pocket Confidant. So a bunch of, a bunch of just tiny notes in here and some more fun ones. The pen I'm normally using just for that is this Like really simple, but I love it. The Pentel EnerGel 0.07 metal point. And what I'll also do during this time is I'll read. Right now I'm reading Celebration of Discipline, Daily Stoic. I'm reading just maybe too many books, but this is a really, this is a really good time for me to get, get some extra thinking done, even if it's just a little bit. So those are the books that I'm reading, and this normally takes me overall about 30 minutes. Or I might move this around because the other thing that I'll do in my morning routine at least 5 days out of the week is I'll do some kind of exercise. So sometimes that is going for a run, sometimes it's going to the gym and lifting a lot of weight. Seems like a lot of weight. Just depends. And then another thing that I'll do a lot of mornings, certainly not every morning, but something I'll do a lot of mornings is 10-15 minutes in prayer or meditation. So everything together takes 60 to 90 minutes, so an hour, hour and a half, and this is a very doable chunk of time. The variance here can be like if I'm going to the gym, then like the class normally lasts an hour and then a little back and forth, so So that could take, that could take, it could actually take like up to 2 hours, but it just kind of depends. But normally from like 5 to 7, I'm normally doing all of this from 5 AM to 7 AM. My son wakes up with his bed head at, you know, normally, normally he gets up at about 7:15, 7:30, and so that gives me, that gives me time to do all these things, and this really sets my day up for success. So, you know, we'll have— at that point we'll have breakfast. Normally breakfast is an egg, or several eggs depending on the workout. There's some kind of breakfast meat, say sweet, sweet bacon, and then I normally try and throw some greens in there too. We get this like superfood salad from Costco that has like kale and Brussels sprouts and a bunch of like chard and stuff. And it actually is really good, like, kind of fried up with— fried in bacon grease with an egg. It's fantastic. So that's something that I have every morning as well. That pretty much makes up the breakfast. Sometimes like steel-cut oats, great as well. So overall, this is how I spend the first few hours of my day. 5 AM to 8 AM normally covers all of this, and then between 8 and 8:30, I'm just hopping into work. There will be days that I don't do all of these things, but they are things that I'm doing the vast majority of days. Something that I've been thinking about a lot when it comes to morning routines and how I feel productive in a day, and even how I feel productive over a week and a month, is that one of the keys is just being able to catch yourself when you have, like, a bad morning, and doing the best that you can to not let that become a bad day, and not letting your bad days become bad weeks, and bad weeks, months, and so on and so forth. It's easy to kind of think of like, well, this day is just shot. But especially what I like about the morning routine is I would build at the start of something. Okay, so don't think that you have to journal, and then you have to read, and then you have to meditate, and then you have to exercise. Like, I built, I built this over several months. And really the cornerstone habit, the key habit for me, was a combination of exercise and journaling. So journaling was something that I knew I could just take like a a few minutes. I could just take a few minutes every day and write down something about the previous day or the upcoming day, and then I could exercise, or vice versa. I would encourage you, find that one or two. Like, take— we've done the time tracking challenge. If you haven't signed up for it, please check it out. But take that 15 to 30 minutes that you found, just take a little portion of it, and go ahead and journal. Go ahead and do whatever it is, is that keystone cornerstone habit, and really watch that set the tone for the rest of your day. Alright everyone, thanks again so much for watching this video on morning routines. I'd love to hear how your morning routine goes, if you have one. Please let me know in the comments. If you have any questions about it, if you have like anything that you're curious about, if you're like, my mornings are totally shot, let me know. I'm always, I'm always looking to help. I can make new videos from things that you're curious about. A lot of these come from questions that you ask in the comments, so please ask. Check out bulletjournalguide.com for complete downloads of all the printables and all the grids and time tracking and everything that I'm putting together. You're going to be able to find it all there. You can also find a link to that in the description below and the cards up top. But thank you so much for watching this. I can't wait to see you next week. We're going to be going through evening routines in next week's video. One of the things that I strongly believe, and this was something that was important for me, is that morning routine is how you start today, But the evening routine, the way that you wind down the day, it does even more for setting the tone for your upcoming morning. Because when you can like wind down the day and get to bed at a reasonable time, then it becomes so much easier to wake up earlier. And also now you're being proactive on the day instead of like waking up and being like, oh my gosh, what's next? Kids crying. What am I going to do? Got to get to work. Waking up early starts with going to bed earlier. And when you're able to wake up earlier, then you can act upon the day instead of having to react to what it's presenting to you. All right, thank you so much for watching this. Make sure you subscribe and give it a thumbs up, and I'll see you next week. Take care. Bye.