Morning Routines of the Super-Successful

Morning routines of the super successful. I've studied the super successful billionaires, the best in sports and business, and I've studied their routines, their daily and morning routines for 15+ years. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to share with you the top 5 things that the most successful people, the happiest people the most productive people on this planet do. Now, as I do this, I need to share a few things with you which are really important. Um, there is no one-size-fits-all routine of the super successful. There is common actions in the morning which seem to set you up the best for the day, but you should test these yourself and figure out what works for you. We all have a different circadian rhythm. Some of us work better in the morning. Entrepreneurs tend to work better in the morning. Artistic creative types tend to work better in the evening, the night owl types. So actually, you don't need to get up at 5 AM and be in the 5 AM club to be successful at what you do, though that actually is a common trait of many successful people in business and entrepreneurship. Now, I wrote a book called Routine Equals Results, and in that book I created a work log and I give you some actions to try out to see if these routine habits work for you. Now, I'm going to come back to that. What I'll do is I will share with you over 15 years of research the 5 common things that are done in the morning in this order of the super successful across many disciplines and areas— sports, general happiness, you know, millionaires and billionaires. Now, as we do this, a few things. Please share this content because I think if you can get your morning right and win the morning, you'll win the day. And if you win enough days, you're going to win at life. So please do share this content. Next thing is I would love you to share one thing in the comments. That you believe is absolutely vital to set you up to win the day. The way you win life is to win one day at a time. Seize the day and win at life is a subtitle of my book, Money. Right, okay, number 1: usually successful people, especially entrepreneurs, get up early. Usually. But you don't have to. However, one definite commonality is that they get up at the same time every day, including weekends. So some quite good friends of mine around me, at least 3 I know, have real problems with sleep. They tend to be a bit of an overthinker, an over-analyzer, and they have very long periods in their life where they sleep really badly. Let me know in the comments if you've ever struggled with your sleep, by the way. Just give me a yes or sleep issues or whatever in the comments. It's actually quite common. And one of the key factors of overcoming sleep problems is to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day, including weekends. But what a lot of people do is they have irregular sleep patterns and then they have really long lay-ins in on the weekends. This, through study and research, is not ideal for good quality sleep and therefore a good morning routine. Now, this is a bit of a weird one, I think, to talk about sleep. I'm going to talk about it real quick. So I've covered point 1. 5 points I'm going to cover. 15 years ago, when these entrepreneurs were saying, you just, you know, if you want to get more work done, you just go to bed later and have less sleep, you sleep when you're dead. I've been saying, wait a minute, you need sleep. And now all of a sudden there's all these scientists and these authors making loads of money about telling you that you need sleep and sleep is life and '7, 8 hours.' I'm like, 'Well, of course, isn't that obvious?' Now, we probably all need differing amounts of sleep. If you're very active, you do a lot of exercise, you have quite a lot of responsibility, you're going to need more sleep because obviously when you sleep you repair your body much more quickly. But this 4 and 5 hours a day of sleep nonsense, I do believe is nonsense, and I do believe could shorten your life. So what you do is you test when to go to bed and you test when to get up, and you work out your ideal time to go to bed and time to get up and your ideal length of time. Now, in my book Routine Equals Results, I give you a work log and I let— help you track when you go to bed and when you get up. Now, I tracked going to bed anywhere from 9 AM to about midnight and getting up anywhere from about 5 AM to 7 AM. And I found if I had less than 7 hours sleep, I struggled. And if I had less than 6, it would be like I have a massive hangover, literally like a massive hangover. And I found for me, 7 to 8, 8 hours is the optimum. Maybe 9:30 to 5, 5:30, or 10 to 5, 5:30. And I did a lot of testing to find this out. And there's nothing that anyone can say to me, oh, you should have less, or you should have more, or you should go to bed here, you should go to bed there, you should get up in the 5 AM. Nothing anyone could say would actually be better than my own experiment on my own body, because you all know your own body. So successful people, especially entrepreneurs, do tend to get up early, but actually it is very individual. But the key is you've got to test when you go to bed and when you get up. And the key is this— this is the key that most people don't say to you— going to bed at the same time. Why am I shouting? Because I'm excited and passionate about it. Why are you not? Um, want to make sure you can hear me. So go to bed at the same time, get up at the same time, and have your optimum amount of hours sleep, which is probably 7 to 8 and a half depending on age and levels of activity. Okay, number 2. I will whisper, but please hit share this if, um, you think this is really important. I think it's vital to get this information out to people, but there's a lot of misinformation around this. So the 5 studied over 15 years success habits and routines of the most successful people on the planet in the morning, and not the general stuff like, 'Be in the 5 AM Club and get up at 5 AM and everyone who doesn't is a loser.' Bollocks. Okay, so they usually get up early, but they always go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time. Okay, number 2: immediately drink a pint to a liter of water. Now this is really important. We're of course made up of water. Most people don't drink enough water. A lot of people will go straight to coffee and drink coffee without drinking water and so immediately become dehydrated. So what you want to do is have a, you know, a sealed bottle of water by your bed, and immediately when you get up, you drink a pint to a liter of water. It will make a huge difference. Okay, number 3 then. Usually at this time, so you're getting up at the same time, you drink a liter of water. Often there's some kind of mindfulness. This is the third trait that I've observed and studied over 15 years. So it could be meditation, it could be visualization, it could be reading something positive and inspiring, but it is not going and grabbing your device and immediately getting triggered on social media. Most of the successful people that, um, I've studied tend to put their phone away from the bed some of them even out of the room, and they tend to look at that after an hour or 2 hours. So they own the day rather than the day owning them. So the third point is some kind of meditation, some kind of mindfulness, some kind of reading, some kind of controlling of the mind, having some positive and calming energy to start the day. Then the fourth thing— now this doesn't have to be, but it seems to be— is exercise. Now, there's some myths on exercise, by the way. Number 1 is you don't have to go down the gym and pump weights. You don't have to run a marathon. Uh, Warren Buffett doesn't seem to go down the gym and pump weights or run a marathon, but he's what, nearly 90 years old and still got great energy. So the exercise, it can be a walk, can be a Peloton, cross trainer, can be weights. And by the way, it doesn't have to be in the morning but it often is. So make sure, making sure you're getting some exercise in the day. And then the 5th trait of the very successful people, especially entrepreneurs, is getting a productive task done early. Now, I was taught to set my daily tasks the, the day before. So in the evening, before you go to bed and maybe do your visualization, you set your task for the next day. One, so that you can declutter your mind and have the things that are in your mind out, which will help you sleep better. But then the next thing is, when you start the day, you're not reactive to the day, because the opposite of a good morning routine is being reactive to the day. You get up at the wrong time, you feel groggy, you check your social media, you get triggered, you check your emails, you've got emergencies, and all of a sudden the day is out of control. So what you do is something productive quite early in the day, you know, a key result area task, an income-generating task, something of high value to you. Okay, now we haven't talked about breakfast yet or anything like that. I'll talk about those in a moment. I'm not a diet expert, um, and what I'm doing here is collating the success habits in the morning routines of the most successful people that have lived. However, I said this at the start, it's really important, you need to test what works for you because some of them will and some of them won't. And there'll be some things that I haven't mentioned that'll be really important to you. For example, if you have a really busy mind— give me a yes in the comments if you have a busy mind, if you're quite an over-analyzer, a critical thinker— if that's you, journaling in the evening and in the morning can be a really good success habit. Someone else also said to me in a thread, making your bed. You know, there was that famous speech, someone I think in the military, about how making your bed can take control of the day and quieten your mind. I actually don't really make my bed. I jump out, just, just move it across. But something to take control of the day and your mind and your thoughts Now, actually, making the bed could be the meditative process that you do early in the morning. So please share this. I think it's really important. Too many people, they're losing the day when they start the day. So let me tell you again and summarize the 5 key habits and traits, and then let's discuss what ones would work for you and what ones would, you know, have been missed out. So number 1 is successful people usually get up early, but if not, it's the same time that they get up and they go to bed each day, including weekends, so they've got consistency and they have enough sleep. Number 2 is they immediately drink a liter or a pint of water to get hydrated. We're mostly made up of water. It will remove the fog from your brain. You should not drink coffee before you've drunk water because coffee is a diuretic. It's— it can actually make you dehydrated. Now, I do drink coffee early in the morning. Some do and some don't, and I'm of course not going to advise that to anyone because of course it is a drug, and I realize my addiction to it. Okay, number 3. And by the way, these are in order. Um, get up early, usually at the same time, immediately drink a pint or a liter of water, and then do something calming and quietening of the mind— meditation, mindfulness, visualization. Making your bed, reading something inspiring and positive. Number 4 is usually exercise, though I'll often do exercise a bit later on. But, um, walking, running, uh, you know, calisthenics, weights, etc. Now, people will tell you what exercise you should do— cardio or weights. No, no, no, it depends on you and your age and, you know, what works for you. You could put that a bit later. Like I said, I often put that at 9 AM or 10 AM. And then getting a productive task done early on your time, on your value, that's a key result area or an income-generating task. And this is important, being productive, not reactive. If you start the day being reactive, reactive to social media, reactive to emergencies, if you don't win that first hour or two, it can put you in a really bad flow for the rest of the day. Whereas if you win that first hour or two and take control, then you're likely to win the day. Now, food and breakfast. So, um, I don't have breakfast immediately when I get up. There's a lot of talk about how that fasting period or getting into ketosis can be very good for your body to heal and, um, clean itself of all the toxins. So I tend to try— I'm certainly not perfect at any of these— but I tend to try to have that 12-hour fast in the day. So I tend to try not eat after 6 to 7 PM, you know, after the dinner, and then I tend to try not to eat for about another 12 hours. So, you know, breakfast— ideally, if you can get 10 to 12 hours of that fast the night before to the morning, then your body will have that fasting, go into ketosis. And science is suggesting that if you have long enough to fast, then your body is much more effective at cleansing these toxins. So that's why I don't immediately eat breakfast when I get out of bed in the morning. So let me know in the comments if there are any morning routines that you think are really important, maybe that I've missed that work for you. For example, journaling, some people have said, um, making the bed, gratitude. I think the practice of gratitude is really important. Now I tend to do this before I go to bed because I think your subconscious mind is the most impressionable and programmable when you're in that semi-sleeping state, when the conscious mind is out of the way. Someone said, I woke up to watching this. So, um, that could be— this could be your good morning routine, watching my lives at 8:30 AM to get some useful information in your brain. Please hit the share button if you're finding this useful. Um, but yeah, gratitude. I think practicing gratitude is definitely in there. In fact, I'm going to put it on my list. Um, like I said, I I tend to try and practice gratitude in the evening and list the things in my mind that I'm grateful for because I find that helps me sleep well and puts my brain, you know, when you're in the sort of semi-sleepy state when you program your unconscious mind. And also, I think it's really important to be, um, grateful through the day. So often we're grateful when things are good, and often we're grateful when we're, oh, I'm going to do my gratitude practice now. But actually, I think you should practice gratitude throughout the day. Reading goals. So Alison reads goals. So I tend to read my goals in the evening. Again, when your mind is sort of semi getting tired and sleeping and the conscious mind is out of the way and the subconscious mind is more impressionable, that's when I like to program my mind with my goals, etc. But I actually think reading them in the morning is a good way to program yourself for the day. You could read your goals before you do your productive task in the morning so that you're setting your mind on focus of what you want to achieve that day. I think that's really important. Yes, I am live every day, give or take, about 8:30 AM UK time. So this is part of my morning routine, is, um, you know, giving you hopefully useful value and connecting up with my community. So yeah, if you want to put in your diary 8:30 AM I usually go live on Facebook, but I am starting to go live more on TikTok at the same time now as well. So yeah, 8:30 AM, I tend to do my content. Now, if you clear your day such that those first 2 hours you're in control and you're doing things for your productivity, your proactiveness, you know, the things that are important to you in your life— maybe you do you know, some of your, your martial arts or your, your hobby or your exercise routine, etc. Your yoga, for example, stretching. Some people would put yoga and stretching in their morning routine. And if you win that first hour or two, you're much more likely to win the day. And if you win more days than you lose, then you're going to win at life. So quick summary, please hit the share button because I think so many people are losing the day because they're losing the morning. And some things people do not do: don't immediately drink coffee, don't necessarily immediately drink, eat food if you haven't yet got to 10 or 12 hours in your intermittent fast. Definitely don't immediately pick up your phone and get triggered by that. You've got to make sure that with your social media, you're unfollowing stuff that triggers you, unless it triggers you in a positive way. Because what you don't want to do is be continually hijacked and cortisol and on edge because And science is showing that that can actually shorten your life. We're triggered far too easily now, and we're in survival mode much more. Okay, right. So the 5 top things over 15 years of research from the most successful people on the planet for their morning routine, which by the way, you can model, but you should test on your own. So they tend to get the same amount of sleep, they tend to get up and go to bed at the same time every day, even weekends, and often for entrepreneurs, it's early. They immediately drink a liter of water, not juice, and a liter or a pint of water before coffee. The third thing is they do something mindful or meditative, like meditation or making the bed or visualization or reading something empowering. Then they exercise, although that can be later, but it's often in the morning because of course you get your endorphins rushing and it gives you a positive hit to gain momentum in the day. Then they'll get a productive task done early. On their terms and not reactive. It will be productive, a key result area, an income-generating task. Some people journal, some people do gratitude exercises, some people read their goals. That's also useful too. So thanks for following me. Did I miss anything? Is there anything you'd like to put in the comments about successful morning routines that work for you or you've observed? I recommend your next action is to go and grab my book, Routine Equals Results. It's a short but practical book which which gives you a work log to do over 30 days to test all the different things that you can put in your day and in your diary and where you put them and how long you do them. It gets you to analyze your circadian rhythm and your body type and your highs and flows and ebbs of lows of ebbs and flows of energy and put the productive and key result area things at high energy and low value and admin in low energy and actually not have to work a load of hours a day, maybe 3, 4, 5 5 hours max. Someone's putting here cold shower. Absolutely, cold showers have been working for me. Again, I tend to have them in the evening or after my workout, but, um, actually my wife's been researching this a lot and science is suggesting start with hot, couple of minutes, go to cold, minute to 2 minutes, go back to hot, minute, go back to cold, minute. Apparently it's really good for reducing inflammation. I get a really good buzz from it. So I'd absolutely agree, cold showers is a good daily routine, but I tend to have them after my workout or, or closer to the evening, not the morning, because I've already got my morning routine done. Um, yeah, so, um, go read my book, uh, Routine Equals Results. Grab it on Amazon. The important thing with all of this is to not blindly follow what other people do, but to test what successful people do and fit it into your day and what works for you. Some people get up and have an immediate cold shower. I could see why that could be good, but that wouldn't work for me. That would shock my body too much. So again, it's about placing these things in the time that's right for you. So thanks for tuning in. Go grab my book, Routine Equals Results. It's a short but tactical, practical read. And hit the share button, because if more people we know can win the morning and win the day, the whole world's going to be a better place. It's like if more people made money, we'd all be better off. So actually, I think we should be sharing the love. So hit the share button. Also, make sure you're following me. Whatever channel you're now watching me on, make sure that you're following me on that channel. Every morning, 8:30 AM, I do content on lives, productivity hacks, money hacks. I sometimes do some rants about some things I think that are wrong in the world that people tend to like. So make sure you're following me on these channels. Hit the share button, and I'll see you soon. Go test this stuff in your morning routine. Try and get 5 things done in the first hour. That might be. Um, water, exercise, meditation, mindfulness, productivity, gratitude. Win the first hour of the day, you're much more likely to win the whole day. Win more days than you lose, and you're much more likely to win at life. Thanks for following me. I'll see you on the other side.