By: Kirsten Thomas

Nobody likes to wake up early, especially me. Here’s my expert experience about how to set the tone for your entire day with a simple morning routine (that doesn’t require you to get up and work at 5 am).

Use a soothing alarm. Your day starts with your morning, and your morning starts with how you wake up. If you use an alarm, the noise is the first thing you experience when you wake up. In my humble opinion, there’s nothing worse than being jerked out of a peaceful sleep (I am NOT a morning person). It puts me in a very bad mood very quickly, and we’re seeking to avoid that jolt. We want to have a good day, not a trash one. The way you wake up can be jarring or soothing, whatever you decide, so use soothing sounds to wake up, or train yourself to not need an alarm all together. 

Activate your mind. Congrats, you’re awake. Now is the time to activate your mind so it doesn’t wander in unproductive directions for the rest of the day. Meditate if you’re into that, journal for a few minutes on whatever’s running through your mind, practice gratitude, take some prayer time or bless your day by waving crystals through the air. Whatever works for you, as long as it’s a kind of mental and spiritual exercise that will activate your mind to an appropriate level of consciousness for the day. I would strongly suggest avoiding TikTok and other social media as soon as you wake up. It’s totally fine to be on them, but I just suggest sifting through your mind to get it where you want it to be before you do it. It’s easy to get caught up in stuff if you haven’t grounded yourself yet. 

Move (your mind and body) a little bit. Go for a short walk, or if you’re feeling more ambitious or a non-student athlete, you could go to the gym, focusing on targeting large muscle groups with compound exercises. 

Eat a light breakfast with protein. I am a proponent of consuming foods where you can see where they come from in one step in the manufacturing process (think eating a potato vs potato chips) because I notice a huge difference in my energy levels and general happiness. Early in the morning especially, avoid processed foods and sugars (no more Lucky Charms). Your breakfast is a big contributing factor for the tone of your day; it’s the first energy you give yourself.  For that reason, dieticians suggest eating healthy protein and fats with carbs (eggs, chicken, black beans, nuts, hummus, avocado, healthy yogurt) to give you a long burning source of energy. Those Lucky Charms spike your blood sugar and make you crash. Crashing is bad for your physical and mental energy. No good. Fasting is fine too, just make sure you have quality food planned for the rest of the day. 

Increase your incremental academic productivity. For my stressed juniors and other serious students, here’s a way I’ve found to not lose my mind due to extreme burnout. Spend 15 minutes studying or working in the morning before leaving your house to plan your activities and obligations for the day. This could be studying. My advice for serious students needing a little bit of structure: set a timer for fifteen minutes and dedicate your focus for those 15 minutes solely to studying, eliminate all other distractions. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done when that is your only focus. Once the timer is up, stop immediately, pack up and be done (unless you are really in the groove and feel compelled to continue). This routine is about sustainability; our entire goal with this mini system is to get stuff done early and efficiently while AVOIDING BURNOUT. If you do this every day (15 minutes is not a big commitment, people) 15 minutes x 5-7 days per week = semi-painless, efficient study time.  Congrats, you’re done. Go to school and have fun after. You can be more productive later in class and study halls. If possible, try to get everything done in the hours you’re at school, and whenever possible, leave school at school, and home at home.