Start your morning with these eight tips

Every individual is busy with many things in a day, and sometimes we need to push ourselves to do more and more. But before we add stuff to our "to-do" list and make a longer daily schedule, it is important for us to organize and utilize our body and mind to enable ourselves for the highest performance.

I've been utilizing my energy and schedule with different tactics to have a productive day. Here are my 8 morning hacks which I would like to share with you. The morning is important as this affects the rest of your day significantly. So it's a smart move to prepare it as well as you can.

1. Wake up early

Waking up early sometimes is not easy, especially for people who have flexible working hours like me! Waking up early in the morning is a good practice to toughen your mental strength and let you start a productive day. This also means you need to sleep earlier too. I totally agree that sometimes we need to stay awake until late night to finish our work and we cannot sleep early; however, this is not good practice in the long run. You can simply schedule your to-do list earlier in the day like early morning rather than doing it late at night.

2. Do mindfulness

Mindfulness meditation is practiced sitting with eyes closed, cross-legged on a cushion, or on a chair, with the back straight. Attention is put on the movement of the abdomen when breathing in and out, or on the awareness of the breath as it goes in and out of the nostrils.

I personally do this for a few months every day, and I can tell you it really changes my mood for the whole day. Here is a quick guide to starting your morning meditation:

Location

The first thing you need to find is a suitable location to start your meditation. The place is better to be calm and away from heavy noise and also make you feel relaxed. Just make sure to cut most distractions from the place.

Posture

Find a comfortable position to sit. You can do it as you like as long as you feel comfortable. Here is the illustration of doing that:

Time

Make time every day to practice meditation. Try to start it with a small amount of time such as 15 minutes a day and increase it when you are comfortable. In the morning when I wake up, I usually do 10-15 minutes of practice. You can do it at night too or any time of the day you are flexible with. Remember, to master every skill you need to set aside some time and practice it regularly.

How to start

I use the Headspace application. It is available for both iOS and Android. Check this app and start your meditation practice easily. The sessions are usually 10 minutes and it provides educational videos and information for handling stress and other emotional challenges.

3. Have a good breakfast

I'm sure you've read lots of articles about that and heard a lot from your mom too. But it's always good to remind yourself. A good breakfast can be some bread, egg, jam or fruits, and a cup of tea or juice. Keep it as simple as possible.

4. Do a quick check of what you need to do for the day

This can be done when having your breakfast or before/after that. Simply check your to-do list and get an overview of your checklist. This gives you a feeling of confidence to start your day. You really don't need to check your emails at that time because this part needs to be fast. When you have a quick glance over your list, it's always good to make it as a reminder on your phone or use other tools such as Trello to manage your tasks.

5. Read a few pages of books or blogs

Always try to start your day with some reading. This inspires you for the rest of the day and also you learn new things every single day. You can simply do this by reading your book when you're sitting in a cab, train, or any other spare time you can find. If you are driving, audiobooks will do the work too. I usually have my book in my bag and read a few pages when I'm taking a cab to my office and the same thing when I'm coming back too.

6. Fuel your creativity

It's good to have new ideas and inspire people around yourself to make more interesting stuff. There are different types of ways to fuel your creativity which I will share with you some of them here.

You can get inspired by other people's work which is available on a variety of social media such as Ello, Pinterest. You can always find new ways to inspire yourself. The environment around yourself is sometimes a good place to start with. Never think you already saw it for thousands of times; most probably you didn't have your full attention. Try to avoid getting inspiration from one source every time. Like those designers who open their Pinterest along with their Photoshop. Every time, try different sources.

7. Have a cup of water instead of coffee

This is one of the common mistakes most professionals make in their morning routine. Try to start your day with plain cold water or a cup of green tea. Not only does it undermine caffeine's effect, but it tends to lead people to build a tolerance for the drug, thereby diminishing its effect down the road.

A few years back I was drinking a few cups of coffee every day from morning to night. After some time I understood that even on those days I'm not tired and I have enough rest the night before, I still feel exhausted during the day. So I tried to cut off my coffee eventually and replace it with plain water and juice. It really improved my performance during the day. Coffee is good and I still like to have it sometimes. It's good to have your coffee in the middle of the day or late afternoon to boost your energy for another few hours.

8. Hype yourself up with music

My last tip is listening to energetic songs. If you are a big fan of music just like me, try to choose a playlist that hypes you up in the morning. This is subjective and everyone has different tastes in songs. As a rule of thumb, try to pick up songs which do not remind you of emotional memories.

I hope you can use these tips in your daily schedule and increase your performance. If you have different routines and are hacking your morning with a different set of tactics, share with me too. I will be more than happy to hear that.