[0:00]You will not stick to your habits unless you make focused time for them. See, the big difference between mere good intentions and actually accomplishing your goals or making your habits stick is a plan.
[0:19]Welcome to the Redeeming Productivity Show. This is the podcast that helps Christians get more done and get it done like Christians, and I'm your host, Reagan Rose. Well, guys, I am very excited about this week's episode, because we're going to be talking about one of my favorite productivity topics, and that is morning routines. But I am even more excited to announce that the Morning Routine course that I have built called Power Mornings is available now. This is a paid course and it gives you a step-by-step plan for creating a Christ-honoring morning routine. And so, in this week's episode, I'm going to talk to you about the importance of morning routines, whether you take this course or not, I think you're going to get a lot of value out of this week's episode, but it's also kind of a giant sales pitch too. So, you've been warned. Um, but here's the thing, in the course that I've built called Power Mornings, you're going to learn exactly how to wake up earlier, how to carve out focus time without sacrificing sleep, uh, what activities you should be filling your morning routine with, and how to make it into a habit that lasts a lifetime. So, you can get that right now, it's at redeemingproductivity.com/power-mornings. So, please do take a look at that course, it's just redeemingproductivity.com/power-mornings. There is a link in the description. So, please, yeah, take a look at that, because that is the culmination of 10 years of me practicing a routine where I get up early every single day, do my spiritual disciplines, Bible study, prayer, uh, do other things, side hustle activities, personal development, reading, exercise, all of that. And I've taken all of what I've learned, having tweaked it over the years, having studied scripture, having really invested myself in the topic of how does a Christian do personal productivity, all of that I've boiled down and I've put into just an actionable plan that will help you become a productive person. So, even if you do a morning routine already, I think there's going to be stuff in this course that's going to be highly valuable for you. So, check it out, it's called Power Mornings, redeemingproductivity.com/power-mornings. So, in today's episode, we're going to explore the topic of why exactly you need a morning routine. Whether you take my course or not, I think you're going to get some value and some tips that are going to get you started on this super helpful productivity train that is the morning routine. So, why do you need a morning routine? Why do you need a morning routine? Well, people often ask me because I'm someone who talks about productivity, they say, well, what's like one thing? What's like your number one tip that you give people? And I always tell them the same thing, and that is, if you want to be more productive, you need to wake up earlier and practice a morning routine. And it it's it's simple advice and you've probably heard it a million times, but it couldn't be more true. How you start your day influences how the rest of the day goes. Habits, we need to do habits if we want to grow and be productive as people and develop in our spiritual walk. When are you going to do your habits? A morning routine enables you to do that too. So, the reason I I think a morning routine is the place to start is because it is just the lynch pin, it is the cornerstone of a life of productivity. And so, if you're not already practicing a morning routine, or you're not doing it with intentionality, I really think you're missing out. So, I like to think about it this way, is if in the big picture of becoming a productive person, you know, if you think about that as like a series of of Dominos lined up and, you know, each thing is going to lead to the next win, the next win, the next win, becoming more and more productive.
[4:03]What's the highest leverage activity you can do first? What's the lead domino that you could knock over and start down that path of becoming more productive? It's a morning routine, it's what you do every single day. And if you are doing activities each morning that sets the tone for the day, puts your your mind on Christ, helps you to make progress in your own personal development, and you're doing activities like exercise that promote energy and a good mood and having a good day, everything else just starts to fall in line behind that. So, if you're looking for a place to start, it's not an app, it's not uh some complex system, it's something as simple as waking up a little earlier and spending those uh first 30 minutes, hour or longer with intentionality. So, that's what a morning routine is, and you need one. So, uh, I really think that that a morning routine is the ultimate life hack, and the few who take advantage of them are the ones who rise in their professional, their personal and even in their spiritual lives, because it's really just a simple way to to make the most out of your day. So, okay, why is it that a morning routine is so powerful? Why do you need one? Why am I so bullish on morning routines that out of all the things I could have done my first online course on, why did I choose morning routines? Why wasn't it about planning? Why wasn't it about organization? Here's why. The first reason is morning routines create consistent habits. You need a morning routine because you want to develop habits. We all do, we all recognize that if we're trying to be uh more productive, if we're trying to build our own character, we need habits. We want to develop habits of daily exercise. We want to habit have it as a habit, Bible reading, prayer, if you're Christian, uh, you want to develop a habit of reading, so you're constantly making your way through books, so that you're becoming, you know, more smarter, and you want to be some people want to be writing daily, you know, having trying to make sure that they're always doing a little bit. These are all just habits. And I think we all recognize the importance of habits and making little incremental progress doing them every day. But how do you actually make a habit stick? Well, I think that that one of the tricks is habits are really impossible to form and to keep going unless you make focused time for them. You will not stick to your habits unless you make focused time for them. See, the big difference between mere good intentions and actually accomplishing your goals or making your habits stick is a plan. It's a plan, it's really that simple. A lot of us say, I want to do X, Y and Z, but until you make a plan to get there, it's not going to happen. Like exercise is a good example. You know, if you if you say, I want to be practicing daily exercise. But if you don't decide when you're going to do it, how many days per week, what you're going to do, right? Am I going to go to the gym, am I going to run, if so, when, what time, how's that going to fit into the rest of my schedule? If you don't actually think through when and how and what you're going to do, that habit will never stick. It'll remain a mere good intention. And so, a morning routine has this amazing ability where it it carves out this focused time right after you wake up, but before the interruptions start coming. You do a morning routine in you wake up earlier than other people, because you don't want a phone call, you don't want the kids getting you up, you don't want um work or email kind of breathing down your neck. You want focused time carved out to focus on what matters most. I think a lot of people, you know, we try to do habits, um and even if we do make a plan, we are kind of sometimes a little foolish about when we do it. So, a good example is, I've tried to develop certain habits, uh, and I would do them, I would say, I'll do this on my lunch break at work. And the problem with that is, yeah, you are on a break, but at least for me, in all my working life, lunch breaks are the most interruptible time ever because you're like, oh, you want to grab a bite? You say, oh, yeah, sure. Or someone says, hey, can you do a call at lunch? Oh, yeah, sure. Like, it's incredibly inconsistent because you're so interruptible. A morning routine is powerful for habit forming just because it's focused. You can't be interrupted because most people aren't awake yet. So, a morning routine sets aside a dedicated period of uninterrupted time for your habits, and that's why it's worth cultivating. Second, why do you need a morning routine? Well, morning routines promote peacefulness. Ooh, that sounds woo woo, Reagan. It's not that woo woo. I think we live in a chaotic time, uh obviously we do in history, but I just mean like the the whole, all the technology we have, all the uh ability to be interrupted, have our mind kind of fragmented into Brazilian parts. It's crazy. You I I've just we've gotten so used to having that kind of hum in the back of our head that, oh, I know there's five things I'm supposed to be doing, but you know, and you never really feel focused on any one thing. And so, you have this overarching kind of malaise of anxiety that you're not doing the stuff you're supposed to be doing. And when it comes to if you're interested in, you know, developing as a person, growing as a Christian, you kind of always have this little guilt feeling that I should be doing more. I should be studying the Bible more. Why don't I read the Bible consistently? How come I'm not in prayer? Um and then with other stuff in life too. How you know, again, why am I not exercising daily? Look, all of that is a result of I think a gap between knowing what we ought to do and what we're actually doing, knowing that we're not actually doing the stuff to get us to what we ought to be doing or where we want to go. And then so you you combine that with just kind of the busyness and chaos of daily life, and we all kind of suffer from not feeling that at peace. And the thing is, if you are practicing a daily routine that is first thing in the morning, focusing your mind on Christ, putting you, putting Bible study and prayer first, uh, giving you enough time to work on other areas of your life and to organize a little bit so you're planning ahead for the day, you suddenly start to have this focus return. And with that focus, and with that sense of I'm kind of on top of things, comes a sense of peace. When your heart, your mind, and your body are all oriented correctly toward the day, the result is more peace, a deeper walk with the Lord, uh, you have more energy, greater focus, and honestly, just a better life. And again, morning routines is like the key to this, it just hands you this opportunity to focus a little bit more, have a little bit more peace. So, why should you practice a morning routine? Well, first, because morning routines create consistent habits. Second, morning routines promote peacefulness, and then third, morning routines transform you. And the point with this one is that it's not the morning routine that transforms you. It's the fact that the morning routine is this vehicle for you to load up with all of the activities and, you know, the means of grace, you the Bible study prayer, and all these other things that that help you to grow as not just a Christian, but as a person holistically with your life. The morning routine is just like this vehicle for that, you know? And so, a morning routine helps you grow as a person, helps you transform because it's a plan for doing those things which transform you. Hope that made sense. And I just think about it like this, um, here's an analogy. If you had a little machine in your basement that printed money for you, and all it required to keep printing the money is that you just knew every single day you had to go down there and you had to turn a little crank. Just once a day, but if you ever stopped turning that crank, if you ever missed a day on turning that crank, the thing would stop printing the money, and it wouldn't ever start again. I think you would make a priority out of turning that crank, right? You would make a priority to go down to the basement and make sure you turn that thing, because you want the money to keep printing. Well, a morning routine won't print you money, uh as far as I know. If I find out otherwise, I'll let you know. Um, but a morning routine when when it's locked in and it's practiced consistently, it's like a it's like a productivity machine. It automatically puts you on a path to maturity and and and and I and I do mean spiritual maturity, because right, like I said in last week's episode, the renewing of your mind, right? If you want to be transformed, not conformed to the world, productivity 101, right? Remember all this? Productivity 101 is you need to have your mind renewed, and you do that through exposure to the word of God, through the preaching of the word, through fellowship with other believers, who they're encouraging with the word, and through personal Bible study and personal communion with God through prayer. Make a plan to do that. Turn the crank every day. Put yourself down in the pathway of the means of grace every single day, make a habit practically out of that, and watch God do the work of transforming you. I'm not talking about with the Christian maturity stuff, I'm not talking about legalism, I'm not talking about you have to do this or God's not going to love you. That's not it at all. Obviously, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is God has given us the opportunity and the means to grow, and if we take that seriously, we will put ourselves in a position to take advantage of those means, and a morning routine is a vehicle that allows you to do that, and it will transform you. It will, it will change your life. It will you will grow as a Christian if you are in the word every day. Period, you will, you will grow as a Christian. If you're in the word every day, you're confessing sin, you're walking with the Lord closely, that's the path to maturity. The morning routine is the plan to put you on the path to maturity. See what I'm saying? I hope so. When you commit to a daily time of focus, you commit to starting your day every single day, you have climbed onto the train that will leave you to producing more high quality output, and you'll look back in five years and you'll wonder how you got to where you are. And I think that you will look at your morning routine as the vehicle that got you there. So, a morning routine, the third reason you need a morning routine is because it will transform you. It will change you. It allows you to grow. So, that's just a few reasons that I am so bullish on morning routines and I think they're so critical. But now the question is how do you actually start one? How do you create a morning routine that you're going to stick with? Well, again, like I said in the beginning, the trick is having a plan. You can't leave it up to chance, and it can't be as simple as just waking up a little bit earlier every morning. That is important. Obviously, that's like the lynch pin of the whole thing or the uh the beginning of it, but you have to decide what you're going to fill it with and how long you're going to do it for. And creating a written plan and a commitment for yourself, that's how you take advantage of this amazing vehicle of a morning routine. So, kind of the basics are, choose 30 to 60 minutes each day that you plan to do before anyone else can interrupt you. And so, for me, and when I'd recommend for you, I mean, I know people have different life situations, but you you need to wake up earlier. You need to wake up earlier. And you can do that without sacrificing sleep, and it's not like that crazy of an idea, it just means go to bed earlier, right? So it is possible, and then decide what you're going to fill it with. You're going to do Bible study, you're going to do prayer, you're going to do exercise, you can do personal development stuff, are you going to work on a side hustle? Um for me, that's a lot of what I've done when I, you know, before I started doing Redeeming Productivity full-time, I was uh doing it in the early, the wee hours of the morning. And that is what a lot of people do. You'll read about this online, people say, oh, I ran a blog, or I started a business, and I did it by doing it in the morning hours. So, ton of power to it, waking up a little earlier, but it's not going to work without a plan. You have to make a plan. And if you are looking for a step-by-step plan to help you make a morning routine of your own, check out my new course Power Mornings. The course is made up of a bunch of video lessons that walk you through each aspect of the morning routine planning. It's got a load of worksheets and planning documents that'll help you work out the details of how you're going to plan each day. There's no guess work, there's no fumbling over, should I do this, or should I do that. It's just a simple plan that if you follow it and you stick with it, it will become a habit that will change your life. Power Mornings is a step-by-step plan for creating a Christ-honoring morning routine. I take you by the digital hand and I walk you through exactly how to schedule out your time so that you're doing this and not sacrificing sleep. I walk you through exactly what activities you should or could be doing in your routine, and I've got multiple worksheets, different activities, so that when you walk away at the end of this course, you are going to have a actual written, specific plan that works for you and your unique life situation. If you follow through the course and actually do what I tell you, you will develop a habit that can last a lifetime. But what I offer you is the principles and the practice and basically a full-on plan for how you can do a Christ-honoring morning routine so that you're reading the Bible every day, you're praying, you're doing a little exercise, you're looking ahead at the day and organizing and planning so you're not on your heels all the time. So, if you're somebody who really wants to learn to get your morning routine on track, even if you've had one for a long time, uh and you just want kind of some some help on, okay, how can I improve this? There is something in here for everyone, I just know it. So, just take a look at it. It's Power Mornings is the name, go to redeemingproductivity.com/power-hyphen-mornings or just click the link that's going to be in the show notes and description, and that will take you over there. And the really cool thing is, by purchasing the Power Mornings course, you're not only getting something that's going to help you, you are helping to support Redeeming Productivity and the creation of free resources on a Christian approach to productivity, so I can keep pumping this stuff out. So, there you go. Win-win. Well, guys, that's all I have for you this week. I hope that this episode has been helpful for you. Please do go check out the Power Mornings course, I really think you're going to find it valuable. Um and also, one more just a little update for you. I'm going to be taking next week off of the podcast. I am changing things up a little bit, and I need a little bit of a lead time to plan what I'm going to be doing next with the podcast, and I think you're really going to like what's on the other side of that short break. So, I won't be here next week, but I will on the week after. But as always, you can keep up with everything redeeming productivity wise just by signing up to the newsletter, which is newsletter.redeemingproductivity.com. There's also a link in the description. Well, thank you guys so much for listening, and as always, I will see you again here in two weeks, but until I do, remember this, in whatever you do, do it well and do it all for the glory of God.
