I need to confess something. I’m a yoga instructor who has never once woken up at 4am to meditate, journal, do a cold plunge, and blend a green smoothie before the sun comes up.

And I don’t plan to start.

The internet is full of morning routine content that’s really just productivity porn dressed up as wellness. The implication is always the same: if you’re not optimising your first waking hours, you’re falling behind.

But here’s the thing. The research on morning routines doesn’t support the “more is better” approach. What it does support is consistency, intentionality, and building habits that match your actual life.

So if you’ve tried and failed to build a morning routine — or if you’ve never bothered because the whole concept felt exhausting — this one’s for you.

Step 1: Audit What’s Already Happening

Before you add anything, spend three days just noticing your current mornings. What time do you wake up? What’s the first thing you do? How do you feel at different points?

Most of us have a morning routine already. It’s just not intentional. Maybe it’s: alarm, snooze, phone scroll, rush, coffee, stress. That’s a routine. It’s just not a great one.

Write down what you’re doing now. No judgement. Just data.

Step 2: Pick One Anchor Habit

This is the most important step, and it’s where most people go wrong. They try to overhaul everything at once.

Instead, pick one thing. Just one. And attach it to something you already do.

This is what behaviour researchers call “habit stacking” — a concept popularised by James Clear but grounded in decades of behavioural science. The formula is simple:

After I [current habit], I will [new habit].

Some examples:

• After I turn off my alarm, I will drink a glass of water
• After I pour my coffee, I will sit for two minutes of quiet breathing
• After I brush my teeth, I will write three things I’m looking forward to today

The anchor habit should be something you do every single morning without thinking. That’s what gives your new habit a reliable trigger.

Step 3: Make It Stupidly Small

Your new habit should take five minutes or less. Ideally two minutes.

I know that sounds pointless. But the research from BJ Fogg’s behaviour lab at Stanford is clear: tiny habits build the neural pathways that make bigger habits possible later. You’re not trying to transform your life in week one. You’re trying to build a streak.

Two minutes of stretching beats zero minutes of a planned 30-minute yoga session you’ll skip by Thursday.

Step 4: Protect Your First 20 Minutes From Your Phone

This one is non-negotiable in my book. Not because phones are evil, but because the evidence on how reactive screen use affects your nervous system first thing in the morning is pretty compelling.

A 2023 study published in Computers in Human Behavior found that people who checked their phones within the first 20 minutes of waking reported higher anxiety levels throughout the day, regardless of what they were looking at.

You don’t need to lock your phone in a safe. Just charge it in another room, or use a physical alarm clock so your phone isn’t the first thing you reach for.

Give yourself 20 minutes of being a human before you become a consumer of content.

Step 5: Let It Evolve

After two weeks of your single anchor habit sticking, you can add another one. Then another. Over a few months, you might find you’ve built a 20 or 30-minute morning routine that feels natural, not forced.

My current routine looks like this:

• Wake up (no alarm — I go to bed early enough that I don’t need one most days)
• Water, then coffee
• Five minutes of sitting quietly on the back deck
• 15 minutes of gentle movement — sometimes yoga, sometimes just walking around the garden
• Breakfast with my partner, phones away

That took me about two years to build. And it shifts with the seasons. In winter I skip the deck and sit by the window instead. When I’m travelling, I keep the water and the quiet sitting and let the rest go.

The point isn’t perfection. It’s having a start to your day that feels like yours.

What the Research Actually Says

A 2024 meta-analysis in the Journal of Health Psychology found that the single strongest predictor of morning routine success wasn’t the specific activities people chose. It was whether the routine felt autonomous — meaning self-chosen, not imposed.

Routines that people adopted because they felt they “should” had significantly lower adherence rates than routines people designed around their own values and preferences.

So forget what some influencer does at 5am. Ask yourself: what would help me feel grounded, calm, and ready for my day? Start there. Start small. And let it grow.

That’s it. No ice baths required.