How long have you stuck with your morning routine?

My routine has been consistent, especially the first part, for an incredibly long time. I feel like it’s a part of my personality. It gets me into a certain zone which allows me to feel calm and focused about what matters during the day—I miss it when I stop. It’s an excellent way to get your day started.

Since 2012. I’m a natural night owl, and I was inspired to change my morning routine because my schedule was out of sync with my wife’s. By the time I woke up, she’d be off to work, and at night I’d often stay up late alone while she slept.

Six months. I started it when I left my full-time job at Facebook as a product designer to join my husband as a woodworker at Nafisi Studio. I had been in tech for ten years as a digital user experience designer, and I now make bespoke furniture and sculpture.

I went from tech to trees! My morning routine is a great reflection of my journey into the woods and deeper into myself. By returning to being my own boss, I was able to reinvent my schedule to allow more quality time with loved ones and more time in nature.

About the last 18 months now. I refer to it as a health routine as its primary focus is to keep me healthy and care for myself in a variety of ways first thing in the morning.

It started with the meditation app, and I started using that because I carried out an assessment and design of my time and energy. I am a permaculture designer and this was an unusual application that led to dramatic changes in my life patterns. It really moved me towards a very healthy space.

I’ve stuck with this routine and have been pretty consistent about it since at least 2014, when I started Planetary. I think the routine has really helped balance the chaos of my days.

For the past five years, since Dahlia started kindergarten. It all revolves around her.

I’ve been teaching for nineteen years now, always in an elementary school and always with a relatively late start. The routine, if you can call it that, has basically stayed the same for most of those years. I’m in a new district this school year and my commute is much shorter, which allows me to laze around and delay the start to my day, but the steps I take—sleep as late as possible, make lunch for the kid, take a quick shower, and then get out the door—have remained unchanged for the past seven or eight years.

I’ve been doing a version of this for the past few years. When I adopted my dog, Rudy, I had to start waking up earlier to get all his needs taken care of, but before that I could just roll out of bed and head straight to class!

This has been my routine for the past couple of years, when I’m not traveling. I’ve become a creature of habit!

I’ve had this specific routine in place for just this school year, but I’ve done my workout in the mornings for about twenty years. I’m not totally consistent every day, but I try to hit five days a week and usually end up hitting three or four.

Five years. When I am at my best, I sneak in a workout before I begin work.

I’ve kept up this particular routine for about a year, on and off. It’s tough to be super consistent since I travel constantly. But, whenever I’m home, this is my go-to.

This morning routine has served me well for the last two years. It creates a mindset of ease and stability—which I enjoy and find to be beneficial.

I’ve stuck with this morning routine since CorePower Yoga opened in San Francisco about nine months ago. Nothing makes me happier than starting my morning with a yoga class.

We adopted our dog Hudson about five months ago, so the 6:30am puppy wake-up is relatively new, but I’m actually starting to enjoy it. Knocking out the majority of my to-do list before noon always makes me feel like a rock star.

For at least five years. I’ve been at my current job for four years, but prior to that, I worked for a major logistics company producing analyst reports that had to be delivered by 8:00am Eastern (when I lived on the East Coast).

I’ve stuck with various iterations of this routine for the past couple of years. I tend to add and remove things every month or so to experiment with different activities.

Years. Decades, in fact. I wrote my second book this way while pregnant with my daughter (now twenty-one), and while my son (twenty-four) was a toddler.

I’ve had this routine for the past eight years. There have been slight adjustments to the timing, but the result has always been the same: I wake up early!

I started waking up early about five years ago because I was working in morning television and the show started at 7:00am. I found that while I hated waking up early, once I was up, I loved it.

Those days my routine was just wake up and rush out the door to work. My quiet time came a little later, around 10:00am. When I left morning television last year I was really committed to keeping that early morning routine. I’ve been doing this new morning routine for about six months. I won’t lie, though—there are some days when I go right back to sleep because, again, it’s not my nature to be up so early. But I’m working on it.

I live this way, so it’s hard to say. I really grew into this specific routine over time. I’d say I’ve been doing it for about four years now.

I’ve been doing this routine for about two years. When I’m in town (I travel a lot for work) this is the routine I follow, unless I’m working from home.

My routine started gradually about ten years ago, and I’ve had this latest routine for the past few years.

I’ve stuck with a variation of this routine for about seven years. I moved my gym time up a few months ago (I used to go in the mid-afternoon until it became too interruptive), but the breakfast has been with me since day one. Having a consistent morning routine helps me feel grounded, especially when life turns into a roller coaster.

Since January 7, 2018. I can pinpoint the exact date because my morning routine has literally transformed my life over the past year. I really believe it is the single most powerful change someone can make. Over the past year I’ve lost forty kilos (eighty-eight pounds) because of my morning routine. I feel so much better about myself; I wake up with determination and go to bed with satisfaction.

Two years ago, I was not living my best life and I felt quite stressed. Events out of my control undermined my confidence, and I put on weight. I knew I had to do something and I decided to start with a morning routine. I read so many books, blogs, and articles; listened to many (TED) Talks; and put together the best routine for me.

I did a lot of visualizations around “What is my perfect morning?” and realized that, for me, my perfect day revolved around a series of small rituals and self-care habits that would make me excited to get out of bed, nurture me, and help me achieve my goals—all before 8:00am!

About two years (since my youngest started sleeping through the night regularly). While I’m always tweaking the meditation, the exercise has been a constant.

I had my stroke approximately four months ago. The pre-stroke routine has been around a long time.

This has been my routine for almost a year, although I’m constantly experimenting with new ideas and trying to find more ways to be productive… it’s a work in progress. On the days when I can get my full morning routine in, I’m so clear-headed and full of energy… I feel like I can conquer the day!

This routine is the reason I was able to write Be More Pirate in just twelve months. This year has been more chaotic than most. I had never launched a book before, and how much there is to do took me by surprise.

Another major change is that I’m also back to being a one-person band. This time last year I was CEO of a one-hundred-person organization, but now I’ve got to do my own contracts, social media, finances, and administration, as well as the actual making stuff bit that I love.

Well, kids sure have changed things. Even more so with two. So this specific routine hasn’t been in place real long, but the broad outlines of coffee, reading, and general chill time before anything else, has been going strong for about the sevel years we’ve been married.

I’ve stuck with this routine for six months or so.

My puppy is only fifteen weeks old, so my morning routine has changed a lot as of recently. Before I had kids I would try to sleep in as long as possible, and even move any meetings I had to later in the day—sleep and self care have always been important to me. Now that I have kids, my days begin earlier and I actually think its proven to been better for my body. As life has taken all it’s turns, my routine has had to adjust. It just comes with the territory.

In terms of the self-care portion of my routine, I have been using the same face wash since I was fourteen…

Almost five years.

Six months, since the day I brought Mango Roll home. I’m a night owl and still identify as one, but I knew I had to adjust. Career advancement isn’t possible when the world favors early birds. I’ve tried everything from sleep-tracking to multi-phasic sleep to no avail. But the dog changed everything.

Her walk serves as a meditation for me. If we bump into a compatible dog playmate, even better. Meeting other dog-owned humans is a nice way to start the day. On weekends, I also tend to my growing indoor garden in the morning. I have eighty houseplants at the moment.

Recognizing that deep creative work doesn’t happen in the mornings for me was key. I now use that time for self care. Sketching and writing are activities that come naturally to me later in the day.

This routine has stuck with me for the past two years, and it fluctuates with my kids’ school, my wife’s job, and the status of the dogs.

I have been doing this routine for approximately four years. It changes slightly depending on the season. However, 99 percent of the time I get up before everyone else, watch the sunrise, and sip my lemon water.

I probably started this routine two years ago when I left my corporate job. During the first several months I would set my alarm and wake up early to check the news, because old habits die hard. I had a lot of anxiety and nervous energy around letting myself “sleep in,” but after about a year of working from home I began to relax and listen to my body. I naturally wake up now around 7:00am, but when I’m feeling worn down or sick and need to sleep longer, I don’t beat myself up over it anymore.

Years. And the thing about not seeing the hours before 6:00am has been there all my life.

I’ve stuck to some variation of this morning routine for about fifteen years.

I’ve been doing the basic wake/water/oatmeal/exercise thing for a long time—probably at least ten years. But I continue to experiment with the details. And as the kids grow up, the routine has to be constantly reinvented.

My schedule is constantly changing. I’m always traveling, and my schedule looks different every single day. I developed my morning routine to give myself some sort of normalcy and standard in a world that is always changing.

I try not to get too comfortable with routines, as learning how to be malleable has been necessary for me as an entrepreneur. I also listen to my body: if I need more sleep, I sleep.

Two and a half years.

Six months for the 7:00am start. Previous to this, I was not a morning person, so it’s been an adjustment. The fasting thing is more recent; who knows how long it’ll last?

Years. I always try to make sure that I have some form of mindfulness meditation in the morning, be it in the form of a brisk little walk, a morning coffee, all that stuff. It’s been like this for a long time.

At least a year, probably more. It’s had slight variations over time.

I’ve been a “morning sweat” kinda gal for about two years now, but this walking-to-work routine is relatively new, since switching neighborhoods a few months ago. I have the attention span of a goldfish (also called “being a millennial”), so I like to shake things up every few weeks to keep it fresh. But for now, this morning routine is workin’ for me.

This has more or less been my routine for several years now, with some minor changes along the way.

Only about two months! I was at “peak unhealthy” because I wasn’t dealing well with stress. I needed to make a change, so I incorporated the morning yoga class. It’s made a big difference in my energy level and outlook. Plus, my hubby loves rolling out of bed and seeing me sweaty and in yoga clothes.

Since I wrote a book about creating an ideal daily routine, I have really honed in and refined my process. I’ve stuck with it with about 90% adherence for the last year.

I’ve stuck with the same basic routine for the past ten years. There was a semester when I had a lot of night classes so I needed to adjust and make mornings about my kids, but I’ve gone back to these same basics when possible.

I’ve had the routine in this form for about four and a half years, but it has been disrupted a few times since then by some major life events. When I stray from the routine, I try to get in what I can and be very gentle with myself when resuming.

My routine has been the same for the past two and a half years. My routine is really tied to my apartment, and I’ve been in my current apartment in Greenwich Village for about this long. In New York City, your neighborhoods—where you live and where you work—dictate so much about your daily routine. Your neighborhood is where you get your coffee, your groceries, where you exercise, and how you get to work. I used to live in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and my morning routine was a lot different then. The best part of the Village is that I can walk through Washington Square Park on my way to work. Being an NYU graduate, I feel nostalgic walking through the same square I used to in college. I never tire of that Arch!

Since I moved to Washington, D.C. approximately six years ago.

Since the beginning of 2017. I’ve generally had a similar routine over the last few years.

I’ve had this routine ever since I had kids, which was about three years ago.

Three years.

On and off for about a year.

Thirty years. Yes, thirty years. Without the Jewish prayers and learning I feel like something is missing. My life is intense. Between being a father of five children, running a fast-growing company, and delivering on stage, it can get beyond crazy. If you lose sight of “why” you do things, the rest can get very chaotic.

The most recent routine has been in place for several years, but it has evolved over time. I sold my last company a year and a half ago, and when I’m not traveling I have a home office. I make it a priority to drop my kids off at school in the morning as often as I can before focusing on work at 8:00am. I can then work relatively uninterrupted throughout the day with an hour-long workout during my lunch break.

Working out at lunchtime is a great way to break up the day and get energized for the afternoon. My workout could involve distance running, swimming, strength training, or a combination. Fitness takes a back seat only to family because it’s critical for maintaining a healthy mind and body, mitigating stress, and staying energized.

I’ve stuck with this routine as long as I’ve had children, so three years.

It’s been off and on for decades.

When I was at Rose Park Advisors, I got up and went into the office every day. I still made time in the morning to meditate, pray, and think, but I had to get cleaned up for the day fairly early. Now, on the days when I work from home, I often go for a quick walk around 8:30 or 9:00am as a sort of break before getting cleaned up for the day. The thing that has helped me stick to a new routine is realizing that there are so many things that I want to get done. So many. Mornings are so precious because it’s when I’m most productive. For me, thirty minutes at 5:30am is equivalent to at least an hour at 3:00pm. I want and need that time to do things that actually require me to create, like writing.​

This has been my routine for about six months.

I’ve done this for the last five years or so. I think my brain reacted to an increasingly busy life by insisting that I get up early in order to write.

I’ve always been a morning person, but rising so early is a new thing. Sometimes I’m up as early as 3:00am. I just wake up and can’t go back to sleep, so I get up to write, which I consider a blessing.

My fiancé and I moved in together about eight months ago, so we had to establish some new “together” routines. He’s an entrepreneur as well, and I love that we have the flexibility to have a low-key morning and eat breakfast together each day.

For about seven years. I got Bear in the winter of 2011, and my interest in biking started when Theo, my son, was a senior in high school in 2009. His high school baseball team often played down in Fort Tilden (about ten miles south of our house), and a friend gave me the idea to ride my bike down there to watch their games. My interest only grew from there.

This has been my routine for years. While I sometimes need to adjust it slightly based on my travel schedule, the thing that I try to keep constant is exercising first thing in the morning.

I’m a pretty disciplined person in general, so I’ve stuck to this regimen for years. I travel often and work for a global company, so I have to modify this to accommodate for time zone adjustments and flight schedules.

I went full-time freelance last year, so it’s been about six months of pure, unadulterated freedom.

Decades—at least three decades. I take a break on holidays and weekends.

Just a few months so far.

I would say 90 percent of the time I’m very consistent with my routine. It has not always been this way; I’ve taken several years to develop and grow into it.

I only disrupt my morning routine when there is another important event that takes precedence. For example, when there is a nighttime event that forces me to go to bed later than my regular bedtime, I still try to get sufficient rest so I can operate efficiently the following day. This means I wake up later and my morning routine is thrown off a bit. Alternatively, when I have an appointment in the morning between the hours of 5:00am and 10:00am, my morning is also impacted because I have to amend or miss some or all aspects of my typical routine.

There was one year where I really wanted this to be my routine, but I’d get to bed too late, or I’d have a fight with my alarm in the morning and end up sleeping until 6:00 or 7:00am. Then I’d spend the rest of the day feeling awful because I’d cut my writing time short.

Now that it’s become a habit, waking up early and moving through my routine has become almost like brushing my teeth; I don’t even think about it. I’ve been doing it for about two years—now I pop up out of bed at 5:00am most mornings, ready to go.

I’ve been practicing some variation of my mindful morning routine for the past year or so.

I’ve done burpees every day since December 21, 2011, so tomorrow completes my sixth year of daily burpees without missing a day. I added the rest of the calisthenics since then. Before then I hadn’t set a pattern. I expect to continue it until my body can’t.

I’ve done about 2,100 days in a row and passed 100,000 burpees two months ago. Tim Ferriss and fitness expert Martin Gibala talked about me and my burpees on Tim’s podcast.

I added the one-minute making the bed and crossing the room in November 2016.

I’ve had my home routine for at least the past five years. Even before I was freelance, when I worked in a corporate 9:00am-5:00pm job, I would nurse a coffee until around 10:00am before finally getting around to sourcing out breakfast.

I ditched my day job about eight months ago and have adapted to this routine since then. I was advised early on that a challenging part of working from home would be keeping myself accountable for doing the actual work, so I made sure to establish a consistent and reliable routine early on.

For at least the past ten years, but even before that my routine was pretty similar. As an athlete, I’ve always woken up early in the morning. What I’ve added lately is quiet time and a baby!

I started my company four years ago, so that’s when this routine started. Before that I was running programming at AMC, and then at Cineflix Studios, and I had to be at my offices for both by 10:00am.

Ever since the kids started going to school, so about ten years, give or take.

A year and some change.

I’ve been waking up at around 6:00am for years. Even when I don’t set my music to wake me up, I’m often awake at that time naturally.

I’ve kept up with this morning routine for years - I find that sticking to a consistent wakeup time makes me sleep better overall. The days of sleeping in are long gone!

This has been our routine for the past two years, when I made a shift to getting up much earlier. It’s been a huge improvement in my ability to feel like I have the day under control before the rest of my household wakes up.

My husband works in finance and, in San Francisco, that often means working New York market hours - leaving home before 4:00am. I’ve always been the only parent on duty in the mornings, so having an organized routine is really important.

I’ve been doing this routine off and on for almost 20 years. I call this my “game changer” routine. When I begin this kind of programming everything in my life gets simplified and all facets of my life tend to elevate. My energy, my relationships, my business, my finances, my opportunities - any time I feel stagnant in life, I decide it’s time to “change the game” and I employ this program.

I’ve been doing this routine for about five months. Andie has had office space downtown since January, but I only started going in every day once we hired our first employee. Before that, I would commute into the office two-three days a week, since it was just me and it didn’t really matter where I worked. But as the “boss” (though I never think of myself that way), I do think it’s important and responsible to show up every day, even though I sometimes think I’d get more work done if I stayed home.

This routine has gone on for at least the past ten years. Maybe longer. Yes, I’m just that boring.

This has more or less been my morning routine for the last decade because I have three daughters, all of whom I’ve made breakfast for and spent time with on the way to school. It’s a great time to talk, uninterrupted. It also sneaks in some walking/exercise time.

I’ve stuck to this same routine since 1993, and it has only gotten more complicated as my life has gotten more complicated.

My morning ritual, though somewhat evolutionary over time, has remained rhythmically consistent. To hijack a well-known phrase, my morning ritual doesn’t repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. And I have to admit that this holds true spanning back to college, with the notable exception of the block of white space, which I added to my schedule about four years ago and which is the single most powerful recalibration of my work/life balance I’ve ever experienced.

Twenty-two years. In the early years it was to help my wife get the kids (now adults) ready for school. Since we are now “happy empty-nesters,” I get up early by habit and use the early morning quiet to jump into the day.

About three years.

I recently went full time on my startup, and moved back to the United States after living in Cambridge, United Kingdom for two years. There, I was working full time as a UX designer for Redgate, and my son was in nursery five days a week, so my routine was very different just a few months ago.

It’s only been a few months since I’ve been in this new routine and, to be honest, I’m still figuring it out!

Fifteen years, at least!

I’ve been doing this for the last two years and, literally, I can’t miss it. Even if I’m away on business, I wake up and walk the new city. It’s part of my soul at this point.

I have four kids who are totally aware of my morning routine and know that my walk is necessary. My oldest daughter is thirteen and she takes care of the kids in the morning while I go on my walk - she always knows where I am.

I have been doing a variation of this routine for as long as I have worked for myself after leaving Google in 2011.

I realized very quickly that my body—and by extension, my routines—were the fuel for my business. If I was operating at fifty percent effectiveness due to lack of sleep or exercise, then as its sole employee, so would my business. That was unacceptable to me! Not to mention unsustainable. Success, to me, has as much to do with how I run my business and my life as it does what I choose to work on. I came to adopt the motto, “Your body is your business,” and I make my physical health and vitality a top priority. My staples are yoga, meditation, pilates, walking, eating well, and getting plenty of sleep. Those elements of my happiness formula are what lead me to my energetic and creative best.

Five or six years, ever since I started working out. I like routines, and this one works for me.

It’s always evolving, but the meditation and smoothies have been part of my morning routine for a couple decades now. I used to wake up bright and early to do yoga first. As I’ve gotten older, though, I appreciate practicing a little later in the morning or afternoon, especially since I can make my own schedule when I’m home.

When I’m on the road, I just do it when I can. However, I always travel with my morning powder - it’s the only item I really need when I’m on the road. It carries me through my long, physically and mentally challenging days, and I like to add all sorts of vitamins, herbs, and probiotics to fine-tune it for whatever I need.

Since January 1, 2013.

I’ve stuck with this specific routine for four months now, but my morning routine has involved journaling, meditation, and exercise for a few years now.

For about three years now, since we’ve lived on a farm.

This routine has been consistent for the past 5-6 months. Before that, it was the same with one exception - I would wake between 6:30am and 7:30am instead of 5:00am. I wouldn’t read or write in the morning. I would wake up, drink coffee, plan my day, and get to work while drinking my smoothie.

Having a few more hours in the morning to do my work is a huge benefit. I feel more accomplished by 9:00am than I used to feel all day!

My routine has been consistent for the past four years. Routine and habit are actually the foundation of quip’s brand (and good oral care), and I’m a firm believer in the power of both.

Years. I can’t remember when it started. Except the kid part. That started six years ago.

About a year. The first year of dad life was not as smooth. I’m up for twenty-four hours a day, depending on the day of the week. Babies have horrible schedules during the first year. It was not as bad as some people’s schedules, but it was not exactly fun.

Around four months. I change it when I travel or have jet lag. But other than that, I keep it very consistent.

I’ve had this routine my entire life! Swimming bred me to wake up in the wee hours of the morning from a young age.

The general routine has lasted for at least two years. I’m truly a creature of habit.

I’ve been working with this morning routine for about three years now, with some minor tweaks along the way to optimize it a bit further. For example, I’ve made it so that Launch Center Pro prompts me to start my reading in the morning and outlines all the steps to my reading workflow within the app. Beyond that, it’s been pretty consistent.

I switch routines every few months depending on my mood and my work schedule. I think it’s important to change things around and get out of my comfort zone.

Over three years now, with a few modifications, mostly based on kid-related schedule changes. I work a lot, but my schedule is flexible enough to allow mornings to fit my family.

About four years now.

I’ve only had the privilege of waking up whenever I want in the last year and a half, but waking up for breakfast and coffee have been essentials of my morning routine for at least six or seven years now.

I’ve been doing this for a few years now. The more structured I am in the morning, the less rushed I feel throughout the day.

For three years now. There’ve been some changes along the way. It’s been an evolution of building entrepreneurial discipline.

I have had this same routine for fourteen years.

Around five years (getting up at the same time and keeping this general order), though it was around three years ago that I started going to bed earlier.

It’s been pretty consistent for the last two years since Henry was born and Clara started school.

This routine has stuck for about a year - since I’ve moved my fitness boot camp. Prior to that, it was very similar. The differences are that I used to train at home, and that I didn’t go into boot camp daily. I sublet the space for my camp and didn’t have an office at that location, so I worked more from home.

I’ve been operating like this for years. In my previous life I was a music and brain neuroscientist with an academic joint appoint at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, so my morning routine was very different!

I’ve been working freelance for ten years, but things have really picked up since I became creative director at Women Online (four years ago), co-wrote Minimalist Parenting (three years ago), started the Edit Your Life podcast (one year ago), and started my t-shirt brand (two months ago!). Building an efficient model that helps me stay on top of all of the balls I’m juggling is crucial!

I began studying Ayurveda about four years ago and have kept up this morning routine since. It’s become intuitive to me! My entire day is more balanced with this simple practice.

Most of my life I’ve followed a version of this routine. My mother has always said I dropped out of the womb and took off. Each morning tends to emulate her premise.

These days, my morning workout is more of a “meditation in motion” rather than a hard workout. This sets up my body and mind to take on the rest of the day.

More than two years.

This is a fairly new routine (we just welcomed our son six months ago), and is an adjustment from my typical mornings, or my thrive routine.

My thrive routine still calls for an early morning, but I leave the house and head to my local coffee shop to write before the rest of the gang wakes up. I then take a morning yoga class before heading home and putting on my Mom Hat for the day.

By rough estimate, about 25 years, not all of it as a photographer, but the same mindset and (lack of) routine served me in other endeavors, too.

Before that I served a mandatory period in the Israeli military which, among other things, cemented in my mind how incompatible my sensibilities are with rigid routines.

I’d say it’s been a good couple of years that I’ve had this routine, but I started meditating a little over a year ago.

I have had this routine since I started my degree in photography. This is my second degree and since I started it, I have had to be very well organized to combine both university and work.

I’ve been doing part of this routine for at least three years; however, I’ve been doing specifically the above for about six months, since I stopped teaching and started writing full time. When I’m teaching, I do the same thing, but two days a week instead of four.

This is all relatively new, so about three months, I think. I’ve become exponentially more productive since I implemented a routine, and I won’t ever go back to not doing this unless some extenuating circumstance calls for it to change. Now that I’ve found one, I’m an evangelist for finding a morning routine that sets you up for a successful day!

It took me a while to find my routine after we moved to Madrid, since I was accustomed to taking the subway from our Manhattan apartment out to my Brooklyn studio. Since I’m now working from a studio one flight up from my home, I needed to find another way to get into work mode, get moving, and not feel cooped up in the same building all day.

I’ve been climbing full time for twenty years, and this has always been my baseline routine.

About six years. There’s a significant difference in my day when I complete my morning routine versus when I don’t, so I’ve made it a staple.

I’m just settling into life in a new job and apartment after eighteen months of living out of a backpack. This particular variation of my routine is about two months old.

My son is twenty months old, so my mornings have changed a lot over the past year!

It varies, but I’d say for a couple years. I think people become a bit obsessive about finding the “perfect” routine. I just want something that gets me going.

I’ve been guarding my mornings for about the last two years, and I started working out exclusively in the mornings in the last year.

I’ve kept up a solid morning routine for almost three years, since really dedicating myself to living an Ayurvedic lifestyle. The routine is always changing a little due to my current interests, work demands, and my sometimes-intense travel schedule.

About two years, but my routine changes according to school schedules.

Life with an infant is a constant negotiation of routine. We follow a routine, and then my son learns a new skill or his teeth are bothering him or he is unsettled by something or he acquires different needs, and the routine has to change.

The sculptures in the show will be from all of his morning naps in August. I devote my practice to the question: “Strangers, why?” In the upcoming show, Ivana and I ask, “How do we ready ourselves before we meet those strangers?”

It’s been about two years that I’ve been doing my yoga and reading. I started tracking this using an app on my phone 423 days ago. I can see that I added journaling 381 days ago. Those streaks have been unbroken ever since.

I have been getting up early for so long, I almost can’t remember a time when I didn’t do it. In college I worked at the gym, and most mornings it was my job to open the place up at 5:00am.

After graduating from college, I was a personal trainer for over ten years, which almost always required waking up in the early morning for those clients who wanted to work out before they went to work.

I’ve guarded my first hour religiously for about the last six months, but I’ve made it a priority to work first thing for about three years.

I’m pretty bad at sticking with any sort of daily routine. I orient my life around weeks more than days.

This has been my routine for the past couple years. It changes depending on what phase I’m in. When I was recording my album in Nashville last year, my schedule was wake up, go to hot yoga, have breakfast and a smoothie, have some coffee, do vocal warmups, record in Alex’s (producer) studio from noon until midnight… and repeat.

When I’m on tour for the next couple months, I’ll be driving and performing almost every day, so it will probably be sleep, drive, play a show, and repeat. I’m really hoping to do some exploring, though, since I haven’t been to many of these cities before.

This routine started when Mogul first launched, so two years. I have been consistent with it ever since.

This has been our routine for the past 8-9 months.

I really began to take my morning routine seriously after my painful wake-up call in 2007, when I fainted from sleep deprivation and exhaustion, hit my head on my desk, and broke my cheekbone.

My morning routine has had many iterations, but I’ve had a morning routine for over five years now.

This has been my routine for the last few months.

The current version of my routine has been in place for about six months.

I’ve stuck with this routine for about a year, on and off. During the winter months, it was difficult for me to get up early because it was pitch-black outside, so I always slept in until 6:30 or 6:45am and exercised in the evening.

This current routine is only a few months old.

{% include content_banner.html %}

This has been my basic routine for the last few years. I’ve become more diligent about the creative time in the mornings. I used to start with email, and I found once I got too deep into it, the writing or editing got pushed to the afternoon when my creativity and willpower is often zapped.

I’ve been doing this morning routine for over sixteen years now. Before that, I was always a morning person and worked out in the mornings before school in high school and college.

I’ve stuck with this routine since I went back to work in January after being on maternity leave for six months. Although, to be fair, it wasn’t that different before I had my son: I’ve been waking up around 5:30am to work out in the morning since early 2014. I even worked out the day my son was born! He came a month early and we had no idea he was on his way.

A few major life changes over the last couple of years have altered my morning routine drastically (see below). In its current form, I’ve stuck with this routine since the birth of my son approximately five months ago.

Since Chloe was roughly three months old.

My allergy to mornings started in adolescence. I guess I never outgrew it. So… pretty much since then, with some variations based on life stages and responsibilities.

The truth is that I wish I were a morning person. Often I try to be. I suspect I’m just not.

I’ve been getting up this early since 2010.

In the early 2000s I was a personal trainer, starting at 6:00am each morning. When my online business grew to the point that I no longer needed to be a trainer, I started sleeping in until 7:30am. But I quickly realized that sleeping in left me feeling “behind” and anxious, so I started getting up earlier and earlier until I settled into my optimal schedule.

I’ve settled into it over the past decade or so. Much of that time has also included a lot of active travel. I had a personal quest to visit every country in the world from 2002-2013, which required a lot of flexibility, but when I’m home I try very hard to keep to the routine.

Two years.

My routine has been fairly consistent for at least the last two years. It is however, open to change a bit from day to day.

I’ve kept this routine (some form of an early wake up, writing, and the gym) for eight years.

I’ve been following this particular routine for nearly two years.

About two years.

It changes all the time. I homeschool my kids and run a startup, so our schedule is always changing.

I’ve been doing yoga every day before work for three months. Starting my day with yoga has been the best thing I’ve done for my physical and mental health.

I don’t like having a strict routine. I try to make space to read and write, but I like starting my day with adventure and unpredictability. For example, sometimes because of jet lag I’ll wake up at 4 or 5:00am, and my partner and I will go to a new part of the city to take a long 5-10 mile walk before our day starts.

Surprisingly, I have stuck with this routine for over a year. I used to not be an early riser or an active runner, so once I changed my lifestyle, I changed my mornings.

Off and on for several years. There will be weeks when I fall off. After that happens for a while, I get fed up with my disorganization and get back to my routines.

I’ve had insomnia since I was twelve. There are months that will pass where I’ll sleep better than others. I used to get anxiety about whether I’d sleep or not but now I just take it as it is and I don’t stress about it, and I try to see the positive side of it.

I like waking up really early in the morning as it’s quiet, and I can write and think and read as during work hours it’s non-stop email madness. However, I am most productive when I sleep around 5-7 hours as I’m sharper during the day. If I sleep eight or more hours I turn into a sloth.

This has basically been my routine since I became self-employed in 2007.

I’ve had a broadly similar routine for almost all of Moz’s eleven years, though I haven’t always been as diligent with exercising in the morning as I should be.

I started developing my morning routine about seven years ago, but it changes over time depending on the seasons, and what’s going on with my family and the rest of my life. When I started, I was working crazy hours and always in a hurry, so I only had about fifteen minutes to dedicate, but that was enough to convince me of the power of feeding yourself first.

While I really look forward to my morning routine, I’m flexible for life’s surprises too. Recently, my husband broke his arm in a cycling accident and wasn’t able to drive for a couple of weeks. I had to take him to the train or to work every morning, so my routine changed.

The details of the routine have varied over the last few years, but the components have been consistent for the last three.

They saved me when I found myself getting too overwhelmed with my work at Voxy (Ed: Where Gregg is co-founder; he left the company in April 2015). I was feeling so one-dimensional and losing my foundation. I focused on the mornings to take care of myself and remind me that I was so much more than Voxy.

​This particular incarnation of my routine has been with me for about six months. There is room for growth; I’m slowly moving my alarm back. ​I’d like to start including some yoga.

I’ve had the basics of this routine for about three or four years: coffee, reading, breakfast, and devotion.

I’ve been using this routine for the past three years and it has helped me in every aspect of my life. I have so much more energy throughout the day, have gotten in the best shape of my life, have been more positive, and I went from being almost completely broke to starting an online business that now makes over $13,000 a month.

Finding a routine that works for me has been the best thing I never did, and if you read through enough of these, you’ll see that most successful people share similar habits that you can replicate into your own life.

As I share in my online course, Make Over Your Mornings, I implemented the concept of a morning routine years and years ago, but I have stuck with this specific routine for the past few years.

It varies a little bit if I’m traveling, or if my kids wake up early, on the weekends, or if we were up later the night before. But the main pieces of it stay the same, even if the time or order of it sometimes changes from day to day.

I have been iterating this routine for the past two years.

I have been consistent with this morning routine for almost a year now.

“Stuck” isn’t the word I’d use, because it implies effort, and I don’t work at my morning routine.

I’ve always been an early riser, but I became an even earlier riser (between 3:30-4:00am) fifteen years ago after a trip to the Middle East. At first I thought my earlier wake-up time was jet lag. Others said, “Oh, you’re going through perimenopause,” (I was 48 at the time), but the pattern endured, and that’s fine with me, because I love the early hours.

I’ve been on this routine for the past three years, but it’s been refined over time.

I moved to Seattle from San Francisco eight months ago, and it took me a good six months to find myself after that. After months of waking up and checking email and Instagram updates in bed before getting up, I realized it was putting me in an awful mood. I was living by the routines everyone else wanted to dictate for me. I was living to see everyone else’s updates and meet their needs instead of looking inward.

One day, I just said I wasn’t going to do that anymore. No one is going to give me time or permission to write or read or create anything at all. I have to find that time myself. People will always, always ask things of me (and, despite how this sounds, I love it when people ask things of me!), but if I don’t set boundaries and give a little love to myself, I won’t be able to truly give to them the way I want to.

I like giving things. But I have to give things to myself too. My writing is that gift.

For as long as I can remember. If you really want to take charge of the day, it is very far-reaching waking up as early as you can because between 6:00am-7:00am, I feel, it is the most peaceful and beautiful time of the day.

As a university student, photographer, and content creator I’m always on the go, which means I get to appreciate nature and watch people as they go about their everyday hustle whether it is people going for a morning jog or people heading to work or school. It is very influential and I cherish these moments, it is very inspiring to me.

I’ve had a similar routine for about a year.

It took a long time for me to gather the courage, discipline, and commitment to follow a routine like that, but I find it to be such a game changer.

I used to struggle to get up in the mornings, mostly because my mind associated early-rising with duty, school, obligation, conveyer-belt careers, and all the things that didn’t excite me the slightest. I purposely engineered my life so that I didn’t have any obligation to get up early - and I loved it, until I got a strong message to change a few months ago. I did and I never looked back.

I realised that waking up early in the morning sends out a very important message to myself and, without sounding too wacko, to the universe: “Hey, here I am, awake, aware, sharp, and ready with the first morning light”. I find that being conscious and awake early in the morning gives enormous power, strength, clarity, vitality, centered-awareness, and focus that evening time just cannot provide.

The more I’ve been doing this routine the more I realise that the renaissance of early mornings is not just an accident. It is a social phenomenon that brings forth within it a new age of individual self-expression. Let me explain: Socially, people used to do things they love in the evenings and at night, because most of us had conveyer-belt day-jobs and duties in the mornings that were obligatory and just had to be done.

It is pretty obvious that at least here, in the West, with the help of the technological developments and the rise of entrepreneurship, we are coming away from the industrial and post-industrial era where people’s individual dreams were crushed, oppressed, and pushed into the dark hours of the night time. Most of us now have full freedom and the capability to express our individual purpose, be creative, and embody our dreams into being. How lucky!

We no longer need nighttime to come out of our closets and be ourselves, we have a freedom and an enormous power of mornings to do what we love and make a statement to ourselves and the world. What a powerful transformation it is!

I’ve had this specific routine for at least the past five years, since I’ve been working from home.

Alas, every day is a new “routine.” But it’s okay. I still get my work done and do the other things I want to do. When the baby is a little older, I’ll be able to choose what time I wish to get up, and hopefully get in a little quiet work during that window before the day starts.

I really admire people with great morning routines (indeed, I wrote a whole book called What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast). In the spring of 2014, when my youngest child was two and a half years old, I got into a good routine of waking up at 6:00am, working for an hour, then starting the breakfast routine. I have a vision of creating a morning routine that involves some strength work or yoga, then an hour of work, then the kids. Someday.

We’ve maintained this routine for about two years now.

The funny thing is, I never considered myself a “morning person” until recently, about the last six months, so my routine is fairly new.

Again, I was living in the UK for the past year, so this was my routine there. In the U.S., it’s slightly different - largely because I do my email at night instead of in the morning. Again, because I like to try to send email when people can’t respond to them immediately!

In the U.S., I typically wake up earlier if I have to head to our office in Mountain View (which can be a 60-90 minute commute). Or I’ll do a meeting or two in the morning. If my schedule is clear, I like to write at this time - but it’s rarely clear.

I’ve been at this for about a year.

I’m always reflecting on my routine and trying to improve it.

Our lives have changed dramatically in the last year or so; new house, new baby, so this exact routine is about a year old, with versions of it going back about four years.

It changes all the time. As my kids get older, their schedules and routines fluctuate so I need to adapt.

Honestly, I don’t think I ever had one.

I’ve never lived alone, I’ve always shared my bedroom with my sister or my boyfriends so it’s always been really hard for me to find my own routine.

I’ve been experimenting and iterating on this current version of my morning routine for about two years.

A few practices I’ve done for years, but as a whole, I’ve stuck with this routine since the beginning of the year.


At least four years. The meditation is just since last December though.

I’ve slowly built up my morning routine over time.

I used to be an evening person, but as I started trying to add structure to my routine I found that it was easier to stick with stuff like writing and meditation if I did it in the morning.

I’ve written 750 words every day for the last 331 days. I’ve also been meditating every morning for the last year. The tea and stretching are the two newest parts of my routine; I’ve only been doing them for the last five months or so.

My current morning routine began in September 2013 when I decided to relocate the entire family from Paris to London to lead the European expansion of Vestiaire Collective.

Since then I’ve fallen deeply in love with London. I find its energy and open-minded attitude quite refreshing.

Only about three weeks, but it’s kind of an altered version of an earlier routine I stuck with for months.

I’ve been remembering my dreams for about two years, walking the dog for eight years, having just one cup of coffee for one year, morning pages for three years, and doing the altar offerings for two years.

The timed (yes, timed!) reading and writing has been happening for four months.

Except for a brief 2.5 year period when we had an office in Greenpoint, I’ve had a similar routine for the past eight years.

I’m one of those rare people who works better at home, alone without deadlines or other co-workers. When I’m in an office or around other people I get too distracted and excited and just want to hear what everyone else thought about last night’s Walking Dead episode.

I’ve had variations of this routine; movement, writing, nourishment, for a few years now.

Last year, my fiancé and I moved into a loft in Dumbo (Brooklyn) where, with my interior designer Mom’s help, we put together a really inspiring creative space. It blends giant post-it walls with separate analog and digital spaces with a solid speaker system and a fridge filled with fresh fruits, almond butter, and kale.

When I wake up and look around, it feels like I could be anywhere in the world which feels grounding in the hustle and bustle of New York. Our indoor palm tree Zoë helps keep that question at bay.

I’ve been doing the 5:30am wakeup since I started working on Daily Rituals in 2009. At the time, I was also working a full-time job as a magazine editor, and the only way I could figure out to do both things at once was to get up really early—so I got in the habit of waking at 5:30 and working on the book for two hours before heading into the office. That proved so effective that I’ve stuck with it ever since, even though I’m now working freelance and could easily sleep later if I wanted.

Other details of the above routine are more recent – I’ve only been following the work-until-11:00 scheme for a few months. Before that, I would stop at 8:00 for breakfast, then take a shower and resume working at 9:00. But now I’m finding it better to have one big block of uninterrupted working time.

I’ve been on this routine specifically for four months, since that’s when I started a new job.

On and off for about five years.

I believe routines need to change over time.

It’s like doing the same workout every time you go to the gym. After a while, your muscles and mind don’t become stimulated by the exercise and your improvements and performance will decrease over time. I believe in implementing a Kaizen approach; by adding very small changes over a period of time to keep things new and fresh. These changes do not need to be radical changes, just slight adjustments. I change the experiences around what I see, but the time in which I do them remains the same.I like to get up early, when nobody else is up. I am one competitive little person, and in a weird way I feel like I’m winning, as I’m doing something productive when everyone else is asleep.

Approximately six months.

{% include content_banner.html %}

Eight years now!

It’s a continuously evolving process. I plan on being one of the old ladies who goes for a swim every morning, but I’m still waiting for that part of my routine to kick in.

I’ve kept with my current routine, more or less, for three or four years now. Of course, with traveling, I have to learn to adapt to whatever country I might be in at the time.

I’m never stuck in any routine. Instead, my morning routine is constantly evolving as I pick up helpful tips from friends along the way, helping me start each day better than the last.

Ever since my son was born.

I’ve been in this routine for roughly five years, give or take some minor tweaks along the way.

We just brought Fievel home three weeks ago, so it’s pretty new. Before, I’d wake up at 8:45am, get ready in fifteen minutes, and be out the door. I value sleep more than preparation, I guess.

So long that I can’t remember ever not having it!

It’s probably been the last 8-12 months. I’d like to fit in more exercise though, and make sure I stick to having smoothies every single day, even at weekends. Both of these things always help get the day off to a perfect start.

I’ve been self-employed for about eight years, and have had this basic routine since I started. The importance of the meditation and mindfulness practices are a more recent addition.

Routines are an iterative process. You add and adapt it over time. I have been doing some version of this specific routine for nearly five years. It’s gotten me through three books in three years as well as dozens of projects for clients big and small.

I have stuck with a similar routine to this for a little over two years now.

This is pretty much how my mornings have unfolded since I went back to college in January 2012. I don’t really remember what it was like before that when I had a regular job except that I was miserable and grumpy because I didn’t get to enjoy my shower.

Since March 2013.

I’ve been doing variations of this for a long time, but this particular routine has been in my life for about four months.

For about four years now, though I had moments where I neglected it… because of laziness. Face it, sometimes, especially on weekends after a party, I don’t want to stick to a routine. That’s okay, because those days are my rejuvenation moments.

Every piece of my routine emerged at a different time: I’ve been meditating every morning for about six months, but my breakfast has been more or less the same for a couple of years. I like to experiment with one variable at a time to see how it affects my performance and mood.

I quit my job in mid-April, so since then.

I’ve experimented a lot with the order of the habits, but for the most part, it’s been about six months.

I’ve been working on my routine ever since my fiancé and I started our company – about two and a half years ago. I’ve had this ‘version’ for the past six months. I’ve been WILDLY productive since then.

I began writing fiction daily in December last year (2013) and haven’t missed a day since!

This has been my routine since my new job started at the beginning of July.

This has been my routine for almost three months now, it being something new I tried in the summer.

I find the earlier I wake up, the more I can achieve and the less stressed I feel. I’ve recently been testing getting up really early, around 4-5:00am, and am actually pleased with the results, so I may change it up a bit. That said, going to bed early enough for this to be effective is quite the challenge.

I’ve had the same routine pretty much since we got the dog four years ago. And even before then it was nearly the same thing. I’ve had the same lifestyle for years!

Ever since we moved into this house, which was February of this year.

I’m on a different team at Mozilla now, which means I’m travelling less and able to get into more of a routine. It’s good to get into a groove, sometimes.

The upside of this is that I’m starting to recognise and talk to people in my community, which is great. We’ve got friendly neighbours and we live in the kind of place where people will stop and have a chat with you.

The majority of the routine I’ve been doing for at least two years. The twenty pages of reading is a new addition that I’ve been doing for the last three months.

This was basically my routine in high school, although I usually didn’t have extra time for some reason. My routine is vastly different while I’m away at school, but in the past two summers when I’ve lived at home, this is what I’ve done.

I’ve done this routine almost every day for the past seven years. The only thing that varies is my waking time, depending on where I’m living and my commute.

The meditation part has only been included since March but I love it. I do it in the morning and before bed but I’ve found that the principles of it affect every moment of my day. The rest of it has been fairly consistent for several years now, except the 5 Minute Journal which was only released recently.

A few months.

Priorities shift (rebuilding my shoulder, for example), but I’ve never been able to get straight to work. I like to go outside and breathe a bit first.

This has officially been my routine since Saturday, May 24.

This has been my morning routine for the past six months, and it takes about 75 minutes.

If I get up closer to 5:00am than 5:30, I’ll squeeze in a 3-5 mile run which can extend it to two hours. Either way, the goal is to complete everything by 7:00am when I need to help the kids with their morning.

I still mark on my wall calendar when I’ve completed everything in the routine. My longest stretch is twenty-six consecutive days. Days when I complete everything in the morning routine before 7:00am are significantly better than days I don’t. Having more significantly better days is a strong incentive to complete the entirety of the morning routine.

At least three years.

Three years in its current format.

I’ve stuck with this routine for the last six months.

This has been my routine on and off for the past three years.

I’ve kept up this routine for a good number of months now, and really for years as a basis. Schedule changes at any given job can mess up my routine for weeks, but I’m fairly protective of my mornings when I can afford it.

“Stuck with” is perhaps stretching it. I prefer it, but I manage it perhaps 70-80% of the time.

When I’m traveling – which I do a lot – I tend to have a problem keeping to my routine. Some of that is self-consciousness (I’m usually traveling with others) and some is just not having the privacy/accessibility for that kind of practice. Still trying to work that out…

I created this routine (together with my evening routine) about two months after I moved out of my parents’ place, in the summer of 2013.

It has changed slightly but I’ve stuck to it for around two years.

Three years.

Five years.

I’ve been at my current job (and kept to this routine) for about 7 months.

Pieces of this routine change (the magnetic poetry is new, sleeping a little later is new) but other parts, like coffee, are cemented in my mornings.

My morning routine is extremely flexible. Sometimes, I have appointments and meetings at 7:00am weekly, so therefore the triple shot latte and breakfast normally extend out until past 9:00am.

The above routine has been on-going for approximately six years or so.

I started being a super early riser back in July (2013) when I was off from school.

Except for the USM in the shower, I have been on this routine for almost three years now.

Ever since I started walking my daughter to school (the 4:00am start has been on and off, mostly on, for the last two years).

I started getting into this routine after I completed my yoga teacher training course this May (2013) and subsequently retouched my spiritual practice after quitting my corporate job.

The thing about working on yourself is you feel incomplete if you don’t do it every day, so since this time it’s been approximately seven months of active living. There are days when you do feel lazy but I usually keep them going even if I get laid back.

We’ve been teaching English in Korea since August, so about four months or so now.

The last six months or so.

A month into my NQT (newly qualified teacher) year and it seems to be working for me.

I was never an early riser before, having a reputation for sleeping in to 1-2:00pm while doing my first degree at university. However, having worked in schools for four years now, I am used to the early 6:00am starts.

I find I am the most productive at the start of my day, maybe it’s because I am fresh, or maybe it’s because I know I have twenty five moody teenagers ready to be bluntly honest about me if my lessons are boring and dull.

Almost three years now. I can’t see it changing any time soon. If it does change the only difference will be the surrounding scenery. A similar routine in Tokyo may be cool…

The twenty-minute meditation is recent, but the rest have gradually become my morning routine over the last nine months.

I am currently changing from a night owl to a morning riser. It is really difficult, but I have stuck to this routine for two months now.

This routine started July 5 2013, right after quitting an eleven year career as an investment banker at Credit Suisse.

My routine changed DRAMATICALLY. I used to wake up at 5:45am, shower, put my suit on, and run for the office to get there before the financial markets opened. I don’t miss it at all!!

I’ve been following this routine for about a month.

My schedule changes pretty frequently, as does my routine. As long as I have my priorities completed early in the day, I will feel at peace.

Since I moved to Bali, Indonesia, a few months ago.

Before then I spent four years in China for college, and my routine was entirely different. Back then I didn’t have my nice morning breakfast; we usually had breakfast in class because of our schedule. Gosh, our teacher hated us eating in the classroom!

Like I said, I don’t have a set routine. I go with the flow. After reading The Power of Habit book I thought I would build a routine. However, this didn’t work out. Routines are boring and they feel monotonous. Instead, I focus on getting myself organised so I feel in control.

All of my backpacking life! I like to get up early, have breakfast, and plan the day ahead.

As it is so fluid and I constantly change elements according to how I feel and what my mind and body needs the most, it’s a bit difficult to say, but my mornings have definitely been more self-care centered for the last couple of years.

One thing that I have religiously done daily since last December is oil pulling, and my teeth have never been in better condition.

About four weeks, since I got settled here.

Approximately ten months.

This routine has been a staple in my life for about six months, with a few additions here and there.

It’s been consistent for about four months.

I’ve kept this specific routine for almost two years, but a morning routine for well over five years. In college, I was a night owl – I hardly ever woke before 10:00am – but my life has changed drastically since then and now calls for much more careful doling out of time.

I am officially a morning bird.

A few months. Not because another one failed, but because my schedule and lifestyle is always changing, so I do too.

When I worked as a consultant, I had some projects where I flew to other cities every week and others where I travelled by train to the suburbs. Each time I get a new schedule, my morning is adjusted accordingly. I try to be adaptable and like to experiment with new habits.

Years ago I was not a “morning person” at all. I wanted to learn what it meant to be a morning person, and broke that routine cold turkey. It’s been nearly a year in this current routine, and I love every single moment of it.

It’s been roughly like this for a good two years, ever since I started P90X and working out every day of the week. Doing my sport in the morning sets me up for a good day; making me feel I’ve done my good deed for my body and it’s out of the way.

The routine changes and evolves as the kind of work changes and evolves.

This summer I have a bunch of travel coming up so I’m going to have to come up with a new routine to both find a way to be productive and take advantage of the new exciting environments I will be visiting. I didn’t become an entrepreneur so I could spend more time indoors and less time living my life.

My challenge now is to figure out how to merge life and work without completely losing focus and ending up lost and alone (that might be a little dramatic, but hey, it runs through my head).

I gave up sleeping in for Lent so I have been up with the chickens since Ash Wednesday.

This has been my routine for the past couple of years.

In college, I woke up at 5:29am four times a week for morning practice, and on the weekends I was at the pool by 8:00. I feel positively indulgent in my routine today, although it’s still fairly similar—just not quite as rigorous.

I’m a creature of habit and have been in this general routine for years now.

I’ve followed it for approximately 10-15 years now.

I have been running in the morning for most of my adult life; it’s my favourite time to run but I began incorporating the qigong in 2008, so about five years now.

Fifteen years or so, give or take times when I’m travelling or not at home for extended periods.

I’ve been doing this most days since January (three months).

It’s been about a year now, which means it’s nicely habitual at this point. It took a while for that to happen, but by being consistent day after day over such a long period of time, I’ve created a routine to fall back on automatically, even on days when I don’t really want to (and believe me, those days happen!)

I’ve been doing this routine, or a slight variation of it, for a long time. I think I’ve always been a pretty early riser but I’ve only been lifting consistently in the morning for the past two months or so.

I’ve been doing things this way for almost four years now. Which makes me feel old.

About three years now. I’ve had different morning routines which included cornflakes for breakfast and a shower in the morning.

At some point I started to prefer showering during the calm night/evening though.

Situps and pushups?! Ha. We’re on day three. Coffee and cigarettes? Over twenty years now. God I’m old.

I’ve been hardcore about the thirty minutes of meditation for about three years. I’ve added the journal and other components in the past year, since I made the switch to working freelance.

It has probably been this way for pretty much my entire adult life. I’m now twenty-six.

In college, some mornings were spent nodding off in the class, but besides that it has remained pretty much the same. As far as routine is concerned, for me it is not so much when I do certain things but what things I do. I think if I ever went back in time and tracked the exact time I’ve woken up for the last fifteen years or so, you’d see 6:45am as my wake-up time 90% of the time.

This is the only routine I’ve been able to stick through over the years. It could probably be a lot better and healthier. I’ve tried a lot of things but nothing seemed to stick; working out, jogging, cooking, meditating, etc.

MMR seems like a good place to get some positive inspirations.

I’m a creature of habit so once I start doing something a certain way I tend to stick to it. This routine has been a rolling series of improvements for the last year.

I have woken early since 2007, when I finally recovered from seven years of illness.

I figure I rested and slept enough in those seven years. I have meditated since the 1990s, daily since 2000. I first began to read and study Zen, and to meditate, back in 1982. This practice goes back a long way with me.

My routine has been similar to this for a couple years now, but only in the last few months have I been able to finally make stick the habit of waking up early.

I used to stay up late and wake up as late as ten or eleven in the morning, but ever since I got my first real publishing contract a few months ago, I’ve been waking up early because early morning is when I seem to do my best and most productive writing.

I’ve stuck with my current routine for about three months. Summer has just arrived in Perth so walking down to the river has been replaced with riding down to the beach.

It has been around two years but I took some breaks on the way. It’s actually difficult to wake up at 5:00am during winter. Sometime, I purposely decide to wake up later. It’s just to be a little more in sync with the natural rhythm. Also this routine has changed and it’s continually evolving. When I started waking up at 5:00am I didn’t know what to do with myself, I was just doing it because cool people were doing it too. So it took me some time to find out that it was important to take care of me and start the day on a positive note.

Also it takes some time to get used to it. At first, I was a zombie, but after a month it was really natural for me to get up at 5:00am. I would say it’s a good thing to start as a good resolution for New Year and wake up around sunrise everyday. That’s what I did last year after stopping this routine for one or two months. In the end it makes it really natural and easy.