January 4, 2026 │Jasmin │6 minute read
What is it about routines that makes them so hard to follow yet so worth it in the long run? Why is it hard to establish one but once you do, life feels off and incomplete when you don’t follow it?
Good routines feel like the key to a better life, and they are certainly marketed as such. Otherwise, guides such as James Clear’s Atomic Habits or Wendy Wood’s Good Habits, Bad Habits would not sell so many copies. And yet, an entire book of wisdom on routines and habits might still leave you overwhelmed because of all the information in it. All those well-meant explanations and examples of how to build a better, easier, more productive life may end up leaving you (and certainly me!) not changing anything at all, simply because everything feels too much. And yet, routines seem intriguing. Having to think less, to decide less throughout the day, simply because your brain can run certain things on autopilot and you can feel (and be!) productive without having to actively choose to do so many things. It sounds… liberating.
Over the course of the past years, I’ve experimented a lot with different approaches to routines, I’ve read various books, some only half (Atomic Habits for instant always intrigued me, yet I never managed to read more than the first two sections because it is SO. MUCH. INFORMATION.) The only thing that really stuck from years of experimenting is a morning routine that leaves me with a lasting feeling of productivity. The idea behind it is quite simple: After waking up, your brain is in a foggy state of uncertainty and whatever activity you choose to do in the first hour of waking up, your brain will want to do more of that throughout the entire day. So, whatever you do in the first hour of your day will influence – if not determine – how the rest of your day will be: if you choose to scroll on endlessly on social media and watch reel after reel, your brain will have a hard time focusing for the rest of the day. If, however, you choose to do something productive, your brain will crave more productivity.
Thus, a thought-through and easy morning routine will not only change the way you start your day, but may change your entire life, if you continue to do it for long enough. Here is how I start my days:
After waking up, I immediately drink loads of water to rehydrate my brain. Remember, you slept several hours without drinking anything, so at this point your brain is dry like a desert and craves some hydration. Then, I move my body for 5-10 minutes, usually I simply do some variation of sun salutations to wake up my body and stretch most of my muscles for a moment. Lastly, I spend 1 quiet, uninterrupted hour on one intentionally set goal. This may be something like learning a new language, practicing a skill or reading a book and actively taking notes, anything that needs concentration and a focused brain. That’s it. My morning routine takes about an hour and 15 minutes, but it changes how I feel daily. Because afterwards, I am proud of having done something, to have spent time on one of my goals, to have already been productive, and no matter what happens throughout the rest of the day, I can be proud of myself for that one hour in the morning.
If you would like to try a new morning routine, this blogpost will provide you with the template I use to keep up with my mornings. It is a PDF that you can print and I will provide you with both the empty version of the template and the one that has my morning routine sketched into it. Maybe you want to follow it, maybe you want to change it and create your own. Whatever you do, make sure you use some form of list or overview with which you can track your progress. Being able to tick off a task you completed will give you those sought after happy hormones that your brain so desperately needs to function. What’s more, seeing that you have completed one day with a morning routine might motivate you to do another day, and then another. And little by little, tracking the progress you’ve made will help you to prove to yourself that you can do this, you can follow a routine, you can achieve whatever it is you want to do.
Now waking up an hour early might seem dreadful, if not impossible, at first. But the reward is immeasurable: a lasting feeling of success even before arriving at school, university, work, whatever it is you do. After a week, you will have spent 7 focused hours on whatever goal you set. After a month, it will be around 30 hours. After a year, 365 hours. Research shows it takes about 20 hours to be moderately good at a new skill (if you need a boost of inspiration, I highly recommend Josh Kaufman’s TEDx-Talk on the first 20 hours of learning something new). 20 hours equals three weeks of investing an hour every morning. Think of anything you ever wanted to learn in life. Maybe it’s drawing. Maybe playing the violin. Maybe you have always dreamt of knitting your own sweaters. Maybe you really want to learn Japanese or how to solve hard Sudokus. Three weeks is all it takes. An hour every morning, and in three weeks you will be able to do whatever skill you’ve been dreaming of acquiring. So go ahead and start tomorrow differently. Create a routine that suits you. And then do it again. And again. And little by little, life will seem better. You will feel in control. You will feel like you are taking action. And the best part is, you are. You are creating the life you want, the life you are certainly capable of. You got this and if you cannot believe it for yourself yet, I believe in you.
With love,
hercalmandstablelife
hercalmandstablelife 
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