For remote workers, routine is critical. There’s no one watching over you, telling you what to do. You need to take responsibility for your own schedule. If you’ve been struggling to adopt a consistent routine, then start by working on your mornings. The first thirty minutes after waking up are the most crucial. Get them right and you’re setting yourself up for success throughout the day.
Why Do Remote Workers Need a Morning Routine?
You’d think that the greatest benefit of being a remote worker is flexibility. You can wake up in your own time and only work when you feel like it. However, this kind of mindset doesn’t make for a successful career. If you fail to implement a consistent routine, then you’ll struggle to stay productive.
Developing a morning routine can give you a sense of control over your day and sets you up for the tasks you have to complete. It gives you time to replenish your hydration, nutrient, and energy levels so that you can stay physically healthy.
A remote work morning routine also has benefits for your mental health. Many people tend to work from the second they wake up and then use their evenings to unwind. However, the mornings are the perfect time to bring your stress levels down before you even begin working. This helps you move through the day with a sense of peace and calm.
There are many different forms of morning routines. This article, though, focuses on the SAVERS method: Silence, Affirmation, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing (AKA writing). This comes from a book called Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod and it’s one of the most powerful techniques for turbocharging your mornings as a remote worker.
Silence, Affirmation, and Visualization
From the moment you wake up, you’re probably overloading your brain with information. That’s certainly true if you’re among the 61% of people who check their phone within five minutes of waking up. Social media notifications, emails, and the bright screen light all instantly stimulate your brain, raising stress levels.
Instead, consider starting your morning with silence. Simply enjoy the peace of the early morning. Depending on where you live, you may hear birds or traffic outside. Regardless, just try to be still and quiet. Meditate. This brings your cortisol levels right down so that you have more energy in the tank to get through your daily tasks.
Next, you could consider repeating affirmations and visualizing your future. This helps you build self-esteem so that you can approach the day with confidence. Whether you’re selling products, building a business, or completing assignments, doing so with confidence will help you succeed.
Visualize the day in front of you as well as your long-term goals. This helps you get into the right mindset. Visualization is like a dry run. It’s a chance to prepare yourself mentally for what you’ll be faced with so that it’s easier to deal with when it comes around.
Earn Your Shower
The next step of the morning routine is exercise. This is something many of us don’t particularly feel like doing first thing in the morning but it can make so much difference to your life. Exercise is the healthiest and most natural way to fully wake up, getting your blood pumping and giving you a quick and long-lasting energy boost.
You don’t need to be lectured on the health benefits of exercise. You already know how good it is for your heart and weight control. However, it can be hard to find time to do it. If you do it first thing in the morning, then you can already pat yourself on the back for having achieved something important.
Exercise also lowers stress and puts you in a better mood. It releases dopamine which will still be present when you start work. Therefore, you’ll associate your work with this good mood. As a result, your brain will be more inclined to focus and less prone to distraction.
You don’t need to do a massive workout every morning. Just get your body moving for a couple of minutes until you begin to sweat. Earn your shower. A few minutes of push-ups, jumping jacks, or lifting weights should do it.
Reading and Writing
Finally, it’s recommended that you start the day with some reading. This can be a chapter of a book or an article related to your work or personal growth. Successful people are always learning so try to learn something new before you begin work. Over time, this accumulates into a massive wealth of knowledge.
To help you with your reading goals, try using summary apps. Alongside your remote work tools, you should have some that aid personal growth. Apps like Blinkist, Headway, and Shortform offer the best book summaries. Instead of checking Facebook, you could get through a whole book in 15 minutes, before you’ve even had breakfast.
You may also want to use this time to write. You don’t need to write anything particularly long or even anything good. Just note down a few sentences in a journal. This could be about how you’re feeling or what you want to achieve. This helps you organize your thoughts and spot patterns.
Writing is one of the best ways to think more clearly. Taking thoughts and turning them into sentences makes them more comprehensible. You can then look at your journal every now and then and see if you have any recurring problems or negative thoughts that you need to overcome.
Get to Work
The above morning routine tips may sound like a lot but each one can be done quickly. A minute’s silence, followed by a couple of minutes for affirmations and visualization, followed by five minutes of exercise, and another fifteen of reading and writing, is plenty. You can easily fit all of it into under half an hour. Once you’ve fulfilled your biological needs of using the bathroom, brushing your teeth, showering, getting dressed, and eating breakfast, you’re ready to work.
Head into your dedicated remote workspace, ready to start your day in the best possible mood. You’ll be clear-headed, focused, and stress-free. This will help you get through your tasks efficiently and accurately, helping you earn more and build a fulfilling digital nomad lifestyle.
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