The life changing magic of NOT having a morning routine

And making a case for lingering

Ronnie has the right idea

The perfect morning routine has become the pinnacle of obsession, a new found status symbol amongst the tech bros, wellness/productivity influencers and anyone else who aspires to be someone. The ultimate way to measure morality.

As someone who spent a large majority of life chasing the perfect morning routine, I’m left wondering what exactly was I chasing? I had this expectation that the perfect morning routine (in addition to being something to showcase online in all its perfect glory) would solve all my problems and offer a North Star that never wavered in a world I couldn’t control. Productivity at any cost was the God I worshiped. A way to feel pure, good and deserving.

In a world of Apple Watches, Aura Rings, and Fitbits are we any happier, healthier or saner? Is it actually helpful? Tech advancements were supposed to make life easier, something that gave us time back vs stealing it away from us.

The amount of times I’ve been with someone wearing an Apple Watch, and this thing around their wrist tells them they need to move, only to watch them turn off the alarm, and ignore it completely. Trying to enjoy the intimacy of an in person conversation only to witness the inevitable distraction of being available 24/7 as their eyes periodically glance down to see their latest text message or notification. No wonder we all feel so goddamn lonely.

When visiting a friend recently I couldn’t help but notice he too had joined the aura ring crowd, to which I asked how was he finding it? I’m paraphrasing, but he shared how this golden jewel had become his biggest source of anxiety. Despite eating healthier, and moving his body, this tiny piece of metal pretending to be gold was a permanent reminder of how close he was to being diabetic, not sleeping enough, not moving enough…all things he was well aware of, but the confirmation of which didn’t provide him with any relief, only fear and increased stress. It served more as a constant reminder of what he was doing wrong, where he was being ‘bad’ or was behind. The problem is data, while neutral, is the easiest thing to use against ourselves in a world of numbers, stats and anything else that measures our advancement, our endless quest for personal growth at any cost.

I’ll never get back the hours I spent thinking (obsessing) about the perfect morning routine, reading about the perfect morning routine or attempting it only to feel like a failure when I couldn’t rise effortlessly at 5am every day, do 100 sit ups, go for a run, meditate and journal all before 7am.

I still consider myself a very organized person who loves order, but there came a point where I had to stop trying to optimize my entire life. The irony is the attempt to make my routines perfect in a bid for a happier and healthier life, I believe is a big part of what contributed to my mental health (and physical health) declining in 2024.

What if instead of the perfect morning routine, we were allowed to let each day be its own? That’s what I have chosen to explore as I navigate a new approach to living.

I admit it’s been hard to unlearn the reward system associated with starting your day right, checking all the boxes, yet the more I’ve allowed myself to let each day reveal itself to me, i’ve been able to meet my needs accordingly. This in itself has felt so much better for my nervous system and my overall well being.

My previous approach of using the time I woke up as a way to measure the probability of my day being good or bad, was undoubtedly reason enough to sack off life and not bother getting up at all. My past self told me 5am=good job, 7am=don’t you dare hit snooze, 9am=You lazy fuck! You’re doomed to live an uneventful, unsuccessful life and that’s that.

Surely starting the day shouldn’t be this hard, this all encompassing? This much pressure? But I believed this is what success as I then understood it (money, status, respect etc) required. How could I become a multi millionaire if I wasn’t willing to do what everyone else does in order to make it so? Because surely being a success would bring me happiness?

What hustle culture (as a result of a capitalist society) wants you to forget is the art of lingering. When rising from the bed in an instant is seen as morally superior, it makes sense that to linger in bed, to stay in the warmth that little bit longer, skin on skin contact with your loved one feels somewhat sinful. Because anything that feels that good, surely is bad for us no? At least that’s what we’re told, slothfulness is adjacent to sin. And yet when you put these beliefs under the microscope, what you see is answers. You witness an explanation for our collective exhaustion, endless guilt and a loneliness that is only getting worse.

What we really need, what we are gasping for as if it was our last breath, is the touch of another. A human body that listens, and sees us. What we need so desperately is uninterrupted reading time of a fiction book, one that reminds us how incredibly wild and vivid our own imagination is. It’s doodling an a napkin in a coffee shop while you sip your coffee slowly, as you inhale the aroma of a coffee that you no doubt payed more than $7 for.

We need to go to a concert where we appreciate an artist’s lyrics and showmanship without simultaneously trying to capture it on our smart phone to impress strangers on the internet, or Julie who you went to middle school with who said you would never be cool.

What we don’t need, is a device telling us we haven’t had enough sleep, that we went over our calorie count or we didn’t get enough steps in. An Aura Ring or an Apple Watch can only give you data. Data will not hold you, listen to you or love you. Unless you’re a doctor, a sleep analyst or you need to track data for some medical reason, for the most part the data acts as a beating stick to remind you you’re doing life wrong. It leaves you feeling like shit or becomes yet another way to measure how good you were today, and what you need to do tomorrow to be better.

Life is happening right now, but that doesn’t mean you have to wake up at 5am or you’ll miss out on it. Just because Steve the tech bro bangs on about how his 4am morning routine changed his life, and how he’s so successful because of it, (while trying to sell you some disgusting protein shake you don’t need) remember that’s just one way. It’s not the only way to exist. You get to define what success means to you, and the time of day you wake up or how much you get done today doesn’t have be a qualifier.

For me now, every day is different. There are things I do most days, I write, I drink tea, I clean my teeth, I walk but I don’t put these under a morning routine, a self care routine or any other kind of barometer I can use to measure how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ I am on any given day. What I need today might look different tomorrow. If my number one priority is checking a box on a tracker, or waiting for a dopamine hit from a colored ring to flash, I can’t guarantee I’m listening to my body or my mind. I’m only judging it.

This past year i’ve had to really challenge my beliefs about work and success. I think without realizing, I had fallen into a very common trap of believing the narrative that I should work hard until i’m 70 and then prioritize whatever people do when they aren’t working. I believed I had to wait to sleep in, to read books or do anything that wasn’t somehow advancing my career. On the days I wake up at 9am I linger in bed a little longer. I celebrate the fact I’m privileged to do so, without feeling guilty about it or assigning any particular outcome to my day.

All this to say, challenge the shoulds. If you find yourself saying ‘I should’ to anything, stop, reflect, and ask yourself why? Ask yourself says who? And better still - give yourself permission to choose what works for you.

Thank you for reading

Harry x