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11 Morning Habits That Will

Change Your Life (And Make You

More Creative)

Your alarm clock goes off and it’s time to mindlessly shower,

brush your teeth, eat breakfast, then head to work. Is that

really all there is?

In order to prime yourself to think creatively in the day ahead, your morning

shouldn’t be a thoughtless drag.

The author Annie Dillard once wrote that “how we spend our days is of course

how we spend our lives, but she might have been being too general. !ecent

studies show that it’s not how we spend our days that’s most important to our

lifelong happiness and creativity but how we spend our mornings.

"ur mornings set us up either to be primed for creative insights or to be numbed

and mindless, merely trudging through our day. #ome of us identify as

“morning people while others are anything but$ yet either way it matters less

what time we wake up at but what we do with that time. %reative people live

life differently in a variety of ways, but perhaps none more importantly than

what they do with their morning hours.

#o check out a few of the scientifically proven habits that the most creative

individuals use each morning and see if it’s not &ust your mornings that are

transformed but your lifelong creativity as well.

01. Make tie to be indful

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Design' #ean (es

)aking time for mindfulness in the morning is one of the most important habits

a person can form for her creative progression. !ecent studies show that taking

the time to meditate makes people more creative and increasesmental clarity.

#pecifically, “open*monitoring meditation + a meditation of clearing your

mind, thinking not of a single concept, person, or ob&ect, but instead being open

to anything that flits through your head + is particularly conducive to

creativity. eople in the study who engaged in open*monitoring meditation were

significantly better at generating new, creative ideas than those who either did

not meditate or meditated differently.

0!. "ta# $is%onne%ted &irst Thing in the Morning

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eople only have so much time to focus and stay creative so wasting that time

on relatively thoughtless pursuits in the morning is a poor management of both

your time and your creative &uices. Avoid tasks like checking emails or writing

out lists or memos as the first thing you do and instead focus that precious timeand attention towards more rigorous, creatively trying tasks that re-uire the very

 best from you.

If, however, emails or similar morning tasks are hyper time*sensitive, it’s

 probably worth it to get up a touch earlier so you can focus first on creative

tasks then get to emails and such later. (e’re all granted small windows of time

at which we’re most creative + it’s a shame to waste them.

0'. $o ee $rinking Coffee

Design' une Digann

/reat news. %affeine makes us more alert, yes, but perhaps more importantly, it

also increases our brain’s production of dopamine, which gives us a feeling of

reward and motivation when we start having good ideas. )aking it a habit to

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grab a morning latte in the morning adds structure to a morning and helps create

the aforementioned windows of creativity.

0*. +e intentional about #our %hoi%es for the da#Apple co*founder #teve obs said that every day when he woke up he would go

to the mirror and ask himself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I

want to do what I am about to do today0 If the answer were “no for too long

then he knew he’d have to make a big change in his life. (e’re nothing without

intentionally and waking up each morning should be a time to review our

motivations in life. Intentionality can be as e1istentially deep as obs’ self*

-uestioning, but it can also be as simple as writing down what you want to getdone for the day. If you’re proud of the list + of the work you’ll be doing in the

day ahead + and you’re satisfied with where your life is going then you can

rest assured that you’re living with intention.

If, however, your daily tasks boil down to things that you find dull or pointless

then perhaps it’s time to reconsider why you’re doing them in the first place.

2ecause if you don’t live intentionally + if you don’t check in with yourself

often + it becomes far too easy to move through life without ever having lived

on your own terms. As Dillard said, our days comprise our lives. Intentionality

means taking stock of our lives and making changes if we’re dissatisfied.

%reativity can only flourish if we’re in touch with ourselves and our aspirations.

0,. $on-t +e in a ush to /et

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Design' 3auren 4om

The key to creative insights is not solely in the amount of hours you sleep but in

how, e1actly, you wake up. A large proportion of creative insights come when

we’re groggy and still somewhat sleepy because sleepy people have a “more

diffuse attentional focus, which leads them to “widen their search through their 

knowledge network. “This widening, the researchers wrote, “leads to an

increase in creative problem solving.

This may mean you need to go to bed a touch earlier or &ust set your alarm thirty

minutes earlier than usual. And while it might be a bit of a &arring change, it will

 be well worth it for the creative insights that are gained. 5onetheless, be sure to

get enough sleep 6which can be in the form of naps7 since naps and proper sleep

not only improve alertness but they’re also correlated with increased activity in

the right brain, which is closely associated with creativity.

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0. /et u and ove

81ercise stimulates creativity not only because it fires off endorphins and gets

 blood flowing to our brains but also because it helps break up the monotony of

sitting and working, leading to more creative insights.

American Vogue editor*in*chief Anna (intour  plays an hour*long tennis match

most mornings in 5ew 9ork at :';:am sharp. !ussian composer Tchaikovksy,

“believed he had to take a walk of e1actly two hours a day and that if he

returned even a few minutes early, great misfortunes would befall

him, according to The Guardian. And while both of these instances seem

 perhaps obsessive, creating a habit around morning e1ercise and movement is a

sure*fire way to avoid getting stuck in a creative rut.

02. edu%e Your Morning Choi%es

Don’t waste your precious morning creative energy choosing between, say, a

wide array of clothes or different types of coffee. !educing variation in your

morning routine may seem dull or uncreative, but it’s a matter of conserving

your cognitive stimulation for activities in the day ahead that actually deserve

6like brainstorming, writing, or problem*solving7. 2arack "bama, for instance,wears only grey or blue suits because, as he said, “I have too many other

decisions to make.

#o too with <acebook founder  )ark =uckerberg, who puts on the same grey t*

shirt each morning. “I’m not doing my &ob if I spend any of my energy on things

that are silly or frivolous about my life, he told The Financial Times.#implify

your life so that you can spend your time thinking not about the color of your

shirt but about your ne1t great creative idea.

03. &ind Tie to +e /rateful

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Design' !ifle aper %o

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2eing thankful for the life that you’ve worked hard to achieve thus far helps you

to reconnect with your purpose and the things and people in your life that

motivate you. %reativity does not always come easily so getting back to your

roots of inspiration and the people who have helped you along the way willassure that you’ll keep working hard even when the going gets, inevitably,

tough.

Try spending a part of your morning commute thinking of two or three things or 

 people for whom you are thankful. 5ot only will it help inspire you to keep

working hard, it will also make you happier, more optimistic, and will reveal

what matters most to you in life so that you can spend more time doing the

creative things you loe rather than the mindless things you merely put up with.

04. "to telling #ourself #ou don-t 5ant to go to

5ork 

9ou don’t have to drop everything and give one hundred percent of your focus

to your creative pursuits to improve your creativity. 5ot only is there nothing

wrong with having a day &ob and coming home in the evening to follow your

creative passions, in fact, the structure and organi>ation of time provided by day

 &obs can actually make you work more efficiently and creatively than if you had

tried spending your whole day being creative.

arkinson’s law states that work e1pands so as to fill the time available for its

completion.

This means that the less time you hae to be creatie

the more creatie you’ll actually tend to be.

lus, working a day &ob and being creative go hand*in*hand more often than

many people think. T.#. 8liot was a banker. (illiam %arlos (illiams was a

 pediatrician. oseph 4eller was an ad e1ecutive.

(illiam <aulkner worked in a power plant. “I think what these people get from

these &obs is structure and self discipline and also focus, wrote "liver

2urkeman, an author on creativity. %reative inspiration comes when we’re

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doing a diverse array of things so, in that way, going to work and diving into

 pro&ects is much more conducive to creativity than sitting on the couch

twiddling your thumbs, hoping against hope for a creative insight to magically

reveal itself to you.

10. Create a routine and sti%k to it

Design' #ean (es

 5o matter where in the world you find yourself, try to keep the same morning

routine. Author 4aruki )urakami e1tolled the virtues of morning

consistency, writing, “The repetition itself becomes the important thing$ it’s a

form of mesmerism. I mesmeri>e myself to reach a deeper state of mind. 2ut,

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as anyone who’s made a 5ew 9ear’s resolution knows, it’s relatively easy to

create a routine or a goal for oneself, but then sticking to it  is a different story.

There are always e1cuses to break habits like proper sleep, morning e1ercise, or 

staying disconnected in the morning, especially when we’re on holiday or on a business trip, but breaking habits “&ust once is a slippery slope that can erode

the creative habits we’ve worked hard to form.

11. 6lan #our orning the night before

)aking to*do lists and designing your morning routine before your alarm clock

goes off can go a long way in getting you up and out of bed and into your

routine without wasted time. It also cuts down on the amount of analyticalthinking we need to do in the morning, which frees us up to think more

abstractly and creatively. 2y spending a block of time figuring out a routine for

the ne1t week or two, we can simply get up and e!ecute rather than spending

our mornings dallying, trying to figure out what we want to eat or who we need

to call or coordinate with in the day ahead.

Let the adventure begin7 start being ore

%reative8

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%reativity is one of the most elusive of all abilities. (hereas some skills you

can learn and then never have to learn again, creativity is something that tends

to come and go. #ome days, we can find ourselves flush with originals ideas

while other days 6or weeks or months or years7, it seems all but impossible to

come up with fresh thoughts or a new way of doing things. And therein lies the

importance of morning routines. 2ecause creativity is so difficult to pin down,

having a morning routine that’s proven to stimulate creativity is one of the only

ways to ensure its consistency.

Through this imposition of order on an inherently orderless ability + by

disconnecting in the morning, drinking coffee, being slow to get up, reducing

our choices, properly e1ercising, taking stock of our lives, and meditating and

thinking with intentionality + it’s possible to stay creative more consistently.

And while no one is always creative, sticking to these morning routines will

make something as hapha>ard and rare as creativity an ability that you can

6almost7 control.