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Morning routines are a tricky topic. For critics of online productivity culture, overly complicated morning rituals—often relying on confident citations of shaky science—have come to represent much of what people dislike about the self-improvement space. Yet, despite the skepticism, the way we start our mornings often dictates the trajectory of our entire day.
Recently, I felt my own mornings getting off to a shaky start. Between wrangling three kids to the school bus and the chaos of administrative tasks, I found myself eating up valuable time before my workday truly began. By the time I faced the "productivity dragon" to time-block my schedule, I was often cursing how much time had already passed. To solve this, I waded into the online productivity world to analyze the most popular morning rituals. I broke them down into three distinct categories to determine what works, what is nonsense, and how to build the optimal routine for 2025.
Key Takeaways
- Discipline is an identity: "Embrace the suck" routines work not because of the physical act, but because they signal to your brain that you are the type of person who does hard things.
- Ground your thoughts: Elaborate checklists like the "Miracle Morning" are valuable primarily because they prevent you from looking at your phone first thing.
- Physiology matters: The "Most Important Thing" (MIT) strategy leverages circadian rhythms and cognitive purity to maximize focus.
- The winning formula: A hybrid approach that combines immediate sunlight, a change of environment, and diving straight into deep work offers the highest return on investment.
Category 1: The "Embrace the Suck" Routine
The first category of popular routines comes from a mindset often associated with the Special Forces. The philosophy here is simple: lean into the difficulty. The objective is to wake up and immediately perform a task that is physically or mentally grueling.
The Jocko Model
The originator of this style is Jocko Willink. Since 2015, he has famously posted a picture of his watch every morning around 4:30 AM. He follows this with a photo of the aftermath of a brutal workout. In the post-Jocko world, this has evolved to include the cold plunge, popularized by figures like Joe Rogan.
"The main advantage that we get with someone like Jocko or Joe in their rituals is psychological. By doing something really hard, you are signaling to yourself that you're the type of person who does really hard things."
The Verdict
The Bad: There is often shaky science used to justify these behaviors. While proponents claim massive therapeutic benefits from practices like cold plunging, the actual effect sizes in studies are often minor—comparable to the mood boost from a cup of coffee. Furthermore, this routine isn't sustainable for everyone. Jocko is likely part of the small percentage of the population that functions well on limited sleep; trying to replicate his 4:30 AM wake-up call can be detrimental to those who biologically require a standard eight hours.
The Good: The true value here is psychological, not physiological. It helps build an identity of discipline. However, this signaling doesn't require an ice bath. You can signal discipline through intellectual endeavors or other non-physical acts of will.
Category 2: Re-centering the Soul
The second category focuses on self-discovery and mindfulness. The canonical example here is Hal Elrod’s 2012 bestseller, The Miracle Morning. This approach suggests a sequence of practices designed to center yourself before the day begins.
The S.A.V.E.R.S. Method
Elrod proposes a six-step acronym: Silence (meditation), Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing (journaling). This creates a checklist of internal, self-reflective activities intended to prepare your mind for the day ahead.
The Verdict
The Bad: This approach is incredibly time-consuming. There is a sense of frustration that comes from spending an hour "naval-gazing" without making traction on tangible goals. It is also highly personality-dependent; someone with a "bias for action" might find sitting in silence and visualizing success to be maddening rather than helpful.
The Good: The hidden value in this category is that it grounds your brain. Our conscious thoughts are ungrounded in the morning—they can easily drift toward stress or distraction. If you engage with a smartphone first thing, your brain is captured by algorithms. Having a cognitive plan prevents this. 80% of the value of this approach is simply that it provides an alternative to doom-scrolling in bed.
Category 3: The "Most Important Thing" (MIT) Strategy
The third category centers on getting to work immediately. This is often associated with Andrew Huberman’s protocols, which combine productivity with biology. The core premise is to wake up, optimize your physiology, and tackle your most important task before the day creates friction.
The Physiology of Focus
A typical routine in this category involves waking up, immediately getting outside for sunlight (vital for circadian health), delaying caffeine intake to 90 minutes after waking, and engaging in a bout of cognitive work—often 90 minutes of deep focus—before touching administrative tasks or food.
"When you open up the neurological black box, what you see is a minimum of conflicting cognitive semantic networks activated. It's the purest deep work you can generate in the day."
The Verdict
The Bad: The logistics can be tricky for parents or those with rigid schedules. Furthermore, there is a danger in the "Most Important Thing" methodology where one assumes that because the main task is done, the rest of the day can be spent in reactive "sludge." For knowledge workers, a single 90-minute block is rarely enough to sustain a career; you still need to time-block the rest of your day.
The Good: The combination of sunlight and immediate deep work is potent. Getting outside wakes up the body, and diving into complex work before checking email ensures your "abstract reasoning centers" aren't cluttered with residue from other contexts.
Synthesizing the Optimal Routine
After analyzing these three categories, I revamped my own routine. The goal was to extract the genuine benefits—discipline signaling, cognitive grounding, and physiological optimization—without falling into the traps of pseudoscience or unsustainability.
My New Protocol
Based on my experiment, the MIT/Huberman-style approach makes the most sense for knowledge workers, provided it is adapted to real-life constraints. Here is the simplified rule I am implementing:
- The Sunlight Commute: I walk my kids to the bus stop. This guarantees 20 minutes of outdoor time and sunlight immediately upon waking.
- The Environment Shift: Instead of returning to my house (where chores lurk), I walk straight to a coffee shop, grab a coffee, and go directly to my deep work headquarters.
- Immediate Deep Work: As soon as I sit down, I dive into a deep task. On open days, this might be three hours. On days with morning meetings, I aim for even 20 minutes symbolically. The rule is absolute: Walk in the door, sit at the desk, deep work.
Integrating the Rest
What about the other categories? They still hold value, but they don't need to happen at 6:00 AM.
- Embrace the Suck: You need to signal discipline to yourself, but this can happen via exercise at 5:00 PM just as easily as 5:00 AM.
- Re-centering: Self-reflection is often more effective at the end of the day. A "thinking walk" or journaling session in the evening allows you to process the day's events, whereas morning reflection can feel forced when your brain hasn't fully warmed up.
Conclusion
The lesson from diving into the world of morning routines is that while the "hustle culture" veneer can be annoying, the underlying principles are sound. You don't need an ice bath or a six-step affirmation journal to have a productive day.
You need to get outside to wake up your body, you need a rule that prevents you from checking your phone first thing, and you need to apply your brain to something difficult before the world intrudes. Keep it simple, keep it grounded in biology, and save the introspection for the evening walk.
