The whole “Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod phenomenum initially annoyed me, how can one morning routine be fit for EVERYONE!? There’s apparently ONE optimal way for all of humanity to wake up?
OK Stu, calm down, these are just some simple tips to give the average Jo Schmo a less rough start to what is likely to be a busy day. It’s not a prescription for humanity, right?
OK, so perhaps my opening gambit does put the bar of disbelief a little too high, but I am by nature and experience a skeptical person. I’m also ND and have my own very specific routine each morning. But, I am open to suggestions on how I may further optimise it, so if there’s no demand for “Hal’s way or the highway“, then I’ll cancel my Uber and let’s dive in.
Just before that let me be clear, with any of the books or resources we share the goal is never to make you feel less-than if the ideas do not resonate. Our goal is to share our own experiences, your mileage may vary enormously! We do want to hear if you agree, disagree or have other experiences that have worked!
Our goal is not to state this book is some revolutionary new way of being or thinking, merely to offer you some ideas to help optimise your day, which may really work for the routine cravers amongst us. I read the book a long while ago, and there’s some decent ideas, minimal-woo and some solid suggestions. So lets dive in…
The AI offered this TL:DR of the book:
“Create a powerful morning routine to improve every area of your life by consistently investing in yourself before the day’s distractions begin.“
Main framework / acronym:
S.A.V.E.R.S.
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- Silence (meditation/prayer)
- Affirmations
- Visualization
- Exercise
- Reading
- Scribing (journaling)
Core themes:
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- Personal responsibility and intentional living
- Small daily habits compound into massive life change
- Mornings set the tone for mindset, productivity, and success
- You don’t need more time—just better use of the first hour
Bottom line:
Win the morning, win the day, win your life.
As a summary it seems simplistic, and why I liked it was that it was simple. First thing, I do not want; complicated, or too rigid routines. The same person doesn’t necessarily wake every day for me. Energy levels vary, life demands vary, my lovely ND traits vary and all of it needs to be allowed, accepted and not shamed for showing up unannounced. Simply put, the PDA leaps to the fore here, and if you start saying I should apply these specific rules, in a specific way, or I am somehow failing, then goodbye, hard nope. I do not need another metric to keep track of to show me by how much I’m failing at life. I already have a few that wake me at 3am, I do not need a subscription to another.
But the book steers a fairly benign course, the ideas being more suggestions for use as a framework, rather than a rigid set of “must dos”. So, I adapted them to suit, here’s an example; I do drink a glass of water first thing, that’s a decent shout, especially as I often forget to drink water. However, that water also has some fresh lemon juice and one grind of pink rock salt as an adaptation from other research and reading.
I do allow for some silence in my day, waking at around 5:30 every day, I have a good two hours in the morning without any interruptions. Allows me to settle into the day, acclimatise and run through the various obligations my day contains.
I do use affirmations; when I hear a nugget of truth I record it and stick it to my inspiration board. There’s some solid bits of business, life and human advice. I bare them in mind constantly as they are in my eye line every day,
I have always been a dreamer, always called out for not paying attention in class, for staring out the window and “sky gazing”. The $1 word Hal uses is “visualization“, and I still like to lean back, and let my mind unfocus, and just run through my problems, trying out different scenarios, working on outlier concepts. All my best ideas have been when I let it all go and just unfocus my mind. Daydreaming counts, especially if it helps direct the day.
I strongly recommend exercise – since running entered my life I have 100% been a happier human. Stretching, resistance training and cardio form the running and I am lighter and tighter, fitter and much happier. Just go do a park run, you don’t have to RUN, you can walk, and do 5K is decent solid exercise when you walk it. Get a smart watch, record your steps, thank me later.
Hal suggests “reading“, well I do audiobooks, and articles, a lot of documentaries and you tube creators. It keeps my mind open to new ideas and suggestions, plus I get to see what other people are doing out there on the Internet!
The final S of the acronym “SAVERS”, is “scribing” which stands for the idea of writing daily, most specifically a journal, but I say, ANY writing is better than no writing. So that may be voice notes, or a bullet list or just some handwritten ideas. Keep it simple, and just jot down useful thoughts and ideas. Using an app you can index them too. So just find some time to keep a little note of those simple, fleeting thoughts that may be nothing on their own. But, may build up into a more concrete idea in future.
These are all solid, decent and genuinely useful things, but I am not about to do ALL of them after waking or suggest that you should either. Pick, choose, discard.
My own personal morning routine is a well worn groove and it delivers me ready to focus on my work for the day. If I don’t do it, then I can get a bit wobbly, especially if it’s disrupted too many days running. This is a routine which I have been working on for years, and it has allowed me to have everything I currently enjoy. But this is MY morning, you have to work on what works best for you and your circumstances.
A morning routine should set you up for success… so why do they feel so impossible when you’re neurodivergent? My own has been built due to my own specific needs and yet some mornings it can feel like I am swimming up from underwater, or hit the ground and my brain is off ahead of me and I am running behind trying to catch up. The wide spectrum of morning states and variable traits all add to the post-wake chaos too.
The idea of a one-size-fits-all morning for the ND brain is therefore ridiculous, and yet some of us crave a routine, for me it can be like a life line, a way to get through without having to use too much brain processing. Stepping stones through a complex, ever shifting landscape, just follow the yellow brick road…
Again I believe the message is flexibility, build your morning for your brain, adapt as local conditions demand.
As we talk about in the episode with the right systems you don’t need willpower, you can also allow for variable energy with buffer days, and some simple prepping the night before.
WHY DON’T I “JUST GET ORGANISED” STUART? – WOW, WHY HAVE I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT? GENIUS!
Yep, totally hear that, and this is why kindness beats perfection every single time. If traditional routines make you feel broken, this is your permission slip to do mornings your way. Acknowledge your needs, make your own accommodations and design the morning around lowering the impact to your energy. This may mean having some very direct conversations with the people you live with, and requesting they help. 100% acknowledge it can be very difficult when you have dependants clamouring for your attention.
As someone who has been self-employed for over 30 years I have had plenty of time to reflect, hone, polish, and learn by “trial and error”, which felt more like trial by error, an endurance race not a sprint. In that time I have allowed my morning routine to evolve, as my own needs, both personal and business also evolved.
Over that time I have read many many books on how to improve performance, endurance, profits, and listened to hours of content telling me how to save time, energy and money. Countless sessions spent reviewing performance, and managing time more efficiently. There’s been quite a bit of money also spent on optimising my business processes. However what is left is the stuff that I adapted to suit my own needs.
Be in business long enough and the rough edges get rubbed off, you get a bit more rounded and grounded, you recognise that most new things are somehow repackaged old things. Or old scams wearing more fashion forward attire. Anyone got any NFTs they wanna confess to owning? You begin to feel a sense of calm, insulated from the FoMo, that fear transmuting into solid risk aversion and pragmatic caution.
One thing does emerge, when you acknowledge your own needs, is your own inner sense of what you need from your day. What the day has to give you for you to feel fulfilled and engaged in the work you do. It’s not about what the work takes, different conversation, but there has to be fair exchange of value right? The goal is to extract positive value from the day, for me it is. Before I started to protect my energy I found I was left at the end of the day feeling like I’d been ten rounds in the octagon. YAY! You get the pleasure of doing more again the following day. DOUBLE YAY!!
Well, take it from someone who has worn himself down to a raw nub by failing to realise that energy exchange cannot be asymmetrical for too long or else you will harm your health. In my case, thankfully there’s been no lasting damage, but when your body stops you in your tracks and refuses to mend, and enforces a downtime. There’s three things that happen;
1) You get very ill; this is a waste of life force and requires unwanted distraction
2) You stop forward motion; this is a waste of time, a finite resource for us all.
3) You reflect; what did I do wrong and how do I do it better next time?
The key to long term survival is to get to point 3 before you experience points 1 & 2. While you’re not earning, you’re wasting opportunity, which is why an energy management plan is at the heart of my day, and my life. I cannot let the day take from me for too long, I am simply unwilling to be persuaded to undertake projects that do not allow me to align my energy goals.
All sounds very “woo woo” Stu, but what are you waffling about?
Here’s the thing, optimising for energy is the key to my success, and the more my life meets my energy goals, then the more success I have. It’s a feedback loop where I only spend time working on the projects that align my goals with my energy over the long term. My day starts acknowledging that and that acknowledgement starts the night before when I go to bed. I go early enough that my 5:30am wake up will not drain me. I need that 2 hrs of peace to reflect and slide into the day without too much stress.
This podcast is a perfect example of a project that gives back more than it takes, my goal is to offer the ND community a recognisable and viable way to earn, whilst allowing your ND best self to live a life you want to live. The best way I can do that is share what I do, and how I live my life, and perhaps some of the things I offer will help you too.
I am a skeptical person, as you age your tolerance for BS certainly diminishes. However, I am self-aware enough to temper this cynical outlook with a never ending curiosity and love of solving puzzles, however they present themselves.
That’s why I still like to reflect on other people’s guidance, lived experience etc. what are the takeaways I can use to benefit my own life?
Whilst the Miracle Morning is not hugely revolutionary in scope and ideas, it does make you reflect on your own morning and what you might do to have less of an impact on your own energy reserves and set yourself up to have a better day.
If you have any hints or tips, or your own routine do let us know, if we can learn something else to add to making the morning more bearable then do let us know.
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