How to Change Your Morning Routine to Meet Your Productivity Needs

I have different needs than I had before, which means I need a new morning routine to meet those needs. Follow along with me while I figure out what that new morning routine is gonna be.

Watch the video below or read on for the full transcript.

You may be familiar with my original morning routine video. My first morning routine video on this channel, which you can watch here is one of my most popular videos. And it goes into detail about the morning routine that I have had for years and years to help me manage my mornings as someone with multiple chronic illnesses and therefore disabled. It's a morning routine that has been tried and true, but I have gotten to a point where things need to change for a number of reasons.

What I'm going to be doing today is following along with the Routine Builder Cheat Sheet that I give to my clients inside my Action Navigator course. I have done a simplified version of that cheat sheet in this video, so if you wanna build your own morning routine or any kind of routine, go ahead and watch that video. And if you're interested in learning more about my course, you can check it out at the link in the description below. So let's go ahead and get started.

I'm gonna go ahead and read the intro to my routine builder cheat sheet because I think it's really helpful to have a common definition of what a routine is.

"Routines reduce resistance, overwhelm, and decision fatigue by turning actions and processes into habits that don't require lots of time and energy to plan or initiate. A routine is a sequence of actions that take place in the same order at approximately the same time each day (or after the same habit trigger). Routines can also take place weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. (They don't have to be daily). A ritual or micro routine is a short sequence of actions to prepare yourself to do something else.”

An important thing to note is that if you are neurodivergent, particularly if you have a ADHD or any form of executive dysfunction, building genuine habits that happen automatically by themselves is really difficult. Like you hear the words like 30 days, 90 days bandied about by the neurotypical world. And that's just simply not enough time to build a genuine automatic habit as someone with ADHD or executive dysfunction. And in fact, depending on your flavor of neurodivergence building a truly automatic habit just might not be in the cards for you. That is morally neutral. That is okay, you're not a bad person for having that disability.

But that doesn't mean it's not worth your time to try to build some structure and routine for yourself, because even though the beginning of your routine and the subsequent like dominoes that knock over from step to step in your routine, that won't be automatic for you. What doing this building a routine work will do is help you eliminate decision fatigue down the road. So you're front loading the decision fatigue by taking a period of time in one day or multiple days, however long it takes you, to decide what kind of routine will best meet your needs for the context of that routine. So that way if and when you need to enact said routine, your decisions have already been made for you and all you're having to deal with is the immediate Swiss Alps as I talk about in this video. And the other things that your executive dysfunction and neurodivergence or other disabilities, like physical disabilities, are affecting you in the moment. You're not also having to make the decisions. Decisions cost a lot of brain juice people.

So I know I wanna be building a new morning routine because my current one is just not cutting it.

The first step in building any sort of routine is really getting to the root of why you want this routine, what you want it to accomplish for you. Because without that guiding light as it were making decisions about what goes into your routine and in what order, you won't have a metric against which to judge your decisions whether or not they'll be helpful or not. So I often recommend my clients use Anytime Pages for this process 'cause it's a really great way of doing like a brain dump plus processing and critical thinking and going far enough into that process that you're gonna get insights that you had no idea existed. They bubbled to the surface and it is fantastic.

So I am going to be turning off the recording and doing that myself, but I'm gonna do a little word vomit for you beforehand 'cause this is probably what I'm gonna get into.

One of the reasons why I need a new morning routine is I've been really struggling to build a different habit of working on version two of my course, The Action Navigator. It's something that means a lot to me, but it has been this big looming scary project that I have been struggling to find the spoons for, make the time for within the context of my current daily routines, just filling it into the nooks and crannies hasn't been working. Certain anchor habits of mine have been falling by the wayside. I haven't been time blocking. And essentially what I have found is that the connection between the end of my morning routine and the beginning of my workday has completely crumbled. Whereas before, my morning routine was effectively setting me up to sit down to work on this business in particular, but also my own personal projects and my side hustle of the dance business. I have not been able to successfully transition from the end of my morning routine to a workday. And before that would look like going into my bedroom office and time blocking. That just hasn't been happening. And while I have lots of tools in my toolbox. Tools that I teach inside my course that can help me with that, I've been trying to, instead of applying band-aids to this situation, I have been wanting to get to the root of why that transition is so difficult for me. And my current hypothesis is that it's my morning routine. My needs for what my morning routine needs to do for me has shifted. And so that's why I'm working on this.

So I'm gonna turn off the recording. I'm gonna do 20 minutes of any Anytime Pages. I'm probably just gonna keep the bright light on so I don't have to stand up 'cause ugh, I recently had breakfast and I am POTSy and standing up sounds like a tachycardic headache. So I will be bathing in these LEDs while I journal. LED's optional for all of you. I'll see you in 20 minutes.

All righty. I finished my 20 minutes of any Anytime Pages. But let me give you some highlights.

So I want to feel clear and motivated at the end of this new morning routine. And It's interesting because motivated means a very particular thing to me in this context. And I'll talk more about that as I get through the rest of what I learned.

One of the things that I know needs to change in my new morning routine is not engaging with social media because I find that just really drains my cognitive and emotional gas tanks in a way that makes the deep work of a highly creative and cognitively intensive project, like version two of my program. It just makes that not a thing, it leaves me. It's really interesting because the original reason why I had social media time as part of my morning routine for so long was it was a really gentle way of waking my brain up. And like I, I would at that point in time, I would wake up feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. My body was in so much pain. I had so much brain fog right out of the gate. The way I described it in my original morning routine video is that my brain is like a Windows 95 computer trying to run in 2024. And the boot-up process is just long and arduous and painful.

And it occurs to me that my morning brain fog has improved enough that for me to jump onto social media, I'm able to engage with it at a higher cognitive level. So it's actually costing me more brain juice than it used to because I don't have as extensive a brain fog in the morning. Why that has changed? I don't know. 'Cause I've had this morning routine for a very long time and I've been working kind of exclusively to get MALs surgery and finally had it a couple of months ago. But that's like been my life for almost two years. So I haven't really been paying attention to what else has been going on with my body. I've just been surviving with it. So I'm unclear why my brain fog is less bad in the mornings. I'm sorry, I wish I could tell you. I wanna know. That'd be great. But long story short, my brain fog is less bad when I wake up, which means when I get on social media, I'm like all there, which makes the social media more draining.

And I just wanna address something. 'cause like a lot of people in the comments of that morning routine video, the the worst ones I have deleted would just like shame me and other people for using social media. And I'm just like, chill. Like do you, we will do us. If you do not have the personal experience or the capacity for empathy to understand why someone might need to go on social media to boot up their brain in the morning, then you have no business commenting on that. There I said it, anyways.

So that has changed for me. So I need to move my social media to a different time of day. But it occurs to me that because that has been my morning routine for so long, so long, it's going to be uncomfortable to not get on social media because it has become a truly automatic habit for me that I have ingrained over years. So I'm gonna have that Autistic Discomfort for me, because I'm autistic, of changing my routine. That's gonna be uncomfortable. So it's gonna make me uncomfortable and antsy. So something I have to take into account with this new morning routine is how I can soothe that instead of just asking myself to cold turkey, not do social media. I need to take into account that I'm going to be extra uncomfortable and take steps to mitigate that, to soothe that, to cope. So that's really important.

And one of the ways that in my Anytime Pages, I was starting to consider how do I cope with that? How do I soothe myself? Is getting to the root of like what is one of the needs that going on social media helps for me? Like if I were to take it away, what would I be taking away from myself? And it's just, at its simplest form, it's a form of stimulation, right? It's a form of passive stimulation. Ooh, I hadn't thought of the passive part when I was journaling that just came out right now. Very nice. It's a form of passive stimulation. So that means in my new, I need to include on purpose a different form of stimulation to help soothe and cope with the discomfort of no longer going on social media as part of my morning routine.

Another question that I kind of delved into. What am I hoping to have accomplished after finishing this morning routine?

And I just wrote a list. So I want to have taken my morning meds, gone to the bathroom, done my morning skincare, had a morning beverage. I've been making myself jasmine green milk tea recently. I love that stuff. And then because my hunger cues, food needs have drastically changed since my median arcuate ligament surgery, it's bonkers. If you wanna hear that story, let me know in the comments and maybe I'll do another video on it. But whether or not I am going to be eating breakfast during my new morning routine, still up in the air. So it's probably going to become an optional step that I can skip if I need to based on my needs.

But the real, the real big thing that I need to accomplish is by the end of my morning routine, I need to have sat down at one of my two laptops. Either my older laptop that I have out here in the living room, or my big beefy gaming laptop that I do most of my work on in my bedroom. I need to have physically moved myself from wherever I was in my home to one of those computer stations at the end of my morning routine so I can transition into working on version two of my course. That's the big important piece.

And as I was continuing to journal on all of this, another element of my previous morning routine, I came to understand better.

So another element of my previous morning routine was doing at least one chore around my home before I sat down to have breakfast. And that solved a number of problems for me because when I originally created that routine and for a very long time, I didn't know if I would have a spoon available for a chore later in the day. And so by making sure I did at least one chore in the morning before breakfast, and usually that was either doing a load of dishes or doing a load of laundry. And I mean like either just unloading the dishwasher or just filling it and starting it, or just putting a load in the washing machine (not like waiting for the washing machine to finish, put it in the dryer waiting even. No, it's just the instigation of those machine chores). That way I know I would be better off later in the day. But now what I see, and again, this is like an extension of my needs have changed. So while I still have brain fog, it's still a thing. I don't have it as much in the mornings anymore. So I don't need social media. Now I'm better at trusting myself to do chores later in the day. Like, there was a barrier to that before, which I could probably get to the bottom of if I wanted to. But it doesn't seem that important to me. I have less barriers physically, cognitively, emotionally, to doing a chore or two later in the day now, which means I don't need to do them in my morning routine anymore. And one of those barriers was like protecting my physical spoons. 'cause I didn't know if I would have enough later in the day to do chores.

But now my focus is: I don't know if I'll have enough deep work capacity in my cognitive gas tank after my morning routine. Which means I need to protect that in my morning routine. So instead of using my morning routine to protect my physical gas tank, I'm now gonna use it to protect my cognitive gas tank.

This is, this is just real fun and fascinating to me. It's not often that I get to use my own cheat sheets inside my program because I mean I made them, they're kind of automatic to me. But this is one of the first times that I'm gonna get, I'm getting that, I'm getting to follow along with this routine builder cheat sheet and I like it. I'm proud of it.

As an extension of that, I wrote out a quick list of things I no longer need to accomplish during my morning routine. So chores, my social media brain boot up and another input stimulation thing is podcast.

So I would listen to podcasts while I did my chores in the morning and made my breakfast. And if I'm not doing chores anymore, I don't, I don't need to fill that time. And if I do need to fill that time with auditory stimulation, I can now listen to music. And then it occurred to me that there was something as part of my previous morning routine that I could still have that might gimme that like stimulation I need for my brain, right? And that was playing wordle. I still play wordle. I have not gone on to whatever the new one is. Categories, is that what it is? That, that's, that breaks my brain in a mean way, but wordle, I can do wordle. And then the other, the only brain rot game that I really have on my phone is Disney emoji blitz. I never give them money, ever, but it's a really nice stimulating puzzle game. And that might be a nice way to warm up my brain for deep work to use that exclusively as a warmup to transition.

So I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but so what I might end up doing is making it so I do my puzzle games at my laptop station, my chosen laptop station for the day. Cannot do my puzzle games until I have plopped my butt with a laptop either in here or in my bedroom. And that might help with that final transition element of my morning routine. I'm getting excited this is coming together.

And then another question that I ask my clients to reflect on in this routine builder cheat sheet is, what state are you hoping your gas tanks will be in after your routine? And again, if you're like completely unfamiliar with my gas tank terminology, go and watch this video next. And it occurs to me that in my previous morning routine, one of the goals of that morning routine was to spend as little gas from each of my gas tanks as possible in order to just get going for the day. But it occurs to me that my new morning routine needs to have a slightly more nuanced take on it. So I need to try to spend less gas as usual, but I also need to try to add gas back to my cognitive tank, especially my emotional gas tank.

One of the reasons, and this is something I've been noodling on, but I feel like it's real coming together right now. Verbally processing after any Anytime Pages. Highly recommend. It's a good one two punch.

One of the reasons I've been struggling with working on version two of Action Navigator is I wanna make sure that when I am writing content for version two, I am in an emotionally healthy headspace and heartspace. Because I know that if I'm not, even though it might not be blatantly obvious at the surface level, there will be subtext to how I'm writing and my voice will be sad. And I don't want that for my clients. And it's not... I don't consider this a toxic positivity thing at all. It's, I want my program to be a safe, inviting, warm hug when you engage with my work. I want my work to be clear, I want it to be concise and I want my clients to feel unconditionally understood. I want them to feel seen and held and safe. And in order to do that, I need to be in a headspace and heartspace to provide that.

It's one thing doing that on my weekly group coaching calls within my program because I am able to do that coaching when drained because I absolutely love every one of my students and even when I'm feeling tired, talking to any of them just fills my heart tank. And I love showing up for them. But also because my program is based around a preexisting curriculum where it's like everything I know is now outside of my head in videos and PDFs, I don't have to trust myself to be able to remember everything I teach in those weekly coaching calls. And instead lean into the nuance of the very unique situations that my clients are in at the time and work them through that. And that's why I have a course plus coaching. So I don't have to depend on my brain being all there for my workshopping calls as I call them, but they're just group coaching calls on Zoom. But with redoing that, putting it outside of my brain course so everything I know is outside of my head and my clients can access it without me even having to be awake, (it's clear and concise and helpful). I need to make sure that I'm in the right head and heart space to be creating that content so it has that warm and loving tone to it.

What that means is I need to fill my heart tank in a way during my morning routine so that way I can get into that head space, into that heart space. And that is probably going to be the most difficult aspect of building this morning routine. So I did a quick like brainstorm of how the heck am I gonna do that?

I can listen to music, I could maybe do one of my (and this is a big question mark) do one of my VR workouts. It's called Supernatural. It's on the quest and it's kinda like beat saber but better music, better views. And the big question mark is that would spend gas tanks. But it's another thing I wanna be incorporating into my regular routine, 'cause my physical therapist says it might help my nervous system realize there isn't a median arligament anymore and it might help my tachycardia if I'm doing cardiovascular workouts more regularly. Ugh, I hate it. But there's a chance I might have to do some science that that might fill my heart tank if I just do like two or three songs. So like less than 10 minutes. Another thing is visual stimulation. So finding fun YouTube videos that are just visually stimulating, maybe have some pleasant music in the background is just so that I can, I could stare at, so like passive meditation almost. Actually meditate, that's another option. I could look out the window, I could go outside. I don't know that that, that weirds me out.

And then I was thinking more of that like passive stuff. So I could actually do a short rollout with my yoga tuneup balls and therapy rollers. And I could also use my vibration plate. That's my new favorite thing. If you've seen them advertised on TikTok, I was influenced and I'm really grateful I was influenced. Although I did buy mine on Amazon, I did not trust TikTok shop. If I remember, I will put an Amazon affiliate link to the one I got in the description box below. I don't work out on it. I rarely ever even stand on it. I either just sit here with it out in front of me, put my feet on it or I lie down and put my lower legs on it. And it is one of the best lymphatic drainage and relaxation nervous system regula- it's glorious. Highly recommend. But it might be fun to incorporate that into my morning routine.

So that is the result of my Anytime Pages, which is funny 'cause like the actual length of my Anytime Pages just one page. Hmm.

So next step is to define my steps and then choose the order and then choose a habit trigger that that's, that's the next step. Okay, so I'm probably gonna do another "go away, come back", 'cause I've been talking stream of consciousness at you and you probably want a break from that. So I'll give you a more concise debrief instead of making you go with me on this journey.

Wish me luck.

Here's what I have so far. Wake up and roll over and take my meds 'cause I always have water and my prescriptions right by my bed. Then get up, go to the bathroom, do my morning skincare. Then I can do either some rolling out or use the vibration plate I was talking about. Then get my morning drink, transition to my laptop of choice for the day. Then I can do my puzzles while I enjoy my tasty beverage. And then I can do time blocking because that's one of my anchor habits that has fallen by the wayside. And then I can do butt in chair time on version two of The Action Navigator. And I will decide how much time I'm going to be spending on that based on the rest of the day's schedule and my time blocking.

Because I wanna make sure I'm not completely burning myself out on version two and am unable to successfully do what else needs to happen that day that's already on my schedule. Like coaching my clients on the weekly call, for example.

So now if I look at this relative to my needs, I already see one glaring problem. And that is I still have POTS and getting out of bed the moment after I wake up and take my pills probably a little too soon, which is one of the reasons why I would stay bed and get on social media before. So I need a little extra time for my body to combobulate, not necessarily for my brain to combobulate, but my body. And this is something that's probably going to take some experimentation.

But right now the thing that I am curious to try is just grab my phone and play a song I've been really enjoying and do a little grooving in bed to warm up my body. Yeah, I think that's what I'm gonna try. So it'll be get up, roll over, take my meds, listen to a song and then I can get up, go to the bathroom. I'll only be upright for a short time and then I can immediately come out here, get on the floor, do some rolling or vibrating, get your head outta the gutter. It's the vibration plate for lymphatic drainage and nervous system regulation. Then I can get up, go make my jasmine green milk tea and transition to my laptop, do my puzzles, do my time blocking and get into version two of The Action Navigator.

So that is my draft for my new morning routine. What I am going to do is now try it for the rest of the week. So today is Wednesday. That means I'm gonna try it for two days, but that should be enough to know if there are any glaring errors in my critical thinking. So I'm going to let you all know how it goes.

Day One: Thursday

So I just completed my first attempt at my new morning routine. It was a really interesting first day because I had a rough night's sleep. I ended up sleeping longer than I would've liked, but I really needed it.

And when I woke up and I was going about the first few steps I found that without social media and without a podcast and only having either quiet or music, my brain wanted to ruminate. There was so much ruminating and scripting going on, it was kind of bonkers. So that was really uncomfortable. But I persevered.

I really leaned into the vibration plate part of my new morning routine and it was really cute. My black and white cat Oreo was very helpful with me rolling around on the floor and purring and wanting scritches. So that was really helpful. So I really made a concerted effort during that step to ground myself and get back into my body. And every time I noticed my thoughts spiraling again, I would redirect myself back into the present moment and my body and the things I was feeling. Which for those of you who have experience with meditation might be like, that sounds the longing meditation and it, I mean technically I don't think someone would say that what I did was meditating, but I was using meditation tools in order to help redirect my thoughts and my experiences. And like that's the result of basically doing the cognitive exercise of meditation is to be able to gently redirect your focus when it's someplace you don't want it to be.

Anyways, whoa, I'm a cat, I'm just distracted by a pretty light on my ceiling. Whatcha gonna do anyways.

And then I found I was actually physically hungry and wanting a meal after I did that. So along with my tasty drink I got my breakfast and so I ate my breakfast and drank my tasty drink while I was doing my morning puzzles. And then I got to work on version, sorry, my other cat, Kayla wants attention right now. She's being very cute and on the floor.

Anyways, I was able to get to work on version two of The Action Navigator. And since it's been so long since I've been in this Scrivener document, a lot of what I was doing today was reviewing the first chapter that I had written, like getting back into the groove of it all. And I'm really proud of that first chapter. I made some really important edits today I think to make it flow better and make more sense. I ended up spending four 15 minute Pomodoros on writing and it feels really good to have done that and now I can move on with the rest of my day.

So the takeaways from day one of this new morning routine is rumination and scripting and spiraling is probably going to be my co-pilot for this new morning routine. And I'm curious to see how it'll go tomorrow if it'll be any better, if how well or not I sleep impacts that.

And over time I'll just be curious and being open to new ideas to help with that beyond just grounding. So yeah, that was day one. I'll let you know how day two goes.

Day Two: Friday

Day two was another success par-tay! And actually I tried something different today because of all that rumination and spiraling and scripting I was doing yesterday. I did not play music today and that seemed to help a lot. So apparently music just cues my, my thinking brain to just go. So I'm gonna continue with this experiment next week, but today is Friday for me and I'm going on a short weekend trip tomorrow.

But I'm really proud of the work I've gotten done on Action Navigator version two in just two days. And today I only did three 15 minute Pomodoros. So I feel like the introduction is really nice and I don't, I don't waffle about or faff about, as they say in England. I, I teach a lot in the introduction and it's a self-care starter pack essentially. And I'm really proud of it and I'm getting really excited about my work and my program again, which is something I haven't felt in a long time. So I'm really glad I did the work of adjusting my morning routine and I'm gonna keep working with it and hopefully this is gonna be the thing that's gonna help me actually finish version two of The Action Navigator. So the current version of The Action Navigator is amazing. There, there's a reason why I haven't updated it before 'cause it is phenomenal and it's lifetime access and if you join the current version, you automatically get access to the new version when it's ready at no additional cost to you. This is a genuine lifetime access program. I'm not gonna gatekeep updates or make the information disappear on you at any time. So if you want to learn more about it, there's a link in the description box below. It's also a a sliding scale program. So depending on your financial privilege determines how much you pay. So if you're someone who like me when I was at my lowest, I didn't have money to get support, like there's a way for you to join this program too. I don't wanna leave anybody hanging. So check it out at the link in the description box below and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

So thank you for joining me as I went through the whole process of building a new morning routine and testing it out as this is still Wednesday me, I don't know how the tests went and I don't know if any revisions were made. That's for future me to know and for you to already know. Ha. Thank you for joining me in this video.

If you like this video, please hit that like button and be sure to share it with a friend. I wanna emphasize that part because if you're one of the people who's like, why doesn't Cassie have more subscribers? It's probably because all of you wonderful people are just like me and you're lurkers so you don't necessarily comment. You might hit that like button, which is awesome. It does help.

But I think I wanna try an experiment. So if there's a video of mine that you really love, go share it somewhere else on the internet. It doesn't have to be this one, but if it was this one, go ahead and share it somewhere. I think, I think 'cause like I'm not gonna make you comment. If you wanna hide and lurk, that's okay, but seriously just share it with one other person in a DM maybe and see, and see what happens. You don't have to share it like in a Facebook group or on Reddit. That also sounds scary. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna ask you to do that. But I'm just curious if more shares might help this channel grow better.

So awesome thank you for joining me. I will be back at some future date with either another live stream or another video and I will talk to you soon. Love ya, Bye.