As January ends, February brings lighter mornings and more daylight. This is the perfect time to refine your morning routine and make the most of the increased sunlight, which can boost your energy and productivity for a positive start to your day.
One effective strategy for optimising your morning is to prepare the night before. Whether it’s setting out your outfit or filling the kettle for your morning tea, small preparations can make a big difference. By organising the essentials ahead of time, you can streamline your morning routine and ensure a more efficient start to your day.
Read below to discover five more ways to leverage the lighter mornings and enhance your productivity.
1. Wake up with the sun and get outside
Exposure to natural light in the morning helps regulate your internal body clock, boost energy, and improve your mood by signalling the brain to increase cortisol and wake you up. To incorporate more light into your morning routine, consider:
- Taking a short walk
- Sitting outside with your morning coffee/tea
- Opening a window.
According to Verywell Health, “When you get bright light in the morning it can help you feel more alert during the day and has a later effect that helps you to feel sleepy in the evening and fall asleep earlier”.
Getting sunlight in the morning can help you stay awake during the day and make it easier to fall asleep at night, regulating your natural body clock.
2. Listen to a podcast or music – Energise your brain
Listening to a podcast or music can wake you up and energise your brain, helping you get into a productive state.
Podcasts can help you focus on a particular topic, such as some of my favourites below:
- The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett. Episode: ‘David Epstein: 10,000 Hours Is A Lie! The Morning Habit That’s Secretly Ruining Your Day!’ – This episode provides tips for boosting productivity and how to become a better learner.
- Online Marketing Made Easy with Amy Porterfield. Episode: ‘#744: How to Stop People’s Opinions From Impacting Your Life with Mel Robbins’ – This episode gives great insight into Mel Robbin’s life-changing “Let Them” theory and teaches you how to not let other people’s opinions stop you from achieving what you want.
- The Best One Yet (TBOY) – A new episode released every day of the week. This is a pop-business news podcast. It gives a quick 20-minute run down of the top three business stories of that day.
Similarly, music has been shown to improve focus, reduce stress and boost your performance. Instrumental music can be particularly helpful for concentration because it eliminates the distraction of lyrics, allowing you to focus without the urge to sing along. See some playlist suggestions below.
- Spotify: Daily Drive: This is a personalised playlist made by AI that combines the music you normally listen to and some news stories of the day.
- YouTube: Cozy Coffee Shop with Smooth Piano Jazz Music
- YouTube: LoFi to Wake Up & Focus
Find a podcast or playlist that aligns with your personal goals and get an instant sense of achievement.
3. Start the day with a win – Complete a small task
Starting your day with a small win can set the tone for productivity and success. Completing a simple task creates an immediate sense of accomplishment and helps clear mental clutter.
This approach leverages the Zeigarnik Effect, which suggests that unfinished tasks can linger in your mind, making it harder to focus. By completing an easy win early, you boost motivation, reinforce a sense of control, and build momentum for the day ahead.
Some suggestions include:
- Take some time to set some saving reminders for the month ahead.
- Plan a budget for the day/week.
- Tidy your workspace.
- Do something you’ve been putting off for a while.
4. Turn off your notifications – Control your focus
Constant notifications disrupt focus and make it harder to complete meaningful work. Turning off non-essential notifications helps create an environment for deep concentration.
Setting time to go through a preview of your notifications in a specific window allows you to stay focused when you need to be, and gives you greater control over how you spend your time. You can set this up in your phone’s notification settings.
5. Try the “Second Brain” system – Organise your mind for maximum productivity
The “Second Brain” system is a powerful way to organise your thoughts and maximise productivity by offloading mental clutter.
As an article from Forbes explains, this method helps you “store, structure, analyse, and delete unnecessary information,” creating a clear path for focused work. The system follows three key steps:
- Brain dump – Write down everything on your mind, no matter how small, to free up mental space.
- Organise the dump – Discard irrelevant tasks, make actionable steps, and categorise them (tasks that can wait, upcoming projects, etc.,).
- Assign deadlines and a schedule – Put the tasks into your calendar with specific deadlines and dedicated time slots to ensure follow-through.
This will free up your brain capacity, reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed, and provide clarity by breaking tasks into manageable steps. To make this system even more effective, ensure each task is specific and actionable – vague tasks are easy to ignore, while more detailed ones are more likely to get done.
Work with an award-winning agency to make your marketing more productive
By making the most of lighter mornings, you can set yourself up for a more productive and energised day.
Whether it’s getting outside for natural light, listening to an inspiring podcast, completing a small task, minimising distractions, or organising your thoughts with the Second Brain system, these simple habits can help you feel more in control and focused.
With consistency, these strategies will not only enhance your mornings but also create lasting improvements in your productivity and overall wellbeing.
If you’d like to increase the productivity of your marketing, we can help. Email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300 to find out more.
