Spending as little as five minutes a day, every day, on a morning routine will have a “transformative” effect on one’s productivity and happiness levels.
And while committing to daily tasks can be difficult, bestselling author Dr Rangan Chatterjee shared tips to turn the routine into a habit that comes naturally, speaking in a special edition of the Spencer Lodge Podcast, in partnership with Arabian Business.
“For me, morning routines are huge in terms of me being able to show up as the best version of myself, whether that’s for work as a doctor, with my wife, my kids or my friends. I know I’m a better person when I’ve had a bit of time to myself each morning,” said Chatterjee.
And while some people consider morning routines a “cliché”, Chatterjee said he has seen it work for his patients “even if it’s a five-minute morning routine,” and even if it’s at another time of day.
“But I will also say that if mornings aren’t the right time for you for whatever reason then that’s okay. What I’m talking about is a period of your day where you consistently give time to yourself to nourish yourself – without that it’s very hard these days to kind of be who you want to be in the world,” he explained.
“This is because there’s so much information nowadays that we’re always consuming whether it’s social media, email, the news etc. If all we’re ever doing is taking inputs from outside, we never have any chance to actually get in touch with how we’re really feeling,” continued Chatterjee.
Chatterjee described his morning routines as focusing on the three Ms of mindfulness movement and mindset.
“If you cover these three bases, it’s a pretty complete morning routine, but even one of those Ms I think will be beneficial and arguably transformative for many people. For me, I realised that if I get up before my kids and have time to myself, I’m just a much better person: I’m calm, I’m more content and more productive at work,” he said.
“I go to bed at nine and get up at five, which is early, and I will probably have 30 to 40 minutes of a morning routine. First thing I do is some form of meditation or mindfulness for about ten minutes. Then I go into my kitchen, and while my coffee brews for five minutes, I have a quick workout in my kitchen in my pyjamas.
“For mindset, I’ve realised that if you do something positive first thing in the morning, and you sort of infuse your mind with positive thoughts, that tends to have a carryover effect, not just for the rest of the morning, but often for the rest of the day. So what I do is while drinking my coffee, I’ll read an uplifting book that makes me think and reflect,” he continued.
Making a habit out of the routine
For people who find it hard to stick to a routine, Chatterjee recommended they “make it easy and stick the new behaviour onto existing habits.”
“So many of my patients get paralysed with choice and so that’s why I recommend doing the same thing every day so you don’t have to think,” he said.
He also recommended making it easy, giving the example of how often people commit to going to the gym every day but with time, when it becomes difficult to stick to that schedule, they slip.
“Basically, this speaks to what science calls the motivation wave where motivation comes up at first and then goes down with time. The reason why if you make it easy, you are going to do it is because you’re not relying on motivation,” said Chatterjee.
“Basically, on that day where you’re knackered and you don’t feel you have time, if it’s easy to do, you will still do it. Now, just to be really clear, I’m not saying you always have to do the bear minimum; some days, I’ll have a bit of extra time at the end of the five-minute work and do another ten minutes but that’s not the expectation I have of myself, because if suddenly I have to do 15 minutes a day then on a day I am worried that I don’t have time, I won’t do it. And before you know it, it’s a habit or a behaviour that you used to do,” he continued.
Learning happiness
A morning routine could also lead to happiness, which Chatterjee said can be learned.
“What I was trying to do with this model of happiness is create something for people that was practical because I think happiness often feels like an unattainable goal or a mirage that one day is just going to appear for us,” he explained.
“When what I’ve realised is that that happiness is a skill we can practice, develop, and work on it, if we know what to work on,” continued Chatterjee.
Recounting how, at a moment in time, and despite all his achievements, he realised that he was not happy, Chatterjee said this prompted him to explore happiness further and he came up with the concepts of core and junk happiness.
“Core happiness is what I think every human being wants. Junk happiness are the habits that we turn to distract ourselves and numb how we’re feeling. It can be sugar, ice cream, gambling or online shopping three hours on Instagram etc. These are distraction techniques because we don’t want to feel what we’re feeling,” he said.
“My model of happiness is called happiness stool where there are three legs – we can work directly on these three legs: alignment, contentment, and control with simple things that actually don’t cost any money. When we do that, the side effect is going to be that you feel happy,” continued Chatterjee.
The control factor does not mean control over the external world but “things that you can do regularly that give you a sense of control over your life.”
“We know from the research that people who have a sense of control have higher success and motivation; they earn more money and have higher levels of what we call social maturity. They do better in exams and presentations, are happier and live longer,” he explained.
“Here again the morning routine factors in. If you look at it through the lens of this stool happiness, that works on the control leg. When I have my morning routine, I feel I’ve created a little bubble of resilience around me and nourished my mind, body, and soul,” continued Chatterjee.
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