In Part 1 of this series you examined and made a list of things you do in the morning. Now let’s dig in and make 
amazing mornings start happening for you. Let’s begin by working backwards.
What time do you need to leave in the morning? If you’re walking into your home office, what time do you need to be seated at your desk? For me, it’s 10am.
Look at the notes you’ve been taking for the last week and make a list of things you need to do in the morning. Now go through that list and see what things don’t actually need to be on that morning list. Here are some things you might be able to take off that list:
Make lunches for kids.
Decide what to wear.
Iron clothes.
Check email.
Watch morning news.
Check Facebook.
Some of the things on your list might be able to be allotted to different times of the day. Maybe you could choose what to wear and iron your clothes the night before. Maybe you could make the kids’ lunches the night before. Maybe could wait to do your first check on email and Facebook for when you get to the office. You get the idea.
Now that you have a list of what you really want to accomplish in the morning, write down how long each item takes. If you can, don’t guess. Actually monitor how long things take so you can put an accurate estimate of how long things take. If I were developing my morning routine this way, it would look like this:
Walk to home office at 10am
Stretching/dancing meditation – 20 min
Walk home – 10 min
Coffee with Dave – 15 min
Walk dog to café – 10 min
Make and drink my smoothie – 10 min (I usually pack it and drink it on my walk)
Feed dog – 10 min
Get dressed – 10 min
Shower – 10 min
Take dog out, drink glass of water, run to restroom – 5 minutes
Lounge in bed saying gratitudes – 10 min
Contingency time – 10 min
This is a total of 120 minutes or 2 hours. That means I need to wake up at 8am.
Notice I added a 10 min contingency time just in case something comes up. For example, the dog vomits all his food up, I can’t find my keys, I get an emergency phone call, etc. Maybe I’m just running slow one morning. It’s good to have a little fudge time in your schedule so you don’t need to stress when things come up for you.
Now you have the rough draft for your morning routine. Try it for a week. Adjust it as needed. Notice how it affects the flow and ease of your morning. Next week we will explore how to wake up already in the flow and feeling good. Until then, have a nice week.