How To Stick To a Morning Routine | 4 Tips To Try In 2026

Raise your hand if you can relate to any of these scenarios:

• At the beginning of every year, you write down all of the great morning habits you are about to implement into your mornings just to cut them in half in the first two weeks of the month and completely drop them another week (or days) later.
• (Almost) every Sunday, you plan to start the next week being productive and disciplined, and the biggest step would be to wake up early and go through some sort of healthy and motivating morning routine. However, once you wake up on the next day, you suddenly realize that this wouldn’t be the week to start all that “change your life” thing.
• You occasionally scan videos and blogs for the best ways to start your days, get motivated, create gorgeous plans, and do nearly nothing after that.

If you recognize yourself anywhere in these three statements, keep reading. This is the post that will give you the answers to your big Why? and How?

Why can’t you stick to starting your day in a better way, and how to stick to your morning routine?

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Nobody can do the work for you!

Now, here is a quick disclaimer, which happens to be a very late realization I just had.

Skimming through a blog post, watching a video, or reading a book on anything does the following things for you:

• It gives you ideas to consider and work with;
• Shows you a different perspective;
• Creates a temporary feeling of motivation and determination…

And that’s it!

It changes nothing about your life. The responsibility to create that change falls on your shoulders, and I am sorry to put it in this way. The dirty work should be done by you only.

It sounds simple and obvious, but as I said, I’ve realized how much I expect from the different sources of information and how little I expect from myself. The lack of responsibility might stop me from getting what I want, and the lack of commitment could be why I cannot stick to a morning routine.

Don’t worry! In this post, I give you three possible reasons your mornings aren’t the way you want them to be and four ways to change that.

Who am I, and why should you listen to me?

We often read about the successful guys’ morning routines when it comes to morning routines. Churchill worked from his bed until 11 a.m., Russel Brand plays tennis every morning, Tim Ferris takes cold baths and tons of strict little steps, and Oprah walks her dogs in her private garden every morning…

We keep looking towards the big figures and take examples from them, but ignore one thing: they can afford to have the routine they want because they are already where they want to be.

And one lesson I learned a long time ago is that I should never compare my beginning with someone else’s middle.

I am just a normal blogger in my 30s who makes enough money to justify staying home and writing all day (plus loads of social media procrastination). I am one of many, and nothing makes me different or more special than the next person.

And I know we should look up to those we consider role models, but I believe that this statement is valid for their financial and business decisions, determination, and ability to create connections that took them to the top where we first heard about them.

In reality, what they do right now is what they need to do to sustain their life and not create it!

And that’s the big difference we overlook.

So, this post is just my point of view on why most people (including myself in the past) do not make the best out of their mornings and how to change that.

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3 Reasons you can never stick to a morning routine

1. You are after the big change!

Here’s a scenario you might go through more often than you wish.

It’s Friday morning! You snooze your alarm a total of six times and finally break up with the bed. You can’t get over it, but the day is calling for you.

Next, you enter the bathroom. You skip the morning skincare routine because you are running out of time. You make yourself a cup of coffee, hoping for it to wake your brain up, and frantically search for clean clothes to wear.

The frustration raises your blood pressure, and you can’t wait for this day to end so you can enjoy a relaxing weekend. You have a toast (yay!) while searching for your shoes and rush out of the house, forgetting about the lunch you prepared last night from the dinner’s leftovers.

You realize your lunch is still at home, and you get cranky at yourself. Why should you always be so unorganized and such a failure?

You decide you must create a better morning routine for yourself. Therefore, you spend the weekend exploring some ideas for building a morning routine for success. On Sunday evening, you are inspired and pumped to get up early on the next day, meditate, journal, and even exercise…

The biggest thing you end up doing, though, is meditating between the five snoozes of your alarm (yes, you were sleeping and lying to yourself it’s meditation).

I know that this scenario is an exaggeration, but it’s needed to create a picture of how big of a change you are after.

Turning your life in 180 degrees happens only when one of the two things is present: 1) a sudden event disrupted your life, and you are physically unable to have it the old way, 2) you are an insane master of getting your life together in a matter of seconds.

Everything else requires a period of preparation and adjustment.

I guess I am trying to tell you that you overwhelm yourself with things to do in the morning that you aren’t used to doing. Piling them up one on top of the other could work for a day or two. Still, unless you have a greater purpose (such as being a Youtuber and doing a 30-day challenge that will eventually turn into a money-making video), chances are you will end up disappointed.

2. You copy-paste

If you’ve ever tried to find out what some of the greatest entrepreneurs do in their mornings, then you’ve also tried to copy their routines to some extent.

But Oprah’s morning routine is her routine, not yours. Just because most successful people exercise before the first beams of light hit your corner of the Earth doesn’t mean you should do it too.

Copy-paste is probably one of the most common reasons people fail to build and stick to a morning routine… In fact, they don’t “build” it; they adopt it from someone else.

I was trying for years (literally) to make myself exercise in the morning. And I hated every single second of that time. Even simple yoga movements would make me grudge and frown. That was until I decided that enough was enough, and I would no longer do this to myself. The maximum I get is 5 to 10 minutes of slight warm-up, and I call it done. Instead, I try to squeeze in more exercises throughout the day.

3. You actually love what you do right now

Yes, even if your mornings are similar to my example for a Friday morning… chances are you are in love with what you do. Maybe the rushing in the morning actually acts as an energy booster for you, and you transmit that into your workday later. Perhaps you hit the snooze button because you love giving yourself some more time to wake up.

Maybe you don’t need nor want to change your morning routine because what you do now works for the life you have now.

And once you start craving a different life strong enough, you will also change how you start your days.

How to stick to a morning routine and start loving it

Maybe some of the ideas I already shared with you have sparked some thoughts. Maybe you’ve realized you don’t need to change too many things to have a routine you are okay with. Maybe you want to reflect on what stops you from sticking to a better morning routine.

Here are my four tips on how to make a difference this time.

1. Have your Why

Yes, it sounds a bit of a cliche, but having your why isn’t about listing a reason or two inside your head.

I am talking of a big Why in front of your eyes every day.

Create a vision board with the life you want to live and have it in front of your bed so it’s the first thing you look at when you get up.

Write encouraging words on little post-it notes and spread them around the house or your home office.

Take the time to read through your list of reasons every evening before going to sleep and every morning before getting out of bed.

Have your Why in front of your eyes and keep the pictures vivid in your mind at any point. This will create momentum and a long-lasting dedication to keep trying and keep doing.

2. Actually work with facts!

Here’s the thing!

Elon Musk’s morning routine is the way it is because he knows it’s what works for him. It puts him in a working mode and makes him achieve his goals and dreams.

And that’s the reality for every other “got their mornings together” person out there. They know that what they do works for them.

Do you?

Are you sure that the morning routine you’ve decided you should stick to is what you need?

You don’t!

You didn’t do it yet, so you do not know where it will lead you!

In fact, you don’t trust the system, and you don’t trust it will give you a return on investment. That is why you fail in it.

But what if you knew? What if you had a guarantee that you would achieve Z if you do A, B, and C?

This is why you should start working with facts – your own facts.

I encourage you to have a week or two weeks of experimenting with the ideal morning routine you’d like to have. Document the whole thing through journaling or little daily vlogs (don’t publish them, they are for you only).

Document the results you get throughout the day, your energy levels, moods, and ideas. To be sure, keep an actual record of those two weeks (or even a month).

And then, be okay with going back to your old morning routine. Give yourself permission to be who you used to be. See how the change in the morning routine affects you. Keep a record of that as well. Assess how the temporary push changed your day-to-day life and what happened when you dropped it afterward.

You might be surprised by your results.

Once you have all the data, the decision will be in your hands. Should you push yourself repeatedly so you get the results you already had during the experimentation? Was the outcome what you hoped for? Did you have a return on investment? Was it worth it?

3. Adjust to it slowly

The only moment when I would encourage you to dive into a brand new, totally different morning routine is if you do the experiment I suggested above.

If you want to make a long-lasting change skipping the experimental part… starting big is the way to fail it.

Your mind and body are most likely far from where you want them to be. And it’s not like they can’t get there… but what is your guarantee that now it would be different than the last 34 times you tried the same thing?

Adjusting to a morning routine is hard, and the bigger the gap between what you do now and what you want to do in the future, the harder and longer the adjustment will be.

Adjust to everything slowly. Start by switching off your snooze button option on your alarm (yes, you have it!) Do nothing different than that. Deal with your morning however else you wish. Go like that for at least a few weeks until you feel like not having a snooze button is the new normal for you.

Then, add a stretch or a few minutes of journaling (5-minute journaling is actually almost effortless). Again, choose one thing and do it until you feel like you’ve done it for years.

Then, add the next thing on the list…

Use this technique for months before quitting. It takes a while to get to that perfect morning routine, but that would still be faster than the speedy “try and fail” technique you are already using.

4. Trick yourself into doing it

I wouldn’t recommend going straight for this option before trying the first few. The only time you would approach your mornings in this way is if you are like me and forget what to do in the mornings.

Sometimes, life is hectic, stressful, and depressing, and until you realize you we supposed to journal earlier in the morning, you are already in the middle of your lunch break.

You forget! And that’s okay. You fail because the action has not become a habit yet.

In this case, try tricking yourself.

If you are tired of hitting the snooze button but removing the function from your phone guarantees you’ll be late for work, then leaving the phone away from the bed is how you trick yourself into getting up and switching it off. Now you are up, so it might be easier to stay up.

If you keep forgetting to eat healthy in the morning, then prepping your breakfast the night before is a great way to trick yourself into just having it. Soak your oats in milk or water from the previous evening, or make yourself a chia pudding that you could grab and enjoy in the morning.

If you forget to journal, place the notebook or the journal next to your coffee machine or on the chair you sit in to have your coffee.

This technique aims to create obstacles that push you to do the thing almost regardless of anything else. Of course, you could leave the journal away and ignore it… But why would you even want it as a habit if you do that?

Final thoughts

These were my four secrets on how to stick to your morning routine. I hope they gave you some ideas, and let me repeat myself – those words above do nothing by themselves unless you actually physically put them into practice. Choose the best individual way to approach your situation, and if the results are worth it, then the path would be worth it too.

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How To Stick To a Morning Routine