My No-BS Morning Routine After 6 Months Of Experiments

Morning routines without the monk cosplay

I like experiments. I build odd video-heavy web things, track too many biometrics, coach baseball kids, and still try to ship actual work.

So 6 months ago I decided to stop reading about "perfect" morning routines and just run my own test. No 4:30 alarms. No ice baths in a steel tub on a balcony. Just something a functioning human can do consistently in the Netherlands without quitting their social life.

This is not the routine I started with. This is the routine that survived six months of real life, travel, deadlines, and the Dutch winter.

The constraints I actually cared about

Before I wrote anything down, I set hard constraints. Otherwise you end up copying some YouTuber with a chef, a home gym, and no clients.

• Must fit in 60 minutes total from eyes open to laptop open.
• No activities that need willpower debt. If it feels heroic, it will die.
• Must work with kids' baseball practice schedules and late games.
• Must be location-flexible. I still want to travel with a backpack.
• Must improve at least one metric: focus, mood, output, or health.

Anything that failed those went on the chopping block, no matter how good it sounded on a podcast.

What I tried and killed quickly

I did the usual over-enthusiastic builder thing. I started with too much. Then I cut ruthlessly. Here is what did not make it past the first few weeks.

• 5am wake-ups. Brutal. My brain felt like a half-compiled build all day. It only works if you also live like a pensioner and go to bed at 9pm. I do not.
• Cold showers as a ritual. I like cold exposure, I track HRV, I have ice packs. As a daily mandatory thing at 7am? It just became a punishment. Now I use it tactically: post-bad-sleep reset, maybe once or twice a week.
• Long journaling sessions. I tried the "3 pages every morning" thing. Result: hand cramps, rushed writing, and a growing resentment of my notebook. I do better with short, structured prompts.
• Strict "no phone for 2 hours" rules. This sounds great on Twitter. In client reality it means you miss urgent stuff and start the day with anxiety. I adjusted it instead of banning the phone.
• Heavy workouts first thing. Lifting fasted at 7am looked good on paper. My code quality and coaching patience dropped noticeably on those days. I moved strength work later.

Those experiments were not failures. They were guardrails for what follows.

The routine that actually stuck

This is what my mornings look like on a normal weekday. No aesthetic flatlay, just the boring reality I repeat.

1. Wake time: a window, not a fixed point

I do not have a single wake-up time. I have a wake window: between 6:45 and 7:30.

I use a simple rule set:

• If I am in bed by 23:00, alarm at 6:45.
• If there was baseball practice, travel, or late calls, I slide to 7:15 or 7:30.
• No snoozing. One alarm, phone across the room.

This window-based system survived every schedule change. Fixed times did not.

2. Light, water, and a fast body check (10 minutes)

First thing I do is walk straight to a window. Netherlands light in winter is a joke, so I use a 10,000 lux lamp on my desk from October to March.

At the same time:

• I drink ~500 ml of water with a pinch of salt and magnesium.
• I do a quick body check: sleep quality from my tracker, resting heart rate, joint stiffness, any DOMS from training.

This is less biohacking theatre and more operational dashboard. I adjust the day's intensity based on that quick scan instead of pretending I am a robot.

3. 5-minute written check-in, not a diary (5 minutes)

This is the journaling that survived. I use a boring A5 notebook and a pen that glides well. That detail matters more than I expected.

The page has three tiny sections:

• Noise dump: 3 bullet points of whatever is looping in my head. Both personal and work.
• Today will be a win if...: one sentence. Not a full to-do list. Example: "Ship first interactive prototype for X".
• One constraint: something I am not going to do. Example: "No redesigning the navbar" or "No new experiments".

This killed two problems at once. It stopped me from treating journaling like therapy at 7am, and it focuses the day on one visible win with an explicit boundary.

4. Movement, but low friction (10–15 minutes)

I used to think morning workouts had to be intense. That never lasted longer than three weeks. What stuck is what I call the "minimum viable warmup".

Roughly 10 to 15 minutes:

• Hip openers and ankle mobility (helpful for both sitting and baseball coaching).
• Spine rotations and shoulder circles.
• 2 short sets of something that raises my heart rate mildly: air squats, light kettlebell swings, or just a fast walk up and down the stairs.

No sweat, no shower needed after. I can do it in a hotel room or a tiny Dutch apartment. The rule is simple: if it requires special clothes or equipment, it does not belong in the morning slot.

5. Coffee protocol and light fast (15 minutes, mostly idle)

I try to push caffeine at least 60 minutes after waking. Habit wise this was hard for the first week, then it felt normal.

Process:

• Prep coffee around the 60-minute mark. I use a simple V60 setup. No espresso temple.
• No breakfast yet. I do a light fast until 10:30–11:00. That is less ideology and more pattern: I focus better slightly hungry.
• While the water heats and coffee draws, I handle one quick life admin task under 5 minutes: bin out, dishwasher, quick reply to a message that is blocking someone.

This part makes the routine feel like life, not a ritual. Coffee plus one tiny progress marker in the real world is a surprisingly strong mental trigger that the day has started.

6. The phone rule that did not implode my client work

As I said earlier, the "no phone for 2 hours" fantasy did not survive impact with reality. Clients work in different time zones, kids have early practice changes, and occasionally production breaks overnight.

So I use a narrower rule:

• Phone is allowed once I have done water, light, and the 5-minute written check-in.
• I use iOS focus modes. Morning focus allows only calls and a tiny set of apps: Signal, email, calendar, and my task manager.
• No social apps, no news, no YouTube, no browsers.

Practically that means I can check for fires, answer anything truly urgent, and then put the phone away again. The focus mode setting removes the self-negotiation.

7. The "first 90 minutes" work block

This part is not technically morning routine, but it is attached to it and the whole thing falls apart if I ignore it.

Once I sit down at my desk with coffee in hand, I start a 90-minute timer. During that block I only work on what I wrote in the "Today will be a win if..." line. No email. No Slack. No client calls.

For me that is usually:

• Prototyping some interactive element for a client site.
• Editing a video component or trying a new WebGL effect.
• Writing this exact blog post.

I track those 90-minute blocks over time. On days where I protect that first block, every other metric looks better: steps, HRV, and basically any revenue number.

Stuff I added later that helped

After the core routine felt stable, I sneaked in a few upgrades. These were small enough that they did not break the chain.

Preparations the night before

Morning routines are secretly evening routines. The quality of my mornings changed more from six small evening tweaks than from any morning hack.

Things I prep:

• Fill water bottle and put it next to the light lamp.
• Lay out training clothes if I plan to move more than usual that morning.
• Open the notebook on the next page and leave the pen on top.
• Write a sticky note on my laptop: the exact thing for the first 90-minute block.

This removes micro-decisions. When I skip this, the routine still happens, but it feels heavier and more negotiable.

Vitamin D and light fix for Dutch winters

Winter mornings here are a grey soup. My energy and mood used to crater from November to February. The combo that worked for me:

• 10,000 lux lamp on for 20–30 minutes while I move and write.
• 2000–4000 IU vitamin D3 with my first food, not on an empty stomach.

That change was measurable in my sleep data and subjective in a very obvious way. Less afternoon slump, more consistent training, less sugar chasing.

What I stopped feeling guilty about

The internet is full of morning routine guilt. You are supposed to meditate, read stoic philosophy, journal deeply, work out hard, do breathwork, eat a perfect breakfast, plan your day, and somehow be at your desk by 9.

After six months I dropped a few expectations completely and did not miss them.

• Meditation: I am not against it. I just prefer walking without headphones or doing a boring domestic task later in the day for the same headspace. Forced meditation attempts in the morning made me sleepy, not calm.
• Heavy breakfast: I grew up on cereal and bread in the morning. It turns my brain into glue. I feel better keeping breakfast light or skipping it until my first work chunk is done, then eating eggs or yoghurt with some actual protein.
• Reading 20 pages of a book: Sounds smart. For me it just delayed my start and moved real work later. I read in the afternoon or before bed instead.

Dropping these was less about efficiency and more about honesty. They were there to make me feel like the sort of person who does them, not because they actually improved my mornings.

How I know it is working

I care about vibes, but I trust numbers more. Over six months I tracked:

• Number of first-90-minute blocks protected per week.
• Weekly shipping output: commits, published experiments, client milestones hit.
• Sleep duration and HRV from my tracker.
• Subjective focus score: 1 to 5, logged once at noon.

Patterns:

• Weeks with 4 or more protected morning blocks had the best revenue and the fewest "everything-is-on-fire" feelings.
• My average sleep time nudged up by about 30 minutes, simply because having a stable wake window made staying up pointlessly feel dumber.
• Focus scores went from a common 2–3 to a common 3–4. Not magical, but noticeable.

The biggest signal was not a metric though. It was how boring the routine felt by month three. No friction. No drama. Just a default.

If you want to steal any of this

I do not think you should copy my exact routine. Your work, family, and biology are different. But if I had to distill six months into a few practical levers:

• Lock a wake window, not a fixed time.
• Attach one tiny written decision to your morning. "Today will be a win if..." has outsized impact.
• Make movement too easy to fail. Ten minutes that do not require a shower is enough.
• Protect the first real work block like it is a client meeting.
• Audit your routine for stuff you are only doing to feel like a certain kind of person. Cut it.

Morning routines are not about aesthetics. They are about making your default morning slightly less chaotic than it would be by accident, so you can build things, coach kids, or just not feel destroyed by 3pm.

Six months in, this one lets me do that without turning my life into a monastery. Good enough for me.