Set the tone for the day by building momentum and starting strong. Here’s how to win the morning so you can win your day.

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There’s an old adage in football that goes: “You can’t win the game in the first quarter, but you can definitely lose it.”

Takes a minute for this to make sense.

But, basically it’s saying that if you start a game sluggish and not ready to play, your opponent can jump on you, seize all momentum and create an insurmountable lead.

Sports mimic life in many ways.

This phrase especially applies to your day to day routine.

How many times have you started the day on the wrong track and let it snowball into a catastrophe? 

It’s where that old cliche of “getting up on the wrong side of the bed” came from. You start the morning horribly and it just compounds all day long.

Well, today we’re going to put an end to that. You’re going to learn how to start the day with some positive momentum so you can crush it. 

And I’ll show you how I win the morning by front-loading some of my most important tasks to start each day with momentum. No snooze buttons, no extended morning routines, no kids jolting me awake to start the day.

Just a system I use to be productive as possible without losing my mind.

Let’s get into it.

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Busy parents and busy mornings

You get out of bed a few minutes later than you planned.

The kids are already jumping down your throat to get breakfast prepped.

Or maybe you’re way too late to even think about breakfast and barely grab a cup of coffee.

It’s a mad dash out the door only to get caught in unrelenting traffic.

Waiting for you at your office is extra work and sudden client fires you need to put out.

The day just gets away from you and each little thing compounds to create an even deeper world of absolute suck.

And it all started because your damn iPhone alarm clock didn’t go off like you programmed it to do and you got up 15 minutes later than planned.

You lost the game in the first quarter.

Which is why I constantly preach about building a morning routine and creating an ironclad routine to start your day off with success.

But this can be confused with doing some fancy, long, drawn-out session of meditation and journaling and cold showers and yoga and hours-long rituals.

Hey, it works for billionaires like Richard Branson, right?

Well, you ain’t got hours of time in the morning like the Bransons or Elon Musks of the world. You have shit to do.

We’ve got to find a way to streamline your morning routine just a bit to make this serve you better.

So, I’m not trying to convince you to join the “4:30 a.m. Club.” This isn’t about beginning each day at sunrise with 46 minutes of fancy meditations and interpretive dances.

Instead, this is about having a solid plan on how to build the proper momentum into your busy ass day.

If you are a busy parent or high performer, you need this.

And it all starts with one simple rule: Do not let your kids be your alarm clock.

Seriously. Wake up before your kids do. Give yourself at least a few minutes before the tantrums and demands and craziness ensues.

Even if it’s just to grab one little sip of coffee.

But you can do better than that if you plan a bit.

Ideally, your morning routine should include a few things:

Mindful practice

This does not need to be anything grandiose. A few deep breaths or even a journaling session can do here.

Movement

If you prefer to train in the mornings, awesome. Do it here. If not, spend just a couple of minutes doing some light stretching and mobility to open up the body and get ready for battle. 

Alternatively, you could simply go for a walk to start the day, combining this with some deep breathing and making it a meditative walk knocks out two birds with one stone.

Relaxation

The mornings do not have to be some timed exercise to see how fast your family can get ready, fed and out the door like a NASCAR pitstop.

Even if it is just five minutes of time to simply chill, read a page of the news, take a few swigs of coffee and then spring into action … It’ll go a long way towards creating a successful day.

It really is as simple as this if you’re just trying to start the day off right. No interpretive dances or extended meditations and sun salutations.

Just getting up a few minutes earlier with a little more intention, some deep breathing and just shaking off the cobwebs a bit.

But if you want to take things to next level, you’ll want to apply a few additional rules to make your morning routine work even better.

No snooze button

It’s going to wreck your sleep patterns.

You’re far better served just committing to sleeping later every day, rather than interrupting that sleep every five or 10 minutes to smash the snooze button.

No social media

Resist the urge to open that damn phone as soon as you wake up. There is nothing important waiting for you there. I promise.

This time should be about you. And you only. Otherwise, you risk the urge of letting small dramas and craziness filter into your morning, which can snowball.

No news

Same applies for the news, too. If you must watch or read the news first thing in the morning, cool. But, give yourself a few minutes before you hop into it.

Make it consistent

You should be going to be bed and waking up at the same times every single day. Even weekends. None of this sleeping in for an extra hour or two on Saturday and Sunday. It can throw off your circadian rhythm and lead to lower quality sleep.

Aim for a consistent seven to nine hours of sleep every single night. Create a regular bedtime routine so you can wind down and maximize that restful time.

“Eat the frog”

This is a phrase coined by author Brian Tracy. It simply means to avoid procrastination by tackling your most important task to start your day.

For my creative types and entrepreneurs, this is super important.

Your morning should be your sanctuary to crush your biggest goals and projects before that inbox starts distracting you and sucking away your mental energy.

If you’re writing a book, spend 15 to 20 minutes every morning writing a page or two.

Or maybe you’re working on a major project that requires total focus. Use the earliest part of your day, when you are fresh, to work on it.

This concept of front-loading the day is how I win the morning. I tackle some of my most important and creative work as soon as I wake up, before I even dive into the mindfulness stuff. It’s been a massive improvement in my productivity.

I’ll show you my morning schedule later on in this piece.

How do you build a routine to win the morning?

Simply start by setting your alarm clock back by a few minutes per day.

Again, we’re not striving for some zero dark thirty situation here. Just 10-15 minutes of time will be enough to do all of the above and prime your day.

If you’re continually struggling to get up a few minutes earlier, it might be time to double check that you’re getting enough regular sleep, too.

That’s another story altogether.

But there’s really no reason why you can’t make an extra 10-15 minutes happen every day.

And in doing so, you’ll be much sharper, more creative, less anxious and better equipped to handle the rigors of your crazy day.

Because you cannot actually win the day by just getting up a little earlier. But you can certainly lose the day by not practicing a solid morning routine.

To provide some deeper inspiration, here’s what currently works for me.

5:15 a.m. Wake up

I start the day early. It’s imperative that I’m up before the kids to get a little bit of focused work done.

This is my creative time. I get about 30 to 45 minutes to write and create much of the content that you read on my website and in my emails and Instagram captions.

Those things all happen during the early morning hours.

6:00 a.m. Mindfulness

Once I’m comfortable with the writing that I’ve produced, I’ll break away to sit down and check in with myself.

I practice meditation every single day. Usually this just comes from a guided application like Headspace or Calm for about 10 minutes.

Then I’ll spend more time in my journal. If you have never journaled before, you should and here’s an entire article as to why it will help.

My journal entries are all about setting the intentions for my day, checking in with my current emotions and making sure that I’m ready to perform at a high level.

6:30 a.m. Coffee, kids and movement

It’s around this time that the kids usually start popping up from their slumber.

In the hour-plus before this happened, I’ve managed to write several hundred words and deepen my mental focus and clarity through my mindfulness practice.

Most people haven’t even started their day yet. And many parents don’t get started until the kids start screaming.

This is flawed. Never let your kids be your alarm clock.

While my morning cup of joe begins to brew, I’ll do five to 10 minutes of some light mobility. Nothing crazy. Not trying to win any competitions here.

Just want to open up my body a little bit and fight back some of the negative effects of sitting all the time.

Then I’ll spend some time with my kids while they eat breakfast and I drink my coffee.

After that, it’s on to the usual morning shenanigans of kids getting ready for school, wife getting ready for work and the day unfolding like most busy parents expect.

This is how I stack the early hours so I can win the morning.

By the time most people are getting into their rhythm and hitting their stride, I’ve actually handled most of my work for the day.

The biggest projects have been handled. Any potential fires from my clients have been put out. Creativity has been maximized. Mindfulness and movement have also been prioritized.

It’s a full day.

Do you need to front-load your mornings the way that I do? Of course not. This is just how I do it so I can be productive and still have time for my kids.

Your morning might look a lot different. It might start much later and include far fewer activities.

Or it could begin at the 4 a.m. hour and include tons of writing for that novel you’ve been waiting to write. Perhaps it looks more like a heavy workout first thing in the morning.

But, the important takeaway remains the same: When you build the mornings around the most important tasks of the day, you create an unbreakable momentum.

When the teacher calls midday to ask for an impromptu parent-teacher conference, it won’t totally ruin your schedule because your morning was the power hour where you got the majority of your work done.

If you suddenly come down with a migraine after staring at your keyboard all day, you’ll know that at least you managed to already crank out your workout because you handled that in the zero dark thirty hours of the morning.

Remember, it does not have to be hours of dedicated focus. It does not need to include some grandiose mindful routine that includes an interpretive dance.

But you should start the day with productivity and a dose of mindfulness. That’s how you’ll start the day fresh.

It’s how you’ll win the morning.

And if you win the morning, you’ll win the day.

Let me help you learn how to win the morning so you can win the day … 

I’m here to help you out. 

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Win the morning” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

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