I’ve been using an app-based morning routine for over a year now. I start out every day sitting comfortably on my living room sofa with my iPad Pro and a cup of coffee.
Everything that I do in my morning routine is waiting for me in one place — the apps on my iPad. I’ve created a “Morning Routine” custom Home Page that contains all the apps that I use in my routine, in the order that I prefer to use them.
Using the apps as the basis for my morning routine has helped to build a consistent morning routine habit. There’s no friction of having to collect books, writing materials, or start up a computer. Everything I need is instantly available on my iPad.
The Overall Benefits of Using an App-Based Morning Routine
I find that doing a consistent morning routine provides many benefits for me:
• It orients me to my upcoming day and week.
• It prompts me to set my priorities for the day.
• It feeds me a steady stream of inspirational and helpful thoughts.
• It provides me with prompts to create new blog topics.
• It sets my mind in a positive direction and starts my day out well.
The Elements of My App Morning Routine
1. An Orientation to My Day and Week.
My first step in my morning routine is to review my calendar for the day and the week. It’s in the form of a larger widget on my iPad screen.
For my digital calendar, I use the free version of Fantastical. I’ve found that the free version provides all the features that I require without paying the high cost of a subscription.
I use the weekly view of my calendar. I can see at a glance any appointments or work blocks I have scheduled that day and for the rest of the week.
Next, I look at my task manager, Things. I can see what tasks I need to complete that day. It’s also a widget on my custom home screen.
2. Starting My Day with New and Productive Ideas.
Every day I work through a series of short readings to get my mind engaged.
• I start with the daily readings in two books, Daily Creative: Find Your Inspiration to Spark Creative Energy and Fight Burnout, by Todd Henry, and The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, by Ryan Holiday.
Both of these books are readily available through the Kindle widget on my iPad. When I’m done reading the page(s) for the daily reading, I advance to the next day’s page. It’s ready for me the next day when I start reading again.
• After my daily readings, I move on to the Readwise app. Every day, the app picks 15 random highlights I have made in books I’ve read. These were ideas that I thought were important.
I consider this one of the most valuable and useful services that I use and gladly pay the subscription price each year.
As I read through the highlights, the thoughts they prompt often inspire me to write a blog post on the topic. To catch the idea while it’s fresh, I have a Blog Idea shortcut on my home screen.
When I tap on the shortcut, it asks me for the name of the blog idea, and prompts me for my initial thoughts. Occasionally, this is only a line or two, but typically, I provide a basic outline of how I might write the post. This generates a blog idea template in Craft.
• Next, I advance to the Readwise Reader app. This app, now in Beta, combines the features of a typical RSS reader and subscription reader, a read-later app, and also automatically syncs highlights to the Readwise app.
As I scan through the feed, I can choose which articles to read, which to save for reading later, and which to delete. Instead of jumping around to several apps, I can do it all within Readwise Reader. It’s a game-changer.
3. Preparing and Planning My Day with Journaling Prompts
My next app is a shortcut to my daily entry in the DayOne journaling app. The shortcut opens my daily template in my basic journal.
My template contains topics or questions I respond to — What am I grateful for? What are my 3 tasks today? What is my priority today? How will my actions today show my character? What’s on my mind today?
I often use the iPad’s built-in dictation feature to dictate my answers into the template. I find this particularly useful when responding to the “What’s on my mind today?” section.
When I write, my writing tends to be careful and concise. When I speak, I tend to develop my thoughts more, and my thoughts are more wide-ranging and creative. See my recent blog post, Transforming Quarterly Reviews With Dictation: A Step-By-Step Process and Evaluation.
4. Shortcuts for Easily Accessing My Most Used Functions
I include several shortcuts on my Morning Routine home page to access functions I regularly use during my morning review.
As I wrote about earlier, I have a shortcut that generates a new blog idea template and captures it in Craft.
As I look through my task manager and calendar, and do my readings, I frequently think of new tasks I need to capture. I created an easy shortcut to create a new to-do in Things.
I keep track of the status of all of my blog posts with a Blog Project Status page in Craft. I regularly get an idea for a new blog post doing my morning routine, but frequently I also see a connection between what I read and a blog post I’m already planning to write.
I have a shortcut that takes me directly to my Blog Project Status page, and on that page are links to all of my blog idea templates. By using the shortcut, I can quickly jump to any blog post idea and add a quote or thought.
5. Apps to Keep Me Healthy
I regularly use two Health apps. I use the FoodNoms nutrition tracker to track calories for everything I eat while dieting (which is most of the time). I set a daily limit for calories, then stay under it.
The other health app I use is a shortcut to an Apple Pages document where I track my blood pressure every other day. It’s a table in Pages where I list the date and blood pressure for the day. It’s nothing fancy, but it does the job of providing a record when I go to visit my doctor.
Try an App-Based Morning Routine
If you haven’t used this approach, I’d suggest you try an app-based morning routine.
I think you’ll find that an app-based approach cuts out a lot of the friction of many morning routines that require you to access different resources located in different locations. Having everything lined up for you in one place makes a morning routine habit easy.
Your app-based morning routine probably won’t look like mine. While there might be some overlap (calendar, task manager), you’ll need to customize your morning routine to fit your needs and desires.
You might have different readings you want to do, different apps you choose to use, or entirely different activities you include in your routine. That’s fine — it needs to be your morning routine, not mine.
What if you’re not a morning person and don’t have the mental clarity to do a morning routine? Then make it an evening routine.
Instead of planning for that day, plan for the next day. Do your readings when you’re mentally alert and open to inspiration and new ideas. Use your evening routine to prepare and direct you for the next day.
For more information on my app-based routines and morning readings, see my blog posts A Morning Routine that Works – An App-Based Approach, and Morning Readings for Thoughts, Inspiration and Practical Life Advice.