Morningmaxxing: The Case for Keeping Our Mornings to Ourselves
Vilhelm Hammershøi, A Room in the Artist's Home, 1901, oil on canvas. Copenhagen, National Gallery of Denmark.
Lately, I’ve been setting my alarm an hour earlier than usual. I stretch, play some jazzy morning music and spend a little more time making, and really enjoying, a proper breakfast. This is a big change from my usual roll-out-of-bed-and-rush-around-for-half-an-hour routine that somehow always leaves me six minutes late to work. I call this new routine my ritual—reframing it as something that sounds more spiritually grounded. I even light a palo santo stick occasionally.
As it turns out, I did not invent the morning ritual; in fact, it’s been around for quite some time. Benjamin Franklin had a 5am wake up call to set intentions for the day before reading and studying. In his 1854 book Walden, Henry David Thoreau discussed plunging straight into a morning swim. Outlets like Forbes, Vogue and The New York Times continue to fuel our fascination in other people’s morning routines, with columns like The Sunday Routine and articles called 5 Morning Habits Of Highly Successful People. The obsession has spread online, too, with videos of influencers reciting morning affirmations, layering serums, journaling about their goals, meditating, practicing yoga and whisking the perfect foamy matcha latte—all before 8am.
Of course, research shows morning routines are good for us; they can ease stress, increase energy and improve productivity. As much as I might yearn for that extra hour of sleep, I’ll admit that my morning ritual has me feeling more energy and balance. My concern, rather, has to do with the online aestheticization of it all: are these carefully choreographed and documented regimens actually a disguised version of productivity culture, repackaging moments of privacy and groundedness back to us in an idealized format? Does my ritual need to be productive or, if anything, can it be a form of protest against productivity?
Let’s take this recently viral video from fitness influencer Ashton Hall as an example. Hall’s morning routine begins before 4am and details, among other things:
4:04am: Push-ups on the balcony
4:17am: Four minutes of contemplating
5:49am: Dunking his entire face in a bowl of ice water
6:38am: Running really fast
8:45am: Rubbing a banana peel on his face
This video is the most extreme example of the type of morning routine content I am interested in, but certainly highlights the contradictory nature of this intersection of wellness and hustle-driven creative culture. Surely, the would-be benefits of a morning routine are offset by Hall’s meticulously elaborate and strict regimen.
Videos like Hall’s seem to imply that the early hours before work need to be maximized— time-blocked, even—in the pursuit of becoming our best, most successful selves. Alexandra Schwartz says in her article, Improving Ourselves to Death, “we are being sold on the need to upgrade all parts of ourselves, all at once, including parts that we did not previously know needed upgrading.” In a culture obsessed with self-optimization, I would argue that we don’t need to harness and systemize the hours before we step out into the world; in fact, those moments should remain private. To me, that is the real form of protest in our current goal oriented, accomplishment driven, self-improvement culture—to safeguard a morning ritual that’s just for you.
Going back to my ritual, I like to treat my mundane morning as sacred, a way to reclaim a part of my day that doesn’t need to be idealized, commodified online or reduced to a checklist. So no, I’m not claiming that my morning ritual will transform you into your most successful self—but I’m also not suggesting you need to wake up at 3:52am and scrub your face with a banana peel either.