10 Better Ways To Start Your Morning Than Scrolling On Your Phone

It’s in these sacred golden moments, before you remember who or where you are, that you reach. Your hand fumbles around for that extra rectangular appendage, perhaps at first to silence your alarm, but how easy it is, phone already in hand, to get sucked into its tantalizing virtual promises of stimulation, interaction, and distraction. 

Before you know it, you’ve thrown away 30 minutes to an hour of your precious morning scrolling, watching, replying, already shrinking your finite resources of attention and executive function first thing. 

Then maybe you stumble across a TikTok about someone’s morning routine, and it occurs to you that you haven’t even met your own yet. This isn’t about demonizing your phone. It’s about giving yourself back those golden minutes of the day, before the timeline hijacks your attention, so that you can start the day with the right momentum before your energy gets rerouted into a hundred fragments of someone else’s life. Here are ten better ways to start your mornings than scrolling through your phone.

Morning Meditation

Think of it like a secret second sleep, minus the actual sleeping part. But you do get to be cozy for longer! Regular meditation can make you more present, less reactive, and more resilient, easing anxiety and depression by breaking cyclesof rumination. In an 8-week study of beginner meditators, just 13 minutes of daily guided meditation significantly reduced negative emotions like anxiety and fatigue, while improving attention and memory. 

Although the best meditation time is whenever you’ll actually do it, morning sessions uniquely set the day’s tone, making you calmer, clearer, and more intentional. Plus, research shows morning meditators stick with the habit longer. You don’t even have to get out of bed to do a quick ten-minute session that will improve the rest of your day. There are tons of different types of meditation, but I recommend trying mindfulness if you’re trying to reduce stress and negative emotions, or mantra-based meditation to help you rewire unhelpful thoughts.  

Read One Chapter

Did you know that 33% of American high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives? For college grads, it’s even worse; 42% never crack open another book after graduation. Last year, 80% of U.S. families didn’t buy or read a single book, and 70% of American adults haven’t stepped foot in a bookstore in over five years. Don’t become a statistic. Read! Read non-fiction, sci-fi, autobiographies, romance novels, or the classics, whatever ignites your imagination. In an era of constant dopamine hits and bite-sized content, it’s hard to quiet your mind enough to read. But that’s why it matters—especially because we know that our attention spans have shrunk dramatically over the past twenty years, from 2 minutes 30 seconds, down to just 45 seconds. The reason why? A bombardment of information on our screens has reduced our ability to focus.

Screen use negatively affects attention and executive function, while reading is a mentally stimulating activity that keeps your brain healthy and reduces your risk of developing dementia. I like to set a simple goal—10 pages, or one chapter—first thing in the morning. It shifts my brain into deep focus mode. I walk away feeling like I’ve already accomplished something significant, which primes me for a deeply focused, productive day. The careful focus, reading comprehension, visualization, and interpretation of symbolism make it easier for me to achieve flow state, so that I’m less distracted and fully engaged in the tasks I have to get done that day. 

Cathartic Journaling

Journaling, combined with meditation, can be incredibly cathartic and freeing. Your mind isn’t meant to be a storage unit, hoarding all of its ruminatory traumas, worries, or regrets. Even daydreaming can become maladaptive. Rather than burdening yourself with these thoughts all day, try to put them to pen and paper. You’d be surprised what a difference five to ten minutes of journaling can make to your psyche. What was once a cluttered, jumbled mess of chaos can become a temple of peace and solitude. Studies show expressive journaling can significantly reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, lower stress, and even boost immune system function. 

Write about whatever you like, but if a thought, worry, or idea is pulling you out of the present, try writing it down: what it is, how it makes you feel, and what you fear will happen. Putting it to paper gives your mind permission to let it go, knowing it’s safely bookmarked for later. You don’t have to process it all right now; you just need to write it down. That act in itself can feel like a huge release. This is expressive journaling, which is ideal when you’re overwhelmed or dealing with a lot of stress. But other styles offer different benefits. Gratitude journaling to cultivate optimism. Goal setting to boost motivation and productivity. Stream of consciousness journaling to clear a cluttered mind.

Go for a Walk

A morning without a walk is like a morning without coffee: incomplete, unambitious, utterly distasteful. Whether you crave quiet stillness or want to stroll to the soundtrack of your morning playlist, walking is an ideal low-impact exercise, especially for those of us glued to a desk all day. A brisk 30-minute walk in the morning burns extra calories for weight management, and taking in the fresh air, natural beauty of your surroundings, and morning sunlight helps regulate your nervous system and circadian rhythm so you get more restful sleep, reduce stress, and improve your mood. 

I think of starting the day with movement as activity momentum. And that golden 10,000-step number? Turns out it really could be the magic cure. Studies show that walking about 10,000 steps a day significantly reduces your risk of dementia, 13 types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes. Clocking in an easy 5000 steps first thing in the morning makes you feel accomplished, energized, and more inclined to keep the physical activity going throughout the day. Start with a short walk, and build up your steps over time. If you want something more strenuous, you can incorporate hills, walk faster, or carry weights (you can be discreet with ankle or wrist weights).

Anecdotes like this young 30-year-old man on the r/getdisciplined subreddit are equally compelling, documenting how a simple morning walk transformed their aimless, procrastination-laden life with a simple new year resolution to walk first thing in the morning. What started as a modest experiment became sacred, and the benefits began to snowball. As they say, how you do anything is how you do everything. The walk became a small, consistent win. The kind that’s addictive. The snooze button, once such an alluring obstacle to productivity, lost its power, and mornings became exciting. Everything began to improve—sleep, mood, focus, mindset, even creative breakthroughs.

Get a Workout In

Not all of us are walkers. Maybe you’re rougher around the edges and need some real adrenaline-pumping cardio or strength training that chisels those abs and melts away those love handles to feel something. If so, don’t rub it in, but we’re all jealous of you. I oscillate between “There’s no way I’m getting out of this chair today” and “I should run a marathon, shouldn’t I?” But back to you, madwoman. 

Morning exercise is a great distraction when first building the no-screens habit. All that pent-up energy has to go somewhere. Why not sublimate it into an activity that simultaneously helps you achieve your desired physique? Regular morning exercise reduces fatigue and improves energy, so you might find that after your morning workout, you have even more energy and focus. While there’s nothing necessarily magic about morning exercise, it does have a few powerful domino effects on your health. 

A 2018 study showed that morning exercisers made healthier food choices throughout the day. Other research has demonstrated that fasted morning exercise increases 24-hour fat oxidation in women. In layman’s terms: while you certainly don’t need to worry too much about when you exercise or whether you eat first, there are established benefits to exercising first thing in the morning, before eating, especially for body composition. Fasted morning exercise switches your body’s preferred fuel source to fat rather than carbs, not just during exercise, but in the hours that follow, too. 

Delay Your Morning Coffee & Bask in the Sun

It took me an embarrassing 20-something years to realize that the sun isn’t just some marvelous sky lamp. It plays a biologically impactful role on your circadian rhythm and hormones. Consequently, it impacts your sleep, mood, energy, and metabolism. Huberman heads will know full well just how crucial early sunlight exposure is the first thing in the morning for your circadian rhythm and serotonin production. 

Getting raw, sunglass-less sunlight in your eyes within the first 30 to 60 minutes of waking sends signals through your retinal ganglion cells that it’s daytime, which sends signals to your brain that it’s time to be alert and energized. It also helps trigger the natural release of melatonin later in the evening, so you get sleepy when it’s dark and can fall asleep more easily. If you’re a night owl or a poor sleeper, you might not need a fancy supplement stack; you probably just need morning sunlight. (Disclaimer: Do not look directly at the sun; just look around the sky.)

If you want to reach super saiyan levels of circadian rhythm optimization, you should try delaying your caffeine intake by 90 to 120 minutes to allow the leftover adenosine (a chemical that makes you feel sleepy) to clear out. If you prematurely drink caffeine, it can mask adenosine, only for it to rebound in the form of an afternoon crash. This is all basically a giant biological excuse to lounge out in the sun and take in your surroundings before the Lorelai Gilmore coffee jitters get to you. Feel the gentle embrace of the sun’s heat caressing your skin. Lay by the pool if you have one. Romanticize your morning. 

Enjoy a Slow, Intentional Breakfast

Something sorely lacking in most American morning routines is the art of romanticizing your life. The always-on-the-go hustle culture, where we’re always plugged in and shoving food in our mouths as we run out the door, is such an unkind way to treat ourselves. It signals you don’t value your time, nourishment, or pleasure. In this sense, we could benefit from taking a page out of the French way of life: to slow down. Take your time to plan your meals. Delight in the ritual of cooking, plating with intention, prioritizing the beauty of the dish just as much as the taste. 

Indulge your senses by eating slowly and mindfully, free from the distraction of screens. The benefits of mindful eating are kind of goated, from increasing satiety and reducing emotional eating to promoting weight management, better digestion, and preventing overeating. One study even found that when people were served more artfully plated dishes that prioritized aesthetic presentation, diners rated the dish’s taste and the individual components as tasting better, resulting in greater enjoyment of the meal, despite identical ingredients. So, eat out of your favorite plateware. Make your own refined dish at a pottery class. Plate up your meal beautifully and intentionally. Set the ambiance. Pay careful attention to the sights, sounds, textures, aromas, and flavors of your food. Presentation and presence matter. 

When I stopped being hostage to my phone, one of the first miraculous creative energies to resurge was my lust for cooking and baking. Suddenly, all of these experimental recipes were coming to me, and I felt genuine zeal about experimenting in the kitchen again. Food cooked with love and intention just tastes better.

Do a Creative Writing Prompt or Write Affirmations

Let me preface this point by adding that I know better than anyone how alluring the temptation is to jot down a rugged (and kind of threatening) to-do list that lurks over you like a thunderstorm. If you’re like me and get possessed by the procrastination gods, might I suggest you start your day with something a little less bewildering? Before jumping into the formidable stuff, write something playful or affirming. Pick a creative writing prompt at random, set a timer, and get lost in your own imagination. You’d be surprised what kind of happy accident epiphanies you can stumble on when you put your back into it. I like to think of it as priming my mind before demanding deep focus on cognitively demanding tasks. 

Alternatively (and especially if you need a confidence boost or reassurance), you can try affirmations. It might feel like trite woo-woo nonsense at first. Good; that’s part of the process. Do it anyway. Research is on the affirmations’ side, not on your pessimistic skepticism. A study at the University of Pennsylvania established that repeating self-affirmations produces real physical changes in brain regions associated with self-processing, effectively changing how people view themselves. 

By changing their self-perception to a positive one, this had a positive effect on people’s behavior. They’re not magic. Just repeating a phrase like “I am successful” to yourself every day won’t instantly change your circumstances without action to back them up. But they do actively shift how you see yourself, which has the domino effect of shaping what actions you believe are possible. Affirmations work best when they align with your values and are repeated consistently. 

Put Yourself Together, Even if You Work From Home

This is a life hack I’ve only recently internalized. As much as I know what a difference presentation can make on self perception, such as perceived confidence, at the end (or should I say beginning) of the day, it’s difficult to convince yourself putting all your good foundation to waste on a work from home day where virtually no one will see you is a good use of time or resources. Boy, was I wrong. It makes all the difference. Intuitively, I should know that. We have an entire cognitive bias dubbed The Attractiveness Halo Effect to describe the phenomenon of making a bunch of unearned positive associations with people who have other positive attributes, such as being attractive and looking put together. 

Simply looking good, or doing your best to look as good as you can, instantly convinces the people around you that you’re more intelligent, trustworthy, happier, more sociable (the list goes on) without any other information other than your appearance. If that’s true, why wouldn’t the same laws apply to your perception of yourself? Don’t make excuses. We’re human, so we think hot people are competent and disheveled people don’t have their lives sorted out. 

When you roll out of bed, hair unbrushed, bare-faced, still wearing your pajamas from the night before, you’re subconsciously signaling to your brain two things—incompetence and apathy. Not exactly giving go-getter energy. If you don’t believe me, run an experiment. Treat your morning routine like you would if you were going out somewhere. Not necessarily to a fancy event, but an outing worth primping for. Now that you’ve dressed for the occasion, see how you feel and how the rest of your day goes. I guarantee you’ll be hit with a boost of confidence, a greater belief in yourself, a more diligent work ethic, and greater appreciation for your time. If you look like someone who respects herself and has her life together, your brain starts to believe it. Just that act in itself is conscientiousness manifest—and that’s hot.

Set Your Intention for the Day

That brings me to the final, and perhaps most important, aspect of your morning routine: attitude. What sort of day do you plan on having? How do you want to conduct yourself while executing your agenda? In work meetings and social interactions? Few of us intend to get swallowed up by habitual self-sabotage like procrastination, excessive screen time, laziness, or negative thinking, but it happens when we move through the day on autopilot. 

If we put more intention into our days from the outset, we might be more empowered to make better decisions. Whether you say it out loud, write it down, or whisper it into your matcha is up to you, but setting a clear intention will anchor you and keep you on track. Think of it as manifesting your day if you're into that. Just a few seconds of clarity can help you act in alignment with your goals rather than your impulses. It’s a gentle psychic reminder to stay on track, that you have a bigger overarching mission.

Closing Thoughts

Try one or a few or all of these if you’re feeling ambitious. I guarantee they’ll serve you better than scrolling ever could. May your mornings be slow, romantic, healing, and free from the doom scroll.