Why Morning Routines Work for Some, Not Everyone

You’ve tried the morning routine thing. You’ve read the books, watched the videos, set the alarm for 5:30am. You were going to meditate, journal, exercise, and plan your day—all before most people wake up. It worked for three days, maybe a week. Then you hit snooze, skipped a step, and the whole system collapsed.

The problem isn’t your discipline—it’s that you’re following a template designed for someone else’s life.

The Problem

Every productivity guru has the same origin story: they transformed their life by waking up early and following a structured morning routine. They meditate for twenty minutes, journal for ten, exercise for forty-five, read for thirty. By 8am, they’ve accomplished more than most people do all day.

You want that. You need that. Your mornings are chaotic—you wake up rushed, check your phone immediately, scramble to get ready, and start your workday already behind. A structured morning routine seems like the obvious solution.

But when you try to implement these routines, they feel impossible to sustain. You’re exhausted. You resent the alarm. You skip parts of the routine and feel guilty. Eventually, you abandon the whole thing and conclude that you’re just not a morning person, or you lack discipline, or you’re doing something fundamentally wrong.

The reality is more nuanced: morning routines are genuinely valuable for some people and actively counterproductive for others. The difference isn’t willpower—it’s chronotype, life circumstances, and what you actually need from your mornings.

Why this happens to remote workers

Remote workers face a particularly confusing situation with morning routines. Without a commute to provide natural structure, your day can bleed together. The advice says you need a morning routine to create boundaries and signal to your brain that work is starting.

Research suggests that rituals do help with psychological transitions—they give your brain a clear “this is starting now” signal. But the research doesn’t say those rituals need to happen at 5am, last two hours, or include the same activities as someone else’s routine.

Many people find that they’ve been trying to force themselves into a routine designed for someone with a different chronotype, family situation, and set of needs. A parent with young children can’t have the same morning as a single person. Someone whose brain works best at 10pm shouldn’t force themselves to do deep thinking at 6am. The routine that works for an extroverted gym enthusiast won’t work for an introverted reader.

What Most People Try

The aggressive early wake-up: You read that successful people wake up at 5am, so you set your alarm for 5am. You’re naturally someone who feels best sleeping from midnight to 8am, but you’re going to change that through sheer force of will.

The first few days, you’re running on motivation and novelty. Then you start feeling increasingly sleep-deprived. You’re groggy all morning, you crash in the afternoon, but you stay up late anyway because that’s when you finally feel alert. You’re now waking up early AND going to bed late, sleeping less than you need, wondering why you feel terrible.

This approach assumes chronotype is just habit, and early rising is objectively superior. But chronotype—whether you’re naturally a morning person or evening person—has a strong genetic component. You can shift it slightly, but forcing a dramatic change creates chronic sleep deprivation, which undermines every benefit the routine was supposed to provide.

The everything routine: If a twenty-minute morning routine is good, a ninety-minute routine must be better. You’re going to meditate, journal, exercise, read, plan your day, make a healthy breakfast, and review your goals. Every. Single. Morning.

This works until the first morning you wake up late, or you’re traveling, or you just don’t have ninety minutes. Then you face a choice: skip the whole routine or rush through it feeling stressed. Either way, you’ve failed at your routine before your day even starts.

The mental model here is that more disciplines equal more success. But what you’ve actually created is a fragile system with nine points of failure. Miss one component and the whole thing feels broken. The routine becomes a source of stress instead of stability.

The carbon copy approach: You find someone whose life you admire—a successful entrepreneur, author, or athlete. You read exactly what they do each morning and implement their exact routine. Same wake-up time, same activities, same order, same duration.

This ignores that their routine evolved to solve their specific challenges. The CEO who does morning exercise might be counteracting a sedentary job and lots of business meals. The writer who journals first thing might be clearing mental clutter before creative work. The athlete’s routine supports their training schedule.

You’re a remote software developer, or a freelance designer, or a customer service manager. Your challenges, energy patterns, and constraints are completely different. Their solution doesn’t map to your problem.

What Actually Helps

1. Design backward from your actual constraints

Start with what you actually need to happen in the morning and work backward. Do you need to get kids ready for school? Be at a desk by 9am? Take medication at a specific time? Have energy for afternoon meetings? Your routine must accommodate these non-negotiable constraints, not ignore them.

If you need to be functional by 9am and you naturally wake up feeling groggy, your routine should include time to ease into alertness—not high-intensity exercise at 6am. If you have thirty minutes before chaos starts, design a thirty-minute routine, not a sixty-minute routine you’ll constantly fail at.

How to start: Write down every actual constraint on your morning. When do you absolutely need to be somewhere or do something? How much sleep do you need to function well? What happens in your household that you can’t control? Design your routine in the space that remains, not in an imaginary world where you have unlimited time and no obligations.

Many people find that once they stop trying to force an ideal routine and instead design around reality, they actually maintain the routine consistently. A realistic thirty-minute routine you do every day beats an aspirational ninety-minute routine you abandon after a week.

2. Match the routine to your chronotype, not someone else’s

If you naturally wake up alert and energetic, front-load your demanding tasks. Meditation, planning, creative work—do them when your brain is freshest. If you wake up groggy and hit your stride later, your morning routine should be gentle and mechanical: simple tasks that don’t require much cognitive effort.

This isn’t about being lazy or undisciplined. Research suggests that chronotype affects everything from cognitive performance to willpower throughout the day. Fighting your chronotype costs energy. Working with it preserves energy for things that matter.

For early chronotypes: Use your morning clarity for high-value activities. Exercise, deep work, strategic planning—whatever requires your best thinking. Keep evenings simple and wind down early.

For late chronotypes: Use mornings for routine maintenance that doesn’t require peak performance. Make coffee, shower, review your calendar, handle simple emails. Save demanding work for late morning or afternoon when you’re actually sharp.

The goal is to stop treating your chronotype as a character flaw and start treating it as data about when you work best.

3. Build minimum viable routines with strategic expansion

Instead of implementing a complete routine on day one, start with one simple behavior that signals “morning is starting.” Make coffee in a specific way. Step outside for two minutes. Do three minutes of stretching. Something small enough that you can do it even on your worst morning.

Once that single behavior is automatic—you do it without deciding to do it—add one more small behavior. Not five more. One. Let that become automatic before adding the next piece. You’re building a routine through accretion, not installation.

This approach feels slow compared to the dramatic transformation narrative. But many people find they’re still doing their gradually-built routine six months later, while the all-at-once routines collapsed in two weeks. Consistency over time beats intensity for a short period.

The strategic part: expand your routine by adding the things that solve your actual problems, not the things that are supposed to be good for you. If you’re constantly running late, add a time buffer. If you start work feeling scattered, add five minutes of planning. If you crash mid-afternoon, add breakfast. Let your routine evolve to address what’s actually not working.

The Takeaway

Morning routines work when they’re designed for your chronotype, your constraints, and your actual needs—not copied from someone else’s life. Start with what you can realistically do, build from there, and remember that a simple routine you maintain beats an elaborate routine you abandon. The goal isn’t to become a different person; it’s to create a smoother start to the day you actually have.