A Morning Routine for Dads Who Work Full Time
Snooze, cold coffee in the car and yelling about shoes is no way to start the day. This simple morning routine is for dads who work full time and still want their kids to get the best version of them.
By Your Bro · · Self Improvement
Remember Jingle All the Way? Arnold plays Howard Langston, a mattress salesman who's so buried in work that he misses his son's karate ceremony, and then spends all of Christmas Eve punching his way through a mall trying to buy a Turbo Man doll to make up for it. It's a goofy movie, but every working dad I know laughs a little too hard at it, because we've all been Howard at some point. You love your kids, you're working your tail off for them, and somehow they're still getting the leftovers of you.
Most of that gets decided before 8 AM. If your mornings are a blur of snoozing the alarm 3 times, chugging coffee in the car and barking at everybody to find their shoes, you're starting every day already behind, and the rest of the day just follows that lead. So if you're a dad with a full time job and you feel like you're running on fumes, this is the morning routine I'd hand you. None of it requires a life coach or a $400 cold plunge.
Your morning actually starts the night before
You can't win a 5:30 AM wake up if you went to bed at 1 AM with your phone 6 inches from your face. I know the late night scroll feels like the only time you get to yourself, but it's stealing from the guy who has to get up tomorrow. I broke down how to kick that habit in how to stop scrolling in bed at night, and it's the first thing I'd fix. Pick a bedtime that gets you 7 hours and charge the phone in the kitchen, and while you're at it, lay your gym clothes out on the dresser so there's nothing to think about when the alarm goes off.
Get up before the house does
This is the big one. If the first sound you hear every morning is a kid yelling or the dog whining to go out, you're reacting from the second your feet hit the floor. Setting the alarm 45 minutes before everybody else wakes up gives you a little window that belongs to you, and for a lot of dads it's the only part of the day nobody else has a claim on. Put the alarm across the room so you have to get up to shut it off. Pro tip: don't negotiate with yourself in bed, because the warm blanket wins that argument every single time.
Move your body before you check your email
You don't need a 90 minute bodybuilding split. 20 to 30 minutes of pushups, squats, kettlebell swings or a brisk walk around the block will wake you up better than a second cup of coffee. The point is that you showed up for yourself before work had a chance to grab you. I've written before that the dad bod hype is a lie, and I stand by it. Your kids need a father with the energy to wrestle on the living room floor and the health to walk his daughter down the aisle someday, and that doesn't happen by accident when you're sitting at a desk 9 hours a day.
Take 10 minutes to plan your day
Before the inbox opens, grab a notebook and write down the 1 or 2 things that have to get done today, at work and at home. Maybe it's the proposal your boss is waiting on, or maybe it's actually making it to your son's practice on time for once. When you decide it early, the day has a harder time pushing it aside. Most men let their calendars run their lives and then wonder where the week went. I went deep on this in why your time is bigger than money, and the short version is that you can always make more money but you're never getting Tuesday back.
Give your kids the first good version of you
When the kids come stumbling into the kitchen, put the phone face down and be there. Make the eggs, ask your daughter what she's nervous about at school, let your son tell you the whole plot of whatever cartoon he watched yesterday. It's usually 15 or 20 minutes, and it's worth more to them than you think. Years from now your kids won't have a clue what was in your inbox that week, but they'll remember whether Dad looked at them over breakfast. And give your wife a real kiss on the way out the door, not the half-hearted peck on the side of the head while you're hunting for your keys. She notices.
Keep it small enough to survive a bad week
This is where most guys blow it. They read something like this, get fired up and build a 2 hour morning routine with journaling, meditation, a 5 mile run and a smoothie with 14 ingredients. It lasts until Thursday. Then the baby gets sick, you're up at 3 AM and the whole thing collapses, and you feel like a failure on top of being tired. Start with the wake up time and the workout. Once those are automatic, add the planning, and so on. On the bad days, do the smallest version (hint: 10 pushups and a cup of coffee before the house wakes up still counts) and pick it back up tomorrow.
The reason this works is that your brain gets good at whatever you keep doing, which is something I got into in a Weekly Bro Chat about what your brain is practicing. Every morning you hit snooze, you're practicing being the guy who hits snooze. Every morning you get up and move, you're practicing being a man who keeps his word to himself, and your kids are watching which one you practice.
If you want a plan that takes the guesswork out of it, The Strong Men System walks you through building habits and discipline that a man with a family and a full time job can actually keep up. Set the alarm for tomorrow before you close this tab.