Change these 2 morning habits to write better content

Is your morning routine helping or hurting your writing? In this post, I'm sharing 2 daily habits that I eliminated from my mornings, which actually resulted in better writing habits! If you want to improve your content creation for social media, email, blog, etc., or simply want to adopt some healthy habits of successful people, this blog is for you.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. VIDEO: Change these 2 morning habits to write better content
3. Habit #1: Checking email
4. Habit #2: Scrolling social media
5. Do THIS instead
6. Recommended resources
7. Let's take action
8. Share this post

INTRO

Morning routines are all the rage and business gurus everywhere are sharing their step-by-step system to optimize the heck out of your day for maximum productivity and business success. While I do happen to believe there's power in how you choose to begin your day, don't leave yet, this is not going to be a guide to meditation and lemon water. In fact, in this blog, I'm going to be sharing two habits that I ditched from my morning routine that has set me up to write better content. 

Read on for the changes you can make in your morning routine:

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VIDEO: Change these 2 morning habits to write better content

Habit #1: Checking email

Okay. The first habit that I have nixed from my morning routine that has resulted in me writing better content is checking email first thing in the morning. Now for reference, I didn't just use to check email, email was a major focus of my morning routine. I would pretty much check email right away before anything else, sometimes before I got out of bed. Then whatever materialized there would dictate how I started my day. 

I've analyzed this a bit and it definitely has its origins in grad school culture and a lot of the norms that I sort of absorbed during my time there. Here's the issue with this. When you check your email first thing in the morning, it automatically introduces new demands onto your to-do list. It imposes other people's agendas and other people's sense of urgency, which as we know, urgency is not the same thing as importance. 

The issue with this when it comes to generating content is, first of all, a practical consideration. You just might not get to your own writing because you're so busy knocking off these other tasks that other people have delivered to you. Creatively, you might find that you're just kind of zapped of all your creative juice. You don't have as much energy to bring to the content that you're supposed to be creating. Even hours later when you sit down to write, you might find that you open up that Google Doc and there's just not much there. 

So over time, I have gradually worked toward a practice of setting set times in my schedule to check email rather than just keeping my email tab open. If you've been in the habit of checking email, first thing, I think a good first step is to delay the start of email in your day. Even just a little extra space in your morning gives your own ideas time to bubble up to the surface, and you'll be much more likely to carry those forward with you into your day. 

Habit #2: Scrolling social media

The second morning habit that I have ditched and become a better content creator in the process is scrolling social media. Now hear me out, I'm not hating on social media. I think there is real value in what's possible when we open up those little apps. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to creating content for our businesses, starting the day, by scrolling, social media really can undermine our efforts in at least a few different ways. For one thing, similar to checking email first thing in the morning, opening up a social media app can actually have the effect of creating new tasks for you to tackle before you've even rolled out of bed. 

Maybe you open Instagram without any goal or objective, and suddenly you are frantically responding to dms or comments and feeling behind the power curve, and you haven't even started your day yet. You also run the risk of disappearing down a series of rabbit holes, especially when your kind of just mindlessly scrolling, which again, I think mindless scrolling has its time and place. When you start your day this way, there's a decent chance that you'll suddenly come up for air and 30 minutes have passed and you have no idea where that time went. 

Finally, and importantly, scrolling social media first thing in the morning has the potential to cram your brain with other people's thoughts. While that might seem on the face of things like a source of inspiration, in my experience, it actually can undermine your clarity and your sense of confidence in your own ideas. This can lead to avoiding your writing projects altogether. That is the last thing we want. 

Simply put, the main issue that I see with starting your morning with social media is that you don't really know what you're going to get when you open up one of those little apps. While that might not matter so much, on a lazy Saturday, if it happens to be a day where you've got lots of other things pulling at your time, including the list of content that you need to create for your business, you might decide that cost is just too high. That's what I decided, and that's why these are two habits I've ditched from my morning routine. 

Do THIS instead

Now, in case you're thinking, "Well, I don't have time to sit down to a formal writing session most days. Does that mean I can't check social media or email until I've done that?"

Not at all.

In fact, I'm going to give you a really easy tip that can help address the very problem I've been talking about here. 

All you have to do is give yourself about five minutes first thing in the morning to do a brain dump right there on the notes app of your phone. Set a timer and put down all the ideas, loose ends, questions, notes to yourself that you want to explore further, and anything that you want to make sure you capture. We always wake up and there's just kind of, little confetti percolating in our brains. You want to capture that.  

If you can do that before you open up your Gmail app or Instagram or TikTok or whatever other social media you may use, you will be so far ahead of the game. You'll be much more likely to carry all that goodness with you so that it's there and accessible when you sit down to write. 

Recommended resources

Want to explore more ways to write better content? Check out these blog posts:

• Don't write a word of copy until you're clear on THIS
• 5 website copy space-wasters
• 3 sneaky places to find website copy inspiration
• How to use words to help your clients feel seen
• 3 places your copy could be more specific

Let's take action!

Ready to implement what you learned in this post? I like your style!

1. Choose 1 of the habits in this post and test it out for yourself.
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