When the morning and the mood are grey in autumn and winter, some people find it difficult to start the day. If you are also a night owl, the morning blues are pre-programmed. One of the causes is lack of sleep, because many people sleep too little or do not sleep well. Intensive sport in the evening, long hours at work, late-night media consumption, waking up at night, whether because of children, pets, the urge to urinate or brooding, make many people sleep badly. In addition, there are stressful morning routines, deadline pressure or completely overloaded mornings, e.g. healthy breakfast, then exercise or meditation, then to school with the children and then punctually and perfectly prepared to the workplace, with this and that being done quickly on the way there. Sometimes something is left over from the day before, the laundry still has to be hung up or the kitchen tidied up, so that in some households the to-do list in the morning is too long for this period of time, so that the stress already arises in the first hours of the day. Single parents, who also have to manage a morning with children all by themselves, people working shifts or in jobs with a glaring shortage of staff, for example in care or education, who already have to deal with a heavy workload in the working day, or carers who are still looking after relatives, are often hit particularly hard. Here, it is rather the context of life that provides ongoing stress, so that these people have to permanently juggle between stress and necessary rest, so that a quiet morning is almost impossible to organise.
Here it helps to reflect on the morning routine, i.e. where do you have time, where do you have to get busy, which may result in one or the other task that you no longer have to do in the morning, but perhaps the evening before, in the course of the day or perhaps at the weekend. Certain routines often make thinking and planning unnecessary, which can save time and energy. The ideal morning routine is the one that gives people a calm start to the day, which means enough time for personal hygiene, a good breakfast and something else that brings joy, such as reading, music, pets or a conversation at the breakfast table with the family. One should check one’s own routines for susceptibility to stress and, if possible, simplify everything that causes too much stress.