How to Create a Morning Routine That Actually Works for You (Especially if You Have ADHD)
How to Create a Morning Routine That Actually Works for You (Especially if You Have ADHD)
Let’s be real, morning routines get a lot of hype. Your feed is probably full of perfectly lit early 5am wakeups, green smoothies, and 10-step rituals that promise to change your life. But if you’re like most of my clients (and me), that kind of routine just doesn’t work. Maybe you keep up with it for a day or two, but it ends up forgotten.
Building a morning routine is not about perfection. It’s about finding a rhythm that fits your actual life, especially if you're working with an ADHD brain.
I’m sharing how to create a morning routine that works for you, even if you’ve never been a “routine person.” These are the same strategies I use with coaching clients who want more ease and less pressure to do mornings "right."
Rethink the Word “Routine”
The word “routine” can bring up a lot of feelings and emotions: guilt, failure, frustration. Especially if you’ve been trying to incorporate “routines” and they haven’t been working for you.
So let’s reframe it. If that word doesn’t sit right with you, call it something else. Morning flow, rhythm, groove, formula—whatever feels more supportive and less rigid. The words you use matter because it shifts how your brain processes it.
Why Most Routines Don’t Stick
You’re not broken if you struggle to keep a routine going. Here’s what usually gets in the way:
All-or-nothing thinking or perfectionism (“"If I can't do all 7 parts of my routine, I might as well not do any of it)
Relying too much on willpower (“I should be able to just do it.”)
External pressure to do it a certain way (“I saw someone on Instagram say a cold shower is the best way to start the day.”)
Lack of dopamine or reward (“I don’t actually want to do this.”)
Negative self-talk and shame when things slip (“I can never keep up with a routine. I always fail.”)
Sound familiar? The truth is, creating routines that you actually stick to start with flexibility and kindness, not strict rules or unrealistic goals.
The Goldilocks Formula: Structure + Flexibility
Your brain craves both structure and freedom. That’s why the key to morning routines for ADHD is building in choice. I often recommend a “menu method,” where you choose from categories like:
Something physical (ex. 5 minute stretch or going for a walk)
Something that gets your brain going (ex. playing the NYT puzzles or reading)
Something to help you plan your day (ex. Looking at your calendar or doing a braindump)
A small task that builds momentum (watering your plants or putting your coffee mug in the dishwasher)
And each of those can take anywhere from one minute to one hour—whatever works today.
You Don’t Need to Be Perfectly Consistent
Here’s my controversial take: consistency doesn’t mean doing the same thing every single day. Consistency is coming back after you’ve skipped it. Life is going to interrupt your plans. That’s not failure—that’s reality. What matters is how you return.
Make Your Routines ADHD-Friendly
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, has four laws of behavior change—make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. These are great starting points. But I’d add: make it flexible. Morning routines for ADHD work best when you build them around your life, your energy, and your values.
Start small. Pick one thing. Give yourself credit. And remember: how to create routines that work for you is less about what you’re doing and more about how it feels to do it.
Want Support?
If this resonates, I’d love to meet you and see if working together would be a good fit. We’ll create realistic, ADHD-friendly routines that actually stick because they’re built for your real life.
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Sarah Lovell (00:02)
Everyone talks about morning routines. And if your algorithm looks like mine, you're seeing curated mornings and life hacks to start your day the perfect way. And that's just not realistic. If you want your morning to feel better and actually fit your life, you do not need a perfect morning routine. Today, we're talking about how to create flexible
ADHD-friendly morning rhythms, flows, or formulas that actually work with your energy, mood, and your life. Whether you love or hate mornings, this episode is for you.
As an executive function coach, I hear the word routine a lot, and it might be surprising to you, but this is something that people often come to me asking for while simultaneously telling me they do not like routines. ⁓ So routine is an interesting word. Like when I hear routine, I immediately think of structure. And...
⁓ This is something that our brains crave and push up against. Your brain wants a mixture of structure and flexibility. And I think sometimes when people come to me saying, I want a new morning routine, I need an evening routine, my self-care routine is non-existent, I don't have routines at work, I think what they're looking for
is the comfort or ease that comes with knowing a plan or having options, like not feeling like you're flying by the seat of your pants all the time. And so it's really, really common that people want a routine but don't actually want to follow it.
or you crave a routine, but you hate routine. So if that's you, you are not alone. Our brains are weird in that they want something and then once we get it or once we try it, they're like, no, that isn't actually what I was looking for. And I think the challenge with routines is this all or nothing thinking, this perfectionism that can pop up with it. ⁓ And so,
I want you to know you do not need a routine. Routines do not work for everyone. You need and deserve systems that fit into your life and have what I would consider the Goldilocks effect of structure and flexibility. Some days there's more structure, some days there's more flexibility. And that is what we're talking about today.
I'm gonna use the word routine a lot, but I want you to know that it's not the definition that maybe you've heard or that your brain auto-populates. ⁓ So, because routines are often too rigid for most people. ⁓ And so, I think it's really important. We're gonna talk about this today, but like reframing what our brain thinks about when we hear the word routine.
possibly even using a different word. So today I'm gonna be mostly talking about morning routines. ⁓ But like I said, there's all sorts of different routines that we have during our day. But for the simplicity of a 20 minute episode, I'm gonna talk about mornings. And so before I jump in, I want you to think about what does your current morning look
What parts of it work for you and feel good? Are there any parts that feel unaligned, rushed, or like they could use a gentle shift? And if you made a small, realistic change to your morning, how would it benefit the rest of your day? What would that positive ripple effect be? And like I said at the very beginning, whether you love or hate mornings,
My goal for you this episode is to have a new perspective on how you think about your morning and some realistic small tweaks that you can make to help you feel better about starting your day. And everything I talk about today applies to any other routine that is on your radar. ⁓ And before we jump in today to talk about how to create or shift
these routines. ⁓ If what I talk about today on the episode resonates with you, if you're like, my goodness, I want more support around this. I want to create and work on a new morning or a different routine. I am leading a workshop in my coaching membership, Stuck to Started, on June 25th, and it is all about creating realistic routines that fit into your life.
⁓ So if that's something that's of interest, if you want more support around this, information, the link is in the show notes to join the membership and come to that live workshop. So the first thing I want you to know about routines is that you do not need to call it a routine. So if you hear that word and you have like an instant cringe or these negative thoughts come up,
I had a client one time say, when I hear the word routine, I immediately think of failure. I want you to know that you can use a different word. And you've heard me talk about this before. The words that you use really matter. And so if your brain, if you know that you like more flexibility, your brain craves more flexibility, maybe you call it your morning flow, your morning formula. ⁓
I have someone who calls it the morning groove, right? You can call it something different. If you're somebody who leans a little bit more on the structure side, maybe you call it a plan, a procedure, a method. Or if you're like, Sarah, routine is fine with me, that's fine. ⁓ But I just want you to know that truly can make a big difference. Using a different word shifts how your brain thinks and processes and maybe even the emotions that come up.
So that's step one. Give it a different word and different name if that's helpful for you. The other thing that I want to talk about is that the goal of a routine is for it to fit into your life. You're not trying to fit around it. And that is super important, especially because we are fed
media and content around what things should look like and hacks that, you know, optimize productivity and the best morning routine for XYZ. And like, if those fit your life, great, go for that. But I'm guessing many of us have very chaotic, busy, constantly changing lives. And so that's why
having a morning routine that fits for what's going on in your life is really important. And this is where that flexibility comes in. And I'm gonna be talking about this a little bit later, but, and that's partially why I like using a different word is because when I think of routine, I think of some structure with lots of good flexibility and choice. And so some the, some,
of the reasons that routines and habits don't stick are because of this external should. ⁓ I should do, I should be able to do this. It needs to look a certain way, right? Like this, this pressure. And so if your motivation for changing your morning routine or mixing something new in is external, if it's extrinsic motivation,
Yes, we do need some of that, but it's more important that it's coming from you internally, that like you're connecting with the why behind making a change or the why, the reason that you want to, you know, have a quiet time in the morning to, you know, sit and journal or meditate or the why for moving or exercising in the morning or the why for prepping your lunch.
whatever that is, whatever the thing is that you wanna mix into your morning. Another challenge I often see pop up with people is this over-reliance on willpower. so saying like, well, I just need to do it. I just need to do it. ⁓ And willpower is definitely part of life, but it is a limited resource.
And so if you're only relying on, well, I just need to hold myself to it. I just need to hold myself accountable. You need other supports and resources and some of the tools that I'm going to talk about today to support you. It cannot just be a willpower thing. That doesn't work for most people.
The other reason that many routines and habits don't stick is because there isn't enough dopamine or reward. And so it has to be something that you actually enjoy or that you get a benefit from. And if it's something that you need to do and it doesn't necessarily give you dopamine, how can you add in or pair dopamine things into that task? That is super important.
And then oftentimes I talk about with clients this shame, guilt and negative self-talk loop that pops up when they think about a morning routine or trying to get back into a routine. ⁓ Because there's a lot of pressure on, like I said, that it needs to look a certain way or that there needs to be, that you need to be consistent. And that's not true. I'm going to talk about consistency in a second. ⁓
but it's really important that you give yourself credit, you practice that positive self-talk and reassuring yourself like, yeah, it's hard to do these things. I'm doing hard things. And so practicing that kindness with yourself is super, super, super important. Most people cannot bully themselves into doing something. It doesn't feel good and it's not sustainable. So.
I have a controversial opinion that I'm about to share on being consistent. ⁓ I don't think you need to be consistent with your habits or with your routines. And I know that is the definition of routine and habit, like something you do consistently, ⁓ but that is not real life for most people. There is always going to be something that pops up eventually.
⁓ And so if you're putting it in your head, I need to exercise every morning. I need to do my full routine for it to count. If I miss a day or don't do the whole thing, I've failed. That is putting way too much pressure on yourself. And so that is something that I talk about with clients all the time. You do not need to be
Consistent 100%. You don't need to do something every day. You don't need to do the full thing. The being consistent part is coming back to it after you missed a day or after you stopped for a month or after you've paused, right? Because something will pop up, right? Whether it's a schedule change, you know, somebody gets sick.
your right like just one day you miss it and then it's like my gosh now what right so instead of focusing on doing something 100 % focus on coming back to it and that that is a form of being consistent when you come back to something when you restart something you are being consistent so that's my controversial opinion ⁓
And honestly, that has been something that I practice myself ⁓ because it feels way better to give yourself credit for restarting something than it does to shame or guilt yourself for missing a day or stopping or whatever that is, right? ⁓ So that takes practice. ⁓ It's definitely a mindset shift. It is a self-talk shift.
It's something I help clients practice a lot. ⁓ So that will probably be a totally new thought to you. ⁓ So you can just practice it, right? It takes time and repetition to shift how we think.
Another important part of morning routines or any routine is basically creating it in a way that's going to be energizing for you. so James Clear of Atomic Habits talks about the four laws of behavior change. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this, but I wanna mention it because I think it's a really simple framework for describing the complicated process of
creating a habit or a routine. So he describes you want to make your habit or your routine obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. He makes it sound so simple. And this is a hard thing to do. But so if you're wanting to, let's say I'll give an example. If you're like, I want to start exercising in the morning.
Okay, we wanna make it obvious. There needs to be a visual cue. So laying out your exercise clothes or putting your sneakers next to the bed or in front of your coffee machine, right? Like you're making it visually obvious because your brain, even when you want to do something, even when you're excited about something, it's so easy to forget, especially if it's something new.
If it's not the autopilot or path of least resistance, we need a visual reminder. We also need to make it attractive so that we want to do it. So this needs to be like a dopamine boost. from the way I talk about it with clients is it actually needs to fit into your life. We're not like I said, we're not trying to fit you around this morning routine. We want it to fit in. It needs to needs to be attractive.
Make it easy. ⁓ easier said than done. ⁓ So this is where you're creating like the small step, the realistic step, having different options based on how much time, energy you have and what reality is. And this is what I talk about in the workshop, basically how to make things easier. ⁓
And one way to do that is separating out planning from action. ⁓ And that is super, super, super helpful. And that's what we're gonna be doing in the workshop. We're going to be basically helping, we're gonna create this plan for you. We're gonna create different options for you. We're gonna explore how your brain works and what your life looks like to make it easier for you ⁓ in the variety of different ways that your life looks.
And then the last law of behavior change is make it satisfying. So it needs to be rewarding. It needs to be something that you want to do. ⁓ And what I would add to this, these laws of behavior change is that there needs to be a mixture of structure and flexibility. And this is really what we dive into in the workshop. And this is what I support clients on all the time. So.
Most of the time when people come to me saying they want a new morning routine, they say, okay, I want to wake up earlier. I want to exercise. I want to journal. I want to make sure I'm ready for the day. I want to leave on time. I'm like, whoa, that is a big morning routine. And yes, that might fit your day sometimes, ⁓ but how can we...
simplify it a little bit and give you more choice for a low energy morning or a morning where oops, you hit snooze three times and now instead of having an hour to get ready, you have 15 minutes to get ready, right? Cause that's life sometimes ⁓ or lots of times. ⁓ So instead of saying like each day I do these three things every single day, you can create
Categories and menus of options for yourself and this is what if you come to the workshop This is what you would leave with you will leave with your menu of options and different ways to use this But basically a super simplified version This is an example from my life each morning. I Try to do something physical something to get my brain going and something to help me plan As well as some a quick light lift off my to-do list
And each of those categories can be anywhere from one minute to one hour.
So when people are like, I don't have time in the morning, I totally hear you. totally hear you. Mornings can be hectic and there can still be one minute of if you're like, I want to exercise, but I don't have time to get to the gym, doing like a one minute HIIT exercise, like high intensity, right? ⁓ Or I want to meditate, but I can't sit down for 20 minutes. There's kids running around, life is busy doing a
a one minute mindfulness sip of your first cup of coffee, right? ⁓ So there's lots of flexibility in this. I'm a huge fan of it does not need to be the whole thing to count. ⁓ And so that is what this menu categories thing that I help people set up is all about. That like it could be anywhere from one minute to one hour. It does not have to be all or nothing.
So, and then connected to this is when people are like, want a new morning routine, oftentimes we want to do the whole thing. I want to revamp my entire morning. I want to do all of these things. And maybe that's sustainable for a day or two, but if it's not something that you've been doing, it can be really hard to stick to that. And so, or to have it like feel sustainable.
because you don't need to stick to it. It's about coming back to it, right? ⁓ So I always suggest to people picking one or two things to start with and starting small. ⁓ So whether that's a specific category that you wanna put some time and energy into, or if there's a specific activity in the morning, like cooking breakfast, you're like, I don't cook breakfast, but I'd like to cook breakfast.
starting with one thing and then as you build that into your schedule, as you see how that feels, then layering other things on top of it. The most important thing about creating new routines and habits is troubleshooting, tweaking, and getting back on track. And so it's not, like I said, the most important thing is not being consistent. The most important thing is
How do I fit it in? How do I tweak it to fit my life as my life changes? And how do I get back on track after being away from it? So this is where it's really important to be patient and kind to yourself. Like I said, start small, focus on your, what you want to give yourself credit for rather than the things that you're not doing yet. Our brains,
autopilot to I could be doing more, I should be doing this, I wish I could do that, but look at all of the things you are doing. Give yourself credit for that. And as you practice that, your brain's gonna notice, ⁓ I am doing more than I realized. And then it's going to be slightly more sustainable to slowly add other things in if that's what you want to do, or to take things out.
Sometimes that is part of the routine is saying, I don't want to doom scroll for 20 minutes on the couch. How do I remove this from my morning or from my routine? ⁓ This is also where adjusting the strategies and tools you're using is really important. How are you planning your day? How are you prioritizing? What does time management look like? And those are all super complicated things. That's what I support people on. That's what
There are some other podcast episodes on those topics, but your systems support your routine. And then asking for accountability, support and encouragement. So whether that's from a partner, from loved ones, from coworkers when you're getting into work in the morning, ⁓ talking about it with people as much as you feel comfortable or joining Stuck2Started where we support each other on this.
every single day, every single week.
And then I'm just gonna drop a quick bonus tip for you. know today I primarily talked about mornings, ⁓ but if you want to adjust your morning routine or if you want your morning to look different and feel different, you actually have to start with adjusting your nighttime routine and your bedtime routine because sleep impacts
your ability to do things in the morning. And so that's whenever anybody comes to me and says, I want a new morning, I'm like, first, yes, we can think about what that will look like and how it'll feel and what small changes you can make. But the foundation of a morning routine is your nighttime routine. ⁓ So just a little tip there, if you're wanting to change your morning, definitely look to your evening to see if there's anything else that you can do to support yourself there.
So if you are tired of trying to create rigid routines and abandoning them when they don't stick, if you catch yourself in all or nothing or perfectionism around routines and you're looking for more support, like I said, I am leading a workshop on June 25th. All of the information is in the show notes.
⁓ If you're interested in joining us for that, I'm really looking forward to helping you create flexible routines that support what your life actually looks like ⁓ with lots of choice, lots of flexibility, ⁓ and really focusing on making it be simple and realistic for your life. if you have
I'm going to regroup my last spot here.
So if you're looking for support, I would love to have you come join us in the coaching membership stuck to started. If you're taking some action steps out of this podcast episode today, friendly reminder to go slow with change, focus on giving yourself credit. And instead of focusing on being consistent, focus on giving yourself credit for coming back. So glad you're here. Next week, I will be talking about
how to use giant chunks of free time, ⁓ something I get asked about a lot. So if you're somebody where you're like, I don't know what to do on the weekend or like for self care or for fun, or if you're somebody who has a ⁓ very flexible work schedule and you're in charge of scheduling your day, this is going to be an episode for you. We're gonna be talking about how to use big chunks of free time. Talk to you again soon.
