Daniel's Notes

RPS #15 – Essential Ingredients of a Great Morning Routine

14 min read

Description

What you do in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. In this episode, I talk about the bare minimum requirements of a Christian’s morning routine. And while everyone’s morning will look a little different, these principles will help guide you in creating a morning routine that gets you oriented, organized, and ready to obey the Lord throughout your day.

✨Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/redeemingprod

My Notes

Introduction

  • 🎥 Welcome to the Show: Introduction to the episode on creating a great morning routine.
  • 📖 Importance of Orientation: Emphasizing the need for Christians to start their days oriented towards Christ.

Overview of Morning Routine

  • 🕒 Morning Routine Overview: Everyone’s morning is different, but there are three main principles to consider.
  • 🧑‍💻 Creator and Passion Project: Insight into the creator’s journey and the work behind the “Redeeming Productivity” brand.

Importance of a Morning Routine

  • 🌅 Impact of Morning on the Day: The structure of one’s morning can significantly affect daily productivity.
  • 🧠 Setting the Mind and Heart: A good morning routine helps align one’s heart, mind, and body for the day ahead.

Three Key Ingredients of a Morning Routine 04:21

  1. Orient: Orient your heart, mind, and body.
  2. Organize the tasks of your day into a plan.
  3. Obey: Go. Do. Execute your plan.

1. Orient: Getting Ready for the Day 05:47

  • ⏰ Waking Up: The importance of waking up at a consistent time to establish your morning routine.

    • 📝 Plan Your Wake-Up Time: Calculate backward from your leave time to determine when to wake up.
    • 🌙 Sleep Schedule: Go to bed on time to ensure you wake up refreshed.

  • 🚫 Avoiding Snooze: Tips on avoiding the snooze button and starting your day promptly.

  • 🪥 Physical Awakening: Activities to help wake up effectively:

    • Brush Teeth and Splash Water: Simple actions to invigorate the mind and body.
    • 💧 Hydration: Drink water to replenish fluids lost overnight.
    • 🏃 Exercise: Engage in light exercises to elevate heart rate and wakefulness.

  • 📖 Bible Study & Prayer: The necessity of starting the day with spiritual focus.

    • 🌍 Avoid Distractions: Resist the urge to check the news or social media first thing.
    • ✝️ Scriptural Foundation: Reference to Psalm 63:1 and Mark 01:35 to highlight the spiritual practice of morning prayer.

  • 🖊️ Additional Suggestions:

    • Exercise: Morning workouts to enhance mental clarity.
    • Journaling: Writing to organize thoughts and set intentions.
    • 📚 Reading: Engaging with educational or spiritual literature to further orient the mind.

2. Organize: Planning the Day

  • 🗂️ Getting Ready: Steps to physically prepare for the day.

    • 🛁 Personal Grooming: Showering, dressing, and other routines to look presentable.
    • 🍽️ Breakfast: Fueling the body for energy and focus.

  • 📅 Reviewing the Day’s Agenda: Importance of planning and organizing tasks.

    • 📝 Calendar Review: Checking meetings, tasks, and priorities for the day.
    • 🗂️ Task Management Systems: Using tools like Notion or OmniFocus to keep organized.

  • 📊 Creating a Daily Plan:

    • Setting Priorities: Identifying three main tasks to accomplish.
    • Flexibility in Planning: Preparing for unexpected tasks while sticking to the plan.

3. Obey: Executing the Plan

  • 🚀 Taking Action: The final step of the morning routine is to act on the plans made.
  • 🙏 Serving God: Carrying a God-centered perspective throughout the day.
  • 📖 Commit to the Lord: Reference to Proverbs 16:3 about committing work to God.

Practical Advice for Building a Morning Routine

  • 🗒️ Writing It Down: Documenting a structured morning routine for clarity and accountability.

  • ⏳ Scheduling: Allocating specific times for each activity and including buffer time.

  • 🌙 Night Before Preparation: The importance of preparing the night before to ensure a smooth morning.

    • 🛏️ Set Up for Success: Lay out clothes, prepare breakfast items, and set up the workspace.

  • 📵 Eliminating Distractions:

    • Phone Management: Keeping the phone out of reach to avoid distractions during morning tasks.
    • Avoiding News in the Morning: Not letting external information shape your mindset before the day begins.

Conclusion

  • 🌟 Key Takeaways: The overarching theme of orienting, organizing, and obeying can lead to a productive day.
  • 🙌 Encouragement to Support: Invitation to support the creator’s work through Patreon.
  • 🌅 Final Thoughts: Reminder to strive for a productive morning to glorify God in all endeavors.

This outline encompasses the key themes and suggestions presented in the video, emphasizing the importance of establishing a morning routine centered on faith, organization, and obedience. The structured format allows for easy navigation through the various principles and recommendations discussed by the speaker.

Transcript

00:00 Every believer wants to have a closer walk with God. Nevertheless, many Christians still struggle to read their Bibles consistently. Today, I want to show you eight tips for how to make Bible reading a consistent daily habit. 00:21 Hey, my name is Reagan Rose. On this channel, I talk about a biblical approach to personal productivity so that you can make the most of your life for God’s glory. Make sure you stick around to the very end of the video, because the last point I give is the one that kind of ties it all together. 00:36 So before we jump into the first tip, I think it’s helpful to think through why it is that it’s so hard to be consistent in reading our Bibles. We live in a time of unprecedented access to the Word of God. I mean, if you speak English, you’ve got approximately four bazillion translations that are good. 00:53 You’ve got tools online, we’ve got Bible software, we’ve got excellent preachers and teachers we can listen to, commentaries up the wazoo. You got everything you would need if you wanted to be a student of the Bible. But we still don’t read consistently. So why is that? 01:09 I think the main reason is we are more distracted than we’ve ever been before. Our options for what we can do with our time are almost limitless. And that makes it hard for us to focus our attention on the things that really matter. And so we need to make a plan and we need to do things that are going to 01:28 help us fight against that distraction, and instead focus our intention on what we really want to do, which is to draw near to God in His Word. So tip number one is make a plan. You may want to read the Bible, but good intentions apart from good plans are really just good for nothing. 01:45 And what I mean is you need a Bible reading plan. You need to decide in advance what you’re going to read in the Word each day. You can’t just randomly flip open to different passages and think, “oh, I guess I’ll read this chapter today.” I mean, you definitely can do that, but the problem is you’re not 02:00 going to stick with it for long. And there are tons and tons of great Bible reading plans out there. You just need to pick one! I’ll link you in the description to some different Bible reading plans that are available that I think are good. 02:12 And just pick one. Choose one that you’re going to do and then commit to it. And go through each section each day. Once you decide what you’re going to be reading each day, you need to decide when you’re going to do that. 02:24 And that’s tip number two, pick a time to read. Personally, I think it’s best to read the Bible when you first wake up. It kind of sets the tone for the day. It puts your eyes on Jesus Christ rather than on your phone or on whatever else is going on. 02:39 I think it’s the best way to start your day, but you can plan to read the Bible at other times too, on your lunch break, maybe after work, maybe before bed. The point though is pick a time and don’t be vague about it. Make a really specific plan. Decide I’m going to read it in the morning. 02:55 When in the morning at this time? Where at that time? On this couch. Which Bible are you going to read? Are you going to bring a notebook? 03:01 Figure out the details, make a plan, make it specific so that you know exactly what to do each day. Third, organize for success. If you want to make bible reading a consistent daily habit you need to organize. 03:16 So we’ve already done some of this through making a plan through picking when we’re going to do it, but you also need to deal with some more of those details. So here’s four organization tips that I think can make your Bible reading time more likely to stick. First, always read in the same spot. 03:30 Second, keep your space clean. Nobody wants to read in a messy environment. Third print out your Bible reading plan. Don’t try to keep it in your head. And don’t put it on your phone where you’re going to 03:40 check that and get distracted. Fourth, when you finish your reading each day, open your Bible or move your bookmark to the next spot for tomorrow. Set yourself up so that the next day, there’s this little friction as possible between you getting back into the Word and doing the next section of your plan. 03:56 When you organize yourself to read the Bible each day, you’re much more likely to actually do it. The fourth tip for reading the Bible every day as a habit is avoid distractions. Listen, I love the Bible apps on my phone and on my tablet and on my computer. I love that stuff. 04:12 I love technology. But it’s distracting. There’s too many things I could be doing on my phone than reading the Bible. And so at least for me, when I try to read the Bible on my phone, it always goes poorly. 04:25 I’m a big advocate for reading in a physical, paper Bible, because it keeps the distractions far away. In fact, I would tell you don’t even keep your phone nearby. Don’t even give you the option of going on it. If you’re getting up and reading your Bible in the morning, 04:41 just leave your phone charging, leave it far away from yourself. Just remove every temptation to “check something real quick” and just focus on the Word. Number five, use helps. Use resources that are gonna help you read the Bible every day. 04:57 Many a noble voyage into the habit of Bible reading has been scuttled on the rocks of ambition. Oftentimes we get excited about reading the Bible. We get excited about making this a habit again, and what do we do? We bite off way more than we can chew. 05:12 We end up saying, “I’m going to read the Bible in 30 days!” Okay. Maybe you, maybe you can. I believe in you. You can do that. 05:21 But look, I think it’s more important that we make it a habitual daily thing, than we make it about reading as much of the Bible as possible. I want a lifetime of being a Bible readernot just little sprints here and there every few months or every couple of years where I get back into it. Don’t be too proud to use a devotional book or use a good study Bible. 05:45 There are great resources for these. I’ll link to some of those in the description. I love the MacArthur study Bible. It is awesome. One of the things that can happen when you’re reading the Bible is you get bored 05:55 because you don’t know what’s going on. That’s okay. Use some helps. Use a study Bible. It’ll give you some help in knowing what’s happening, giving you a little context. 06:05 Just reading the Bible and not understanding what it actually means isn’t all that helpful. You need to know what’s happening. And so use a good devotional or use a study Bible to help you understand it. Number six is enlist accountability. 06:20 God gave His Word, not just individual believers, but to His church. You have other believers, or you ought to have other believers, in your life at your church, read together. Pick a plan with your small group or with some other people who you’re close with at church, or maybe with your spouse or with a friend or with people in your family. 06:40 It doesn’t matter. Just get a group of other believers and decide together what you’re going to read through. That sort of holy peer pressure keep you on track with making sure you’re actually reading the Bible every day. 06:53 And it can be really simple. My wife had a group of ladies at a previous job where they were reading through a book of the Bible together, and then they’d get together once a week for lunch and they would talk about it. That’s all it was. 07:06 They didn’t do something crazy or intense. They just picked some stuff to read through and then they discussed it later. You can make it that simple. The point is accountability helps you to be more consistent and more habitual with reading the Bible. 07:19 And number seven is apply what you’re learning. Look, we don’t read the Bible just so we can know more. We read it so we can understand and believe and obey. And so you want to see your reading in the Bible actually changing your life. Be deliberate about this, what you’re studying, what you’re reading 07:39 each day, think through, pray it back to God and try to actually put into action what you’re learning. If you’re reading about some of the one, another commands from the new Testament, consider how you might love other people in your church more, what specifically could you do? 07:54 How could you apply that? If you’re reading the Psalms, think about how, the way that the Psalmist phrase things, how that could influence the way that you pray. Or how you think about God when you’re worshiping Him. Deliberately, try to take what you’re learning in the word each day and actually 08:09 apply it to your life and you’ll see that not only are you getting more out of it, but you’re wanting to read more. The habit of reading the Word begins to stick more as you see the results from it in your life. And the final tip I have for you for reading the Bible consistently as a habit 08:25 is number eight: start a morning routine. So a Christian morning routine is basically where you wake up a little bit earlier than you would have, and you do some very specific things. Things like studying the Bible, praying, exercise, journaling, and a few other kind of self-development activities so that you are ensuring that every day 08:47 you’re making progress in growing with the Lord and in your personal life. The number one thing you can do is start having a daily morning routine. And I have created an entire free mini-course on how to do this, along with a free PDF planner that gives you all the steps you need to take to start building your own morning routine. 09:07 I’ll share a link to that in the description. And that mini-course and that planner are totally free. I just want to give you a resource that’s going to help you grow. I’ve also created an entire paid online course about morning routines that goes into way more depth. 09:20 And it is just a step by step guide that walks you through how to build a morning routine of your own. That’s going to give you the plan and the motivation you need to actually start getting on track with your devotions and with your personal life. Check out my paid course, it’s called POWER Mornings. 09:36 You can learn more in the video here. And for more videos on a Christian approach to personal productivity, don’t forget to subscribe and ring the notification bell. I’ll see you guys in the next video.

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