One small but annoying daily challenge? Getting ready each morning.
I very much dislike rushing or feeling pressed for time, and fervently agree with Thoreau, who wrote in Walden, “I love a broad margin to my life.”
“I love a broad margin to my life.”Henry David Thoreau @gretchenrubin (Click to Tweet!)
By figuring out easy, quick ways to make it faster to head out the door, we can give ourselves a bigger margin of time.
Need some ideas? Here are eleven simple morning-related habits that may make your life easier.
11 Simple Morning Habits to Make Your Life Easier
- Put your alarm clock across the room, so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. No more snooze button!
- The night before, set an alarm to tell you that it’s time to go to bed. It’s a lot easier to get going in the morning if you’ve had enough sleep the night before. Also…
- Set an alarm to remind you when you’ve spent enough time in the shower.
- Buy several pairs of the same socks, so you never have to hunt for a mate.
- Decide your outfit while you brush your teeth to go to bed the night before, so you don’t have to take the time for inner debate in the morning. Or even better…
- Give yourself a work uniform, so you have very few choices to make when dressing. (I loved this piece by an art director, “Why I Wear the Exact Same Thing to Work Every Day.”)
- Always put your keys, wallet, sunglasses, and cell phone away in the same place, so you don’t have to spend any time hunting for an important possession. (Can’t find something? Here are 8 tips for finding misplaced objects. Bizarrely, I’ve found, these tips really do work.)
- The night before, gather everything you need for the next day–papers in your briefcase, exercise clothes in the gym bag, the book you’re returning to a friend at work.
- Always keep gas in the car.
- Drink the office coffee instead of stopping at a coffee place on your way to work.
- Convince everyone in your household to follow these same tips.
How about you? What tips and tricks do you use, to help yourself get ready faster each morning?
Gretchen Rubin is the author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Happiness Project—an account of the year she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier—and the recently released Happier at Home and Better Than Before. On her popular blog, The Happiness Project, she reports on her daily adventures in the pursuit of happiness. For more doses of happiness and other happenings, follow Gretchen on Facebook and Twitter.
Image courtesy of Markus Spiske.
