Dawn Re-PACK'D: Optimize Your Morning Routine
The way you start your day can easily influence the efficiency of your brain, but even bring you more discipline and organisation throughout the day. Here are a few tips that can optimise your morning routine:
1. PRIORITISE SLEEP
Getting six hours of sleep a night simply isn’t enough for you to be your most productive. In fact, it’s just as bad as not sleeping at all. This sleep deprivation study, published in the journal Sleep, took 48 adults and restricted their sleep to a maximum of four, six, or eight hours a night for two weeks; one unlucky subset was deprived of sleep for three days straight. As you can imagine, the subjects who were allowed to sleep eight hours per night had the highest performance on average. Subjects who got only four hours a night did worse each day.
2. HYDRATE FIRST
Instead of grabbing that first cup of coffee of the day, try going for a green tea or a big glass of water. Even a cup of hot water with lemon juice can really give you a kickstart to get through the day. Things like cold showers in the morning can also really wake you up. Feeling tired after 8 hours of sleep has little to do with not sleeping enough: when you’re still feeling tired after getting up, you’re probably dehydrated, and a high-caffeine pick-me-up acts as a diuretic, sapping even more water from your body.
3. STRETCH & MEDITATE
This might not be for everyone, but as life gets more hectic, our mind can get cluttered with thoughts and ideas. Hence, meditation can be a great way to deal with this spiderweb of ideas and create a clean slate. Stretching can also improve your blood flow and mobility. Doing a few minutes of sun salutations, upside-down poses or even just lying on the floor with your legs against the wall will enhances blood flow, redistributes nutrients to the upper half of your body and improve oxygen flow to your brain.
4. MAKE YOUR BED
Navy Seal admiral William McRaven swears by making your bed in the morning: “Making the bed is about getting up and doing something with discipline. But it's an easy task to undertake – easier than an hour-long run or doing an hour's worth of weight training. You roll out of bed, you just put your bed, you make it straight. It's not just about kind of throwing the covers over the pillow. It's about making your bed right and walking away and going. And that gives a sense of fulfillment, as if anything you do that day will work.”
5. EAT BREAKFAST
It’s a big debate: people burn more calories on days they skip breakfast, but that habit may increase dangerous inflammation. You also feel easily distracted. Great brain-friendly breakfast choices include eggs, avocado, salmon, walnuts, seeds, and berries. Avoid pastries and white bread and sugary cereals, all of which will give you a mental and physical dip a few hours after eating them. Eating your breakfast at the same time every day also helps regulate your circadian rhythm and digestion, priming your brain for peak performance and reducing the need for unnecessary decision-making.
6. FINISH WITH PACK’D
You should always take your Dawn and Dusk pack after eating food, which is another reason why breakfast is such an essential part of your breakfast routine. There’s a lot in the PACK’D Dawn pack that will greatly help you optimise your energy, focus and state of mind. Our Focus supplement has 40mg of caffeine. This is the equivalent of drinking only 1/3rd of your cup of coffee. In our Active vitamins you will find green tea extract, vitamin B3, B6 and B12, which give you an extra boost of energy. Unlike caffeine, green tea also has an amino acid, I-theanine, that has been linked to improved alertness, which can help with productivity and focus, minus the jitters.
