For most people reading this, the concept of a morning routine isn’t something new. Likely, you either have somewhat of a morning routine yourself or you’ve told yourself over and over again that you should have one (in which case, I’d agree!).

But it can be tricky and take a lot of trial-and-error to find a practical morning routine that is easy-to-follow (so you actually do it) and really does help make you more productive.

That’s why, today, I’m sharing the five Ms I follow every day for max productivity. Hopefully, this will help you skip some of that trial-and-error and set you up for happier, get-stuff-done type of days.

1. M Is For Morning Journaling

In our busy, day-to-day lives, our minds end up collecting a lot of nonsense: unfinished thoughts, unnecessary worries, pessimistic mindsets or worse. Morning journaling is one of the best ways to fix this.

Morning pages is a creativity-unblocking technique first described in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. It involves writing three pages by hand before you do anything else in the morning.

It works because it cleans up and declutters your mind by getting all your distracting and negative thoughts out of the way first – thus setting you up for a more productive, prolific and positive day.