Everyone likes to talk about the things we must do to achieve success.
But while often overlooked, the things we DON’T do can sometimes be even more important.
Successful people know this and for that reason they all have some kind of “NOT TO DO IN THE MORNING” list.
If you want to be more successful in life, never do these 9 things successful people avoid doing in the morning.
1) Keep hitting snooze until they oversleep
For all the hard hustling that successful people do, they pay close attention to their sleep.
They make sure they get at least eight hours of sleep every single night. That’s because they know that sleeping way too little can easily throw them into a horrible brain-fog that will only hurt their productivity.
At the same time, they’re aware that too much of a good thing is bad.
Sleeping too much can not only disrupt their schedule, it can also leave them too tired to function.
This is why they train themselves to wake up the first time their alarm goes off, and not tempt themselves with “five more minutes”—and yes, even on weekends. They know that consistency is key so they’d rather wake up at the same time every day than confuse their body clocks.
And this kind of discipline has made things much easier for them. Most of them don’t need alarm clocks because they’ve trained themselves so well they’ll get up on time and get moving.
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Scroll social media for more than an hour
Even the most successful ones among us can’t help but scroll through our socials and e-mail in the morning (and hey, nothing is wrong with that!).
I mean, it’s not like it’s an entirely useless time-waster. Sometimes we get notifications for important things overnight!
But what sets successful people apart from everyone else is that they don’t waste too much time on the internet before breakfast.
They’d check their feed, DMs, and e-mail for about ten minutes or so at the most and then move on to more important things (and yes, that could even mean yoga and other things they do for their wellbeing).
The last thing they want is to be caught up in the flow of information and end up being too distracted to get anything done for the rest of the day.
3) Plot revenge
Successful people are successful because they don’t waste their time on things that won’t matter in five years.
They will set aside any petty arguments they might have had the previous day with colleagues and strangers on the internet.
They don’t want to waste their time and energy dwelling on grudges when they could spend it in more productive things instead.
They just try to set things aside and get about their business, forgiving what they can and ignoring what they can’t. Revenge is a waste of time, and it’s beneath them.
But just because they think this way doesn’t mean they’re pushovers. They can easily file an HR report or outright refuse to work with an abusive coworker.
4) Eat junk for breakfast
What we eat has a huge impact on our mental state. For example, too much sugars give us too much energy at once and then leave us crashing when we’ve spent all that energy.
This is why successful people eat proper food for breakfast. They eat balanced meals, rather than nutritionally empty junk that makes them feel full but doesn’t actually give them the nutrients their body needs.
This is also why they get up early. Because well…when you have very little time to spare, it can be quite tempting to just grab a granola bar for breakfast rather than sit down for a full meal.
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Rush self-care
puccessful people don’t wake up 10 minutes before they need to get to work. As I mentioned before, doing this makes it hard (in fact, impossible) to live healthy.
Being forced to rush means that it’s hard to enjoy our meals, stretch, take a shower, and do meditation.
But if they wake up at least an hour early, they give themselves the opportunity to breathe…and to take things slow.
They can cook and savor their meals, get their blood moving with exercise, and even bond with their family and pets.
This means that when they go to work, they’re more relaxed, better fed, and that their bodies are in better overall condition.
You might think “Meh, self-care is overrated. The hustle is all that matters. I’ll just catch up.”
But this might be the reason you’re not going ahead in life than you should. You don’t care for yourself enough
So if you want to be more successful, don’t look down on self-care as if it’s for wimps. We all need it—especially if you are mighty ambitious.
Get on a heated argument on Twitter
We all have only so much energy to spare, and many of us unfortunately waste it arguing with people online.
And this is such a waste of time.
It fills our heads with clutter and noise that will stick with us all day, and it leaves us with little energy to spare for our colleagues at work.
This is why successful people will simply scroll past whatever internet drama they might have stumbled into in the morning.
And if something truly is too juicy for them to ignore, they’ll just bookmark it so that they’ll get back to it after work. Even then, they’ll still avoid getting invested in it.
Ultimately nothing they say to strangers online will mean anything, after all. So they’d rather use their time on things that truly matter.
