854: My Morning Playbook: Routines, Rituals, and Productivity Hacks

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2:19and stressed and burnt out. I'm Jenna Kutcher, your host of the Gold Digger podcast. I escaped the corporate world at the age of 23 with nothing more than a$300 camera from Craigslist and a dream. Now I'm running a seven figure online business that feels even better than it looks all from my house in small town, Minnesota with my family. Here we value time as our currency. We mix the woo and the work, and we are in the pursuit of building businesses that give us the freedom to live lives that we love. I've always loved turning big goals into reality, and I'm here to help you do the same. This isn't just a peek behind the curtain.

2:58Come along with me and my guests as we tear the whole curtain down. Every week we tackle practical, no-fluff marketing strategies and host honest discussions on what works and what doesn't. Join me and my expert guests for actionable insights to help you grow your dream business with confidence. Pull up a seat and get ready to be challenged, inspired, and empowered. This is the Gold Digger Podcast. I am an absolute sucker for wanting to know people's routines. There is just something about hearing how people start or end their days. I want to know their rituals, their routines, even those quirky little habits.

3:37It gives me a glimpse into their world. It's like this mini little field trip into someone else's life. and even when I can't totally relate, I love imagining what it's like to walk in their shoes. Now, over the years, my mornings have evolved a lot. Parenthood, business, and life in general have reshaped how I approach my day. Today, I'm giving you a backstage pass to my exact morning playbook, what I do to set the tone, the rituals that ground me, and the productivity hacks that keep me on track. Whether you're juggling life as a CEO, managing parenthood, or just trying to figure out what works best for you, there is something here for you.

4:13So grab your coffee or lace up those sneakers. Let's dive on into my morning playbook. You know, what's so fascinating about morning routines is that they are constantly evolving. And it's so obvious, but I think a lot of us, sometimes when we hear people's routines, we take it as like, this is what happens every single day. And I don't know about you, but no two days look the same in my world, especially as a mom. And speaking of being a mom, it was so fun. The other night I was with my family. We had a huge get together. We love just like gathering together. And I was talking to my sister who recently had twins and I was just telling her and I keep encouraging her of like, you know, you are literally in the trenches right now.

4:57And it's so interesting because my daughters are now three and six and I am getting so many glimpses of freedom and just the change in them with their independence and their ability to play together and just like all these different things. And it's so interesting with parenthood because it's like when you become a parent, you are literally like thrust into the deep end and you don't even realize how deep in the trenches you are until you start to see the light and climb out of said trenches. And so this has just been a really remarkable time as a parent because I feel like we are able to have more semblance of routines and we're able to have a little bit more time to ourselves.

5:37We're able to have a little bit more freedom to be autonomous people and not just mom. And it's just been a really beautiful time of parenthood. And I've loved every stage, but there's something really, really beautiful about this stage. So if you are in the trenches like my sister is, just know that I think things get easier. And most parents would argue certain things get easier, certain things get harder. And I think that's true for every journey that we're on. But it's just been this really, really amazing time. And so what's interesting is that I recorded an episode a few years ago, which I'm going to talk about in a little bit, about just how routines were so unrealistic.

6:19And based on the stage of life you're in, And if you're a parent or if you're juggling a nine to five, or if you're single, like your bandwidth is going to be different than every other person's. And so whenever I love listening to routines, I'm always having to put things through my own filter of like, would that really be realistic for me? Does that work for me? Is that in alignment with me? And honestly, at the end of the day, I'm just really curious. Like remember those cosmopolitan, like what's in her purse type vibes. Like that's what this feels like to me is just like giving people a glimpse into your life.

6:51So I'm going to give you a very detailed look at my morning routine. And I'm also just going to preface this, but this is all very subject to change. Things have changed so much over the years. And I can only imagine even six months from now that this routine might look totally different, but I think it's fun to share it regardless. So when we wake up in the morning, the goal is to wake up before the kids. And I'm not saying wake up at 4am so that you have an hour to yourself. I'm saying I want to wake up like 10 minutes before my kids wake up, just to have a few minutes to myself. So the ideal day, which let's be honest, most days as a parent is anything but ideal, is that my alarm would go off at 645 and I wake my kids up at 7am.

7:32Now what's so wild to me is the fact that we are finally in a stage of parenthood where we get pretty reliable sleep. Now that's not to say that a six-year-old doesn't come wandering into our bedroom every other night to get a little snuggle or that our three-year-old isn't yelling, mom, I peed in the monitor like she did this morning. But that is the goal. The ideal would be that we get up a few minutes before our kids get up and that we just have a few minutes to ourselves to kind of center our own energy, get ourselves set for the day, and then we go get our kids. Now, one thing that we have is I got Drew this alarm clock for Christmas one year.

8:10It's called the Lofty. So we use the Lofty to wake ourselves up. It's a more of a gentle awake than like a device that just like starts ringing at you. And we also have not slept with our phones in our bedroom for probably a decade. So I've talked about it a million times on this show, but we have no cell phones in our bedrooms. It's just been a thing for us. It's been so beneficial. If you have not tried it, I would challenge you to try it. And so there's zero scrolling going on in our bedroom and I absolutely love it that way. And we actually charge our phones on the first floor of our home in our little box in our pantry.

8:47That's where we put our phones at the end of the day. And we don't typically touch them until I don't usually touch my phone until the kids are off to school. So alarm goes off at 645. We have an actual alarm clock in our bedroom. Highly recommend it. We also make our bed every single day. And I'm not talking just like pulling the blankets up. I'm talking like even those throw pillows that you put on the floor every single night, we make the bed fully. It looks like a hotel and I just, I love it. We are kind of neat freaks when it comes to our home, especially our room. It just feels like it's like our little domain.

9:23And so like, I will go as far as like unplugging our white noise and putting it in a drawer, shoving extra pillows under the bed. Like we just, it looks very nice and clean and tidy. And that's just like our room. I want it to be serene. I want it to be a calm environment. I don't want it to be a place where I feel stressed out. So every single morning we make our bed. I wish I could say the same about our children's beds, but that's not true. And then if I'm lucky enough to get up before the kids, I will often do just a quick intentional skincare routine. So usually I will start the day. I'll either splash water on my face or I'll just go straight to the Primally Pure clarifying spray.

10:03They have so many good toners. So it's either the everything spray or the clarifying spray is what I love. And then if I'm not doing makeup for the day, I'll put on a little bit of serum or moisturizer. Today I did the clarifying moisturizer from Primally Pure. And that just like sits good on my skin, especially in the winter months, my skin gets so dry. And so I love just kind of adding that like moisture barrier. If I am going to wear makeup, which is typically only on days that I'm recording or actually leaving the house, there's this product called One Skin. It's like a tinted SPF and it's really just a great product.

10:37I love it. And so I will often just put that on as like a base layer for my makeup days. And then a lot of times I'll actually get dressed and I'll just put my workout clothes on first because I love doing walking meetings. And I feel like if I get my workout clothes on, there's a way better chance I'm going to work out for the day. I actually work out probably six days a week, sometimes even seven, but I love just putting on my workout clothes right away. So most days I don't have to get dressed in real clothes, at least right away. And so oftentimes in the morning, I'll just put on a sports bra, yoga pants, and a sweatshirt.

11:16And that's how I start my day. And it just makes it a lot easier once the day gets started that I can just kind of get into the gym when it best allows. This podcast is brought to you by Mercury, banking that helps entrepreneurs do more with their money. Okay. I remember in the early days of my entrepreneurship journey, clients would literally mail me checks and then I would have to drive all the way to the bank to deposit them. It took me literal years to make things go digital. And I am ashamed to admit I still have a filing cabinet with paper contracts because I'm way too afraid to throw them away.

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13:27Exclusions apply. So then is when like the hustle starts, right? this is where I get very detached and I get envious of people that have these like beautiful slow morning routines where they're like lighting a candle and writing in a journal I'm like no no it's like a little bit of chaos and so I'll get up both of the kids I get them dressed I'm so lucky that Drew's home with me so Drew goes down and starts breakfast right away it's so cute Quinny will wake up and she'll be like I smell sausage or like I smell muffins and so my job is getting the kids dressed and downstairs. Drew is usually starting breakfast.

14:03One thing for me that's been really interesting on my own health journey is that for a very long time, I just used to skip breakfast entirely. I was just someone who was convinced that I could do like the intermittent fasting that I'm not hungry in the morning. So that's like where this all stemmed from is like, I would often just skip breakfast and then eat and have kind of a fasted morning and then eat. But one thing that I've gotten really consistent with is making sure that I get 30 grams of protein. And so for me, the best way that I can do that is in like a pre-mixed protein shake. So for a long time, I was doing like muscle milk, but they're not like the cleanest shakes.

14:45They're very easily accessible at like a target. And there's 30 grams of protein, which is great. And they taste good, which is good, but they're not like the cleanest protein. And so I switched to, I have two options that I usually will drink one of them each day. So there's Jocko Mulks, which is great. They taste really good. You have to order them online, which is a little annoying with the shipping and boxes and that kind of stuff. And there's a brand called Pioneer Pastures that just got launched at Target. And so both of them are around 30 grams of protein. I'll usually slam one of those in the morning and that will give me good protein.

15:22to start off my day and make it so that I'm not like starving when lunch comes around. And then I'll have this thing called Keaton and it's like a isotonic. It's like a saltwater thing. You just, it's this little glass thing and I'll slam it. It has really good healing properties. It has 78 essential minerals and trace elements. It just tastes like really salty water. So I slam one of those as well in the morning. And so I really just try to set myself up. And one thing that's been really helpful is that when I have my protein shakes in the morning, then I can take all my supplements in the morning because I do morning and afternoon supplements.

15:58And so if I was just on an empty stomach, I wouldn't be taking my supplements in the morning. And I do feel like they help give me the energy that I need to start. So like I said, I usually will keep my phone in our little box in our pantry until the kids leave. We just want a very like calm, distraction-free morning. And I feel like mornings are already chaotic enough. So oftentimes we'll grab a phone to put on music and we listen to like very, very calm music. I mean, sometimes we'll do like healing frequencies. Like we have very calm mornings and like, you know, dimmer lights. It's not super bright.

16:37We're not running around like crazy. And so that's kind of the mood. And oftentimes at breakfast, Coco has homework. She's in kindergarten. Oh my gosh, homework. So we're often doing her homework before she heads to school. So we basically have one hour of like getting the kids dressed, fed, ready for the day, homework done before they hit the road. So then at 8am, that's when we load up the car and Drew heads out and he'll take Quinn with him to drop Coco off at school. And it's about almost an hour round trip by the time they leave and get back into the house. And so that's really when I feel like my day truly starts in terms of like my own routines and rhythms, because that first hour of the day is very hit or miss in terms of like, what is actually going to get accomplished?

17:26What is the vibe? How are the kids feeling? Are we rushed? Are we calm? What does that look like? So I love that when 8am hits, it's like, okay, I've got like 45 minutes to an hour of myself with a quiet house to do the things that I need to do. And what's so interesting to me is that for so long, I used to like the second the house was empty, I would crack open my laptop and get straight to work. And over the last few years, I've really pivoted that of like, you know, the whole, you can't pour from an empty cup thing, but just filling up my own cup, getting myself energized for the day, doing the things that I need to do with a quiet house before I crack open my laptop.

18:05And even just flipping that of like prioritizing self-care first has just been such a game changer for me. And I recognize that it's probably not doable for everybody, but it's just what works for me. So post drop-off is like when I look at this as like my reset. So regardless of if it was a smooth morning or not, this is when I start my own stuff. So oftentimes I will go downstairs. We kind of have like a little biohacking area downstairs in our house. I will lay it on my PEMF mat, which is pulsed electromagnetic magnetic frequencies. So it's a black mat. It has crystals in it. It's a warm mat.

18:40And I just lay on it. It's a very grounding. It's amazing, especially as I'm looking out the window and it's like negative 30 degrees out. Like there's no way I can go ground outside and stick my feet in the grass right now. It is literally a frozen tundra. And so laying on my mat is amazing. And then the mat is built by higher dose. One thing I love about them is I get to test out their products before they hit the market. And so I've been doing red light therapy for over two years, but they recently are developing a new red light therapy product. And so I've been testing that out and I am obsessed with it.

19:13And so I will go lay on my PMF mat, do my red light. I've done this for a couple of years now. It's about 20 minutes that I'll stay there. In an ideal world, I am meditating while I'm doing this or like listening to a meditation. In reality, most of the time, this is when I am catching up on text messages, scrolling social, doing all of those things. And it's just like a very specific amount of time before I get into my work in my day. So even though it's not ideal, and I really do think that there's so much power in like creating before you consume, it's kind of hit or miss. Again, ideal world is like I'm meditating.

19:51I'm just getting quiet in my own thoughts, thinking about my plan for the day. But oftentimes I'm like usually voice memoing my friends and catching up. So I just think this is a really nice time where it's like 20 minutes to myself just to pour into myself, my energy, my body before I get into work. Once I've done my little reset, that's when I start to jump into my day. And I've gotten really good at setting priorities. For me, my all-time favorite days are the days where there is literally nothing on the calendar. I'm talking like meetings, calls, podcasts, different things like that. I love days that are wide open.

20:27One of my goals for 2025 is to create more of those days. There are days where I get so much work done and it's not just work. It's the deep work, the actual creative process where I can focus on writing, reviewing, ideating, creating. And then on meeting heavy days, I end up stacking really similar tasks together for flow and focus. So usually I'll either have a wide open day or I'll have a very stacked day. And some people would prefer to just kind of like, you know, make everything even, but I actually would way rather have a stacked day if it meant that the following day I could have a wide open day.

21:03So that is usually when I kind of get into work. So that's kind of my morning routine. The main priorities are just like very simple self-care, whether it's making my bed, doing quick skincare, getting in my protein, my water, just like prioritizing those things at the front end of my day. And then I get into work. And so it's been really helpful because I think for a lot of us, it's really easy to put like self-care at the bottom of our list. And oftentimes when we do that, we never actually even get to it. And so finding these like very micro small efforts that help me to feel better, more energized, more excited about my day has just been really helpful.

21:44And again, not all of these things happen every single day, but like, this is like my dream scenario. This is what I aim for on a daily basis. And one thing that I've really had to learn as a mom is that routines are awesome and super helpful based on what stage of parenthood you're in. But for me, resets are way more reliable and way just more applicable in this stage of life. And so instead of thinking like, if I don't do everything step by step by step, my whole day is shot, just looking for and claiming even like five minute reset of like, if I had a stressful morning, like what do those first five minutes look like once they are loaded in the car and heading to school?

22:26Or if I got woken up really early, like how can I just steal five minutes for myself to just get back into my own energy and to feel back like myself? And so I feel like when we think of routines and rituals, we often think that they have to be super elaborate. it. But I think that if you can create different rhythms in your life or different resets in your life that can make you be consistent, that can just help anchor you back into your day. And so for me, you know, doing red light therapy and laying on my PMF mat, you know, I understand that that might not happen for every single person. But for me, that has just been such a good way to like ground, get in my own energy, step out of mom mode, get ready for CEO mode and have kind of that transition.

23:10And I've been trying to just invite in more of those transitions because I've recognized over the years how easy it is to go from mom mode to work mode to mom mode to work mode and like never actually getting back into like my own body and calming my nervous system down. And so if you're curious about kind of this thought process of like, you know, I am not in a stage of life where I can have this elaborate routine. I did an episode two years ago. it's screw morning routines try this instead and it's all about just claiming resets in your day and that information is still incredibly applicable still very pertinent in my life and you might enjoy that as well based on what stage of life you're in okay so now I want to pivot and talk about some of the productivity hacks that I do I think you know this but in case you don't I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago it's something that I've struggled with my whole life.

24:02And now I'm just really putting the pieces together to really see the areas of my life where maybe it helped me and maybe it harmed me. And so having productivity hacks has been just so helpful for me so that when I'm working, I am fully focused. I know what I'm spending my time on is worth it. And when I'm momming, I'm not sitting there, you know, doing blocks with my kids and thinking about work. I've recognized that like for me, mom guilt creeps in when I feel like I'm not fully present in whatever I'm doing, whether it's work or motherhood. And so for me, productivity hacks are not necessarily about working harder and smarter so that you can work even harder.

24:40It's just about making sure that when my time is going into my business, it's going into the best places. And I feel like I am doing meaningful work that's going to get me a return. So the first thing in terms of hacks is really tuning into your energy and designing your life as much as you possibly can around it. So if you are a full-time entrepreneur, this is where the magic can happen. This is probably why you became an entrepreneur so that you had more control over your life. And so if you feel out of control of your life, this is where I invite you to remember that you are the boss and that you are in charge.

25:15And so starting to pay attention to your energy levels and seeing if you sense trends. And this could be like a daily trend where like you're most energized between the hours of 1 and 3 p.m. Or it could even be a monthly trend where you're looking at your monthly cycle. If you get a cycle, if you're somebody who menstruates and figuring out like, when are you most inward? When are you most, you know, outgoing? Like, what does that look like? And so really paying attention to your energy and honoring it and trying your best to design your work around it. So for me, when Coco first started school, She was actually just doing half day school.