You may have heard that making your bed first thing in the morning is good for you, I think the military is really into it. I’m not really a military-influenced, Type-A person. Instead, I have ADHD. I joke that the ADHD diagnostic is the only test that I always pass. Some of you may be familiar with ADHD, but everyone tells me they think they have it, so maybe many people can relate to the lesson I learned as a result of having ADHD.

When you have ADHD, the mornings are the worst (at least for me). They have been the worst part of my day as long as I can remember. It took me a long time to figure out that the mornings were crazy because I couldn’t get a grip on pulling my life together at the beginning of everyday. It causes me a lot of anxiety and stress, not to mention being late and flustered and forgetting things. Anyone who has seen me in the morning would probably describe me this way. But…

Routine has made my mornings a practice in meditation, kinda. No, I don’t make my bed. Every morning I wake up and I spend my first 30 minutes making bulletproof coffee, pouring a gallon of brita water into my water jug (that’s my best friend) , cooking a cup of egg whites (I yolk 6 eggs every morning) and a cup of oatmeal, and packing my lunch. The moment I wake up I know exactly what I’m doing, step by step, and I have a direction. I’m a mess at first, the lights are off and things are falling and I’m jumping around the kitchen, but by the end of my 30 minute routine I have what to anticipate the rest of my day sorted out and my head together. I need that time to process before I go conquer the world and its become critical to my sanity. If I don’t get my morning routine, things are off and I’ll make more mistakes or be more anxious and stressed, none of which I can afford in a PhD program. No one has time for that.

You may say, well no one has time for 30 minutes of anything before they get out the door. Sure, it doesn’t have to be 30 whole minutes, maybe you can really just make your bed and go from there. Just remember we all have the same amount of priceless hours in the day and how we choose to spend them is up to us. For me, the practice of ‘anchoring my sanity’ is worth investing 30 minutes into a regular routine- rather than get 30 minutes of more sleep (pressing snooze three times). This is a lesson I learned after years and years of struggle and I sound so boring and so grown-up it kinda kills me a little, but it’s really really true,