My 6-Step Morning Protocol for a Better Day

How you start your morning sets the tone for your whole day. In this episode of Office Hours, I share the science and habits behind my “Mad Scientist” morning routine, a six-step protocol I use to lower negative affect, boost positive mood, and make mornings a time of focus and flow.

I introduce the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), explain why morning mood matters, and show you the research-backed habits I use to improve mine. 

In this episode, I cover:

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• Why your morning starts the night before with an early bedtime

• How witnessing the sunrise can help manage poor morning moods 

• The reason I don’t use the alarm clock on my phone 

• Why I exercise first thing

• How to build a grounding spiritual or reflective practice (even if you’re secular)

• Why delaying your morning coffee can improve focus and energy throughout the day

• The high-protein, tryptophan-rich foods I eat for breakfast 

• Why you need to protect your most productive hours of the day 

• Listener questions on staying compassionate while protecting yourself and whether anger is linked to unhappiness

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We’d love to hear any feedback you have. Please email us at officehours@arthurbrooks.com. And please leave a review on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for listening! 

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Referenced:

• Leadership and Happiness course

• How to Build a Life

• The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life

• Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales‍

• Arthur’s PANAS quiz

• Self-Reported Depressive Symptoms and Stress Levels in Healthy Young Men: Associations With the Cortisol Response to Awakening

• Brahma Muhurta: Everything you need to know

• Influence of early rising on performance in tasks requiring attention and memory

• A controlled study of dawn simulation in subsyndromal winter depression

• Genome-wide association analyses of chronotype in 697,828 individuals provides insights into circadian rhythms

• Sleep More and Be Happier

• Associations of chronotype with anxiety, depression and insomnia among general adult population: A cross-sectional study in Hubei, China 

• The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Going to Bed Early

• Affective Responses to Acute Exercise: A Meta-Analysis of the Potential Beneficial Effects of a Single Bout of Exercise on General Mood, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptoms

• Exercise effects on depression: Possible neural mechanisms

• The effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive function in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis

• Zone 2 cardio: What is it and why is it trending online?

• 9 Benefits of Walking After Eating

• Dan Buettner’s website

• How Does Prayer Help Manage Emotions?

• Brief, daily meditation enhances attention, memory, mood, and emotional regulation in non-experienced meditators

• Global and regional alterations of hippocampal anatomy in long-term meditation practitioners

• How to pray the rosary

• Caffeine acts through neuronal adenosine A2A receptors to prevent mood and memory dysfunction triggered by chronic stress

• Sarcopenia

• The bovine protein α-lactalbumin increases the plasma ratio of tryptophan to the other large neutral amino acids, and in vulnerable subjects raises brain serotonin activity, reduces cortisol concentration, and improves mood under stress

• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• The experience of flow and subjective well-being of music students

• What’s Missing from Empathy

• How to Stop Freaking Out