15 : Stop Winging Your Mornings - How to Use AI to Build a Routine That Actually Sticks

Your mornings don't have to be chaotic, and AI can help you prove it. 

I have mastered the early morning routine. And because of that, it’s one of the things people ask me about the most - how do you get up early to work out? What time do you go to bed? I want to become a morning person but it’s just so hard!

You’re going to walk away from this post with a handcrafted morning routine, a nighttime checklist, and easy high-protein breakfast ideas. Your mornings are about to feel more automated and a lot less stressful.

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YOUTUBE VIDEO for this episode (I'm getting more natural on YT yay!!)

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Transcript

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You are going to walk away from today's episode not only with a handcrafted morning routine for yourself, but you're also going to walk away with a nighttime checklist and some easy high-protein breakfast ideas so that breakfast is one more thing that you can automate in your morning routine because one thing is for sure extra time does not just magically appear. Something has to give. And for you, maybe breakfast prep in advance for the week is something that buys you a few more minutes each morning. One thing about me is that I have mastered a morning routine. And that is one of the things that people ask me about the most is like, how do you how do you get up early? You know, what time do you go to bed? I want to become a morning person. Can you give me some tips? It's so hard for me. How are you able to get up and work out so early in the morning? And here's one thing that I know to be true is that time blocking my day and locking myself out of social media apps, it reveals a heck of a lot more time than all of us admittedly think that we have. So, this is what we're gonna dive into on today's episode. If you're watching me on YouTube, I have a freshly cracked open Alani. I have a candle on my desk. The vibes are immaculate. So let's dive in. I'm your host, Carly Kaikendal, and this is The Daily Penny, the podcast about building sickening consistency through everyday habits. Being occasionally great does not get you very far, but being consistently good is what moves the needle forward. Every time you follow through for a workout, a meal in motherhood, in your finances, in your business or in your life, you're putting another penny in the jar of the person you want to become. One penny doesn't feel like much, but those daily deposits compound over time. This show is about fitness, nutrition, motherhood, money, business, and the systems that actually hold your life together in seasons when motivation is gone. Whether you're building habits, rebuilding confidence, or just simply trying not to quit, you're in the right place. Let's add another penny in the jar. One thing I think that we all need to do is set a bedtime for our phones because even though I am so good about not scrolling in bed, as soon as I walk in my bedroom to go to sleep, my phone gets put on the charger. I set my alarm, I turn my sound machine on. I use a white noise app, but I use the brown noise feature in the white noise app. The brown noise just sounds so much more satisfying to me, and it helps me sleep better at night, I swear. So although I'm good about setting my phone across the room and not looking at it once it's time for me to go to bed, I'm not good about putting my phone to bed at the same time every night. So I'm not scrolling in bed, but I'm not necessarily always going to bed at the time that I want to go to bed. So this is something that I need to work on as well. Setting a bedtime for our phone is most likely going to result in us getting more sleep at night and therefore making it easier for us to get up earlier and prioritize our morning routines. I want to tell you a story about a 101 client that I welcomed back for her second round of coaching with me. She wants to become a morning person, but she doesn't know where to start. And I think her story can resonate with so many of you, not necessarily the exact situation that she's in when it comes to her current life and her job and her schedule, but just her desire to become a morning person and not knowing how to make herself become a morning person. So I'm gonna tell you a story about her. She and I first started working together back in 2023. At the time she was in college and now she is graduated and she's in her first year as an elementary school teacher. She also, on the side, does marketing for another company part-time, and she coaches middle school basketball. So her schedule looks very different than it used to. I mean, if you're listening to this, you know for a fact, when you think about back on your time in college, you're like, what did I even do? What did I even do with all of my time? You say that now that you're in the real world, but you say that tenfold when you have kids. You're like, what did I actually do with my time? I am truly asking myself, like, what was I doing? So her schedule, this client, her schedule looks a lot different because now she teaches, she coaches, she works part-time for another company. So on our onboarding call, I had her just walk me through what a typical week looks like for her. And now that basketball is over, like basketball season is over, most of her days look very similar. So it really was a matter of us just like mapping out some potential schedules for her to choose from. Because I didn't want to just be like, here's a schedule, here's your schedule, no questions asked. Like I wanted to give her some options based on what you know was most that felt most realistic to her, but also that she enjoyed the most because I don't want to just force her in a routine that she's not going to enjoy. And so after talking through with everything with her, I had a really good grasp and I felt like I had kind of lived through a week with her. And so here's what I did: I went to AI and I crafted two different morning routines for her to choose from. And here's the thing about AI: the best thing that you can do with your AI prompts is to basically write a dissertation because the more details you give it, the better a response it can craft for you, and the better it gets to know you. And if you've never used AI before, what are you doing? I mean, and and don't worry, I'm going to link to a blog post in the show notes and in the YouTube notes for this episode with a copy and paste AI prompt where you can fill in the blanks for your own situation and schedule, and you can replicate this exact same practice for yourself. So after talking with this one-on-one client and doing a deep dive into her week, here is the prompt that I dumped into AI. I'm going to read through it exactly, but here's the thing: it's sloppy, which is fine. Like you don't actually have to type in complete sentences with AI at all. Trust me, it's smarter than you are. I normally just type a few complete sentences at the start, and then I just do like shorthand lists of like the actual meat of what I want it to analyze for me. So I just do a massive brain dump. Like I give it a prompt at the top, but then everything else below is kind of just like a short checklist for me. So here's the exact prompt that I typed into AI. I said, I have a one-on-one client who strength trains Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday each week. She teaches elementary education and works part-time for another brand doing their marketing. Here's her weekly schedule. She gets to school at 7:45 a.m. She leaves between 3.15 to 3.20. She works her other brand relations job about one to two hours per night, some nights at zero, but it's generally at least one hour per day. She works that brand relations job for a total of 30 hours every two weeks. She often completes this brand work during her planning period at school, but if she has meetings during that planning period, then all of that brand work has to be completed at night after school. And she generally gets to bed around 9 p.m. every night. I want her to strength train Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And I want her to do either an incline or an outdoor walk on Monday and Friday. Create me two slightly different schedules for her to choose from. Create a schedule A and a Schedule B. I want her to work out every morning before getting ready for work and factor in her getting ready as well. That is the prompt that I typed into AI. So if you feel like you have to just, you can only send AI one question and have it spit you out a response, you are you could not be more wrong. You can, this is a deer diary, okay? Treat AI like a deer diary. And it is so, it's it's scary. It's quite scary how smart it is and how quickly it can give you great, great results. So that was the entire prompt. And I would say that the large majority of women listening to this podcast probably have young kids that you are either dropping off at school or you're dropping off at daycare, or maybe your kids are a little bit older. And so you are maybe taking them to school or just maybe taking them to and from sports. But regardless, your afternoons, I can guarantee you this, they probably feel like a black hole. Because even though I have small kids, my afternoons can feel like a black hole sometimes. So this is why, this is the literal reason why we must win our morning routines. And I have created, like I said, the ultimate template for you to be able to dump this into AI so that it crafts a time-blocked morning routine for you. And I've made this template 100% customizable. Like I said, I'll paste to it in the blog notes, and I'll also put a link to that in the show notes and in this YouTube video. So all you have to do is paste this into Chat GPT or whatever AI platform that you prefer and replace these bracketed sections with your info. So here's the prompt. Now, the prompt that I just walked through was what I did for my one-on-one client, but it sparked this idea that I can create a super in-depth, generalized prompt that any woman can use for herself and her situation and her scenarios. So I have created a prompt for you, and I'm gonna walk you through exactly what that prompt looks like. And like I said, I'm gonna link to it as well. So here's what you would dump into AI. Create a step-by-step morning routine for me that minimizes stress and minimizes decision fatigue. Here are my details. I need to leave the house by, and then you paste in what time you need to leave. I need to be at work by blank. My kids need to be at school slash daycare by blank. I have X number of kids and their ages are blank. I want to include a workout that lasts blank minutes. I work out either, and then you insert either home or the gym. I need blank minutes to be able to shower and get ready. On days that I don't work out, I would like to use that same time block to, and then you can fill in either like sleep in, use it for something else. I suggest those two options right there. And then breakfast needs to happen for blank, either like me, the kids, everyone, and then you the set the another prompt is I have to pack lunch for, and then you enter everyone that you have to pack lunch for. And inside all of these brackets, I have suggestions. So like inside that bracket, I put I have to pack lunch for me, the kids, everyone else. And then I have to get the following people dressed and ready. So maybe that's just you, maybe that's you and the kids, and then I have a suggestion that you list their ages, and then it takes about blank minutes to get the kids ready. School or daycare drop-off includes, and then I have suggestions. It's either a quick curb stop and you drop them off, or you have to walk them in. And then my commute takes X minutes. I work either in an office, I'm at home, or a stay-at-home mom. I would like X minutes of personal quiet time, and then I put in parentheses to drink coffee, to journal, to read before my day starts. I prefer to wake up no earlier than blank time. The single biggest pain point in my current morning routine is, and that's actually open-ended. So you just insert a massive brain dump there for whatever your biggest pain point in your current morning routine is. And then the very last part of this prompt, we're still in the prompt, by the way. This is how specific it is, and this is why it's going to give you such good results. This is the last part of the prompt. Please give me a realistic wake up time, a minute-by-minute time block schedule for the morning, suggestions to combine tasks or simplify things, a night-before prep routine that takes me about 10 to 20 minutes and will help my morning run more smoothly. A nighttime checklist of things that I need to lay out so that my morning routine can feel more automated with very few tasks. And last, any other helpful ideas that can reduce stress in the morning. And then this very last line says, assume my mornings are hectic and that my kids are generally going to move slowly. This routine should feel realistic and doable. So that is the end of the prompt. And yes, you can dump all of that information into AI. And then you can even say, give me two different options, option A and option B. And the last part about the pain points is probably the most important because it allows AI to think outside of these basic templated questions and answer prompts that we're giving it. And that is gonna be what it really customizes for you when you give that brain dump of this is, you know, my current struggle with my morning routine. So that is the what I'm gonna have you to be able to fill out, customize to you the template. But here are some ways that you could possibly even tweak this prompt is you could add another line at the end. So after you type out that last line of, you know, assume my mornings are hectic and that my kids generally move slowly, this routine should feel realistic and doable. You could also say, please provide two separate time-blocked morning routines, one with me going to bed and waking up at X time, and another with me going to bed and waking up at X time. So this allows you to still have a time-blocked morning routine, even if you're someone who has a variable schedule, or if you take midweek rest days and you don't plan to work out. So let's say that you're a nurse and you work 312s. You are gonna need a different schedule for the days that you work because you probably have to be at work by 7 a.m. versus your off days, you have the flexibility to sleep in a little bit later. So you might want a routine for workdays versus days that you have off work. Whereas for me, my routine differs a little bit throughout the week as well because I have a son who's in part-time daycare. He goes Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So on a normal week for me, those three days, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, look a little bit different than Tuesday and Thursday. I generally go to the public gym Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I work out from home on Tuesday and Thursday. I personally already have a slightly different schedule for those days because Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have a little bit more margin in my morning, so I have a longer morning routine. I start my workout just a little bit later because I'm working out at home and I'm not rushed to get back before my husband leaves. So I already have that. And so maybe that's something that is going to be a good approach for you. And that's why you can give AI the prompt to create you two different morning routines. But like I said at the very beginning, something has to give. And that's why I've tied in the breakfast meal prep idea for you, because maybe you're currently making something in the morning. If you're superwoman, maybe you're making a nice breakfast for your kids every morning, or you're just still putting something together, even if you're not making this, you know, elaborate meal. You're putting potentially something together for you to eat, for the kids to eat. But here are some ideas of things that you could make in advance that are all so incredibly delicious, so easy to make, and macro friendly. I have four ideas for you here. One of them is the protein pancakes that you have seen me make almost every single weekend at this point. We are really on a rhythm of just loving us some protein pancakes on a Saturday or Sunday morning. And when I say protein pancakes, oftentimes protein-baked goods get this like ick feel about them. This is probably the number one protein baked good that I have made. It's not even a baked good. I'm making it on the skillet, so you can't even call it a baked good. It is a protein item that has protein powder in it that does not taste like you are thinking it does. These are the music, these are the most fluffy, delicious, high fiber because you're making them with old-fashioned oats. You're essentially grinding up and making oat flour. You're making it with oats so it's high fiber, but you're also adding cottage cheese and you are adding a scoop of protein powder, so it's also high protein. They're so, so, so delicious. I'm gonna link to those in the show notes and or in the blog post as well. The second thing is overnight oats. I sleep on overnight oats way too often, and I think it's because I just love a warm breakfast, especially if I'm at home. But overnight oats, every time I make them, I'm like, why do I not make these more? These are so delicious. So here's my go-to recipe. I'm sure there's a ton of other people out there who have better recipes than this. And you can't even call it a recipe, it's an assembly. You're assembling something, you're not making anything. But this is what I do I do old-fashioned oats, and that's super important because you want it kind of thick, and I love the texture of old-fashioned oats, so old-fashioned oats, and then I do one scoop of chocolate protein powder, and then I do one cup, so 240 milliliters of Fairlife chocolate milk. If you wanted even a little bit more protein, you could use a fair life shake, but I just buy the half gallon of Fairlife chocolate milk. So that's what I use, one cup of that. I also add some chia seeds for some extra healthy fats and fiber, and then some chocolate chips for some texture and taste. So that is option two. I also do a version of that with vanilla protein powder and regular whole milk versus the fairlife milk and uh the chocolate protein powder. So that exact same thing, but with vanilla and whole milk is also super, super good. Option three, this is something that I have made so many times. I share this recipe with everyone I know, and it's Jordo's World Tater Tot Casserole. Oh my goodness, y'all, I'm telling you, and yeah, it has tater tots in it. Who cares? It's so delicious. It also has like liquid egg whites, cheese. Oh my goodness. It is so, so incredibly good. So I'm gonna link to that as well. And then the last thing is also from Jordo's World, and that is her McGriddle bites. It's like pancake mix with a little bit of turkey sausage and some cheese. Oh my goodness, all of these items are so good. And then you just make them in a little muffin pan, and it's just these little McGriddle bites. I mean, so good. So there's four options for you the protein pancakes that I make every single week, overnight oats, tater tot casserole, and McGriddle bites. I will link to all of those in the blog post for this episode. So, in closing, like I mentioned, I have stuck with a morning routine and morning workouts for almost eight years at this point. And I'm not kidding you when I say I will truly never look back, because my morning routine does the following things for me. It regulates my nervous system, and I know nervous system regulation is such a hot topic these days. It does that for me. It allows me to start my day with peace, which I took for granted until I became a business owner and I became a mom. So many demands are placed upon you as soon as those kids get up, and they're the biggest blessing in the world. But when you immediately start your day with needs and requests before you have been able to take a deep breath, you feel shot. You feel absolutely your never nervous system just feels shot. So imagine creating margin for yourself where you're starting your day with peace, maybe a cup of coffee and some journaling or some reading, and then you're going into a workout that's also going to challenge you and help calm you down and help, like I said, with stress management, nervous system regulation. Imagine starting your day like that versus waking up as soon as your kids get up and being having all these questions and needs fired at you. I promise you, it makes a world of a difference. It also allows me, like I this is kind of feeding into the next thing, is it carves out time before anyone else needs anything from me? It allows me to prioritize my quiet time with the Lord and some leisure reading if time permits. It gives me a few healthy habit, small wins to immediately start the day. So for me, those healthy habit wins are water before coffee and then a workout. And then also because I work out in the morning, I'm getting a head start on my step goal as well. So afternoons are always unpredictable, especially as moms, because your kid's gonna get sick, your kid's not gonna nap, you're gonna have last-minute errands, your husband's gonna stay late at work, you're gonna have practices for your kids. Like I could go on and on and on. But if you start your day with an earlier morning, I swear to you, one, you will never look back. Two, the keystone habit of an early morning is gonna trickle positively into your family life, into your work life. Three, you're gonna become and feel more productive overall. Four, you're gonna become a lot more consistent with your workouts. And five, you're gonna more easily hit your step goal. So that's all for today. I want you to head on over to the blog post. It's gonna be linked at the bottom of these show notes and in the YouTube episode and paste that prompt into what. Whatever AI platform you prefer, customize it to you and become a morning person starting tomorrow. That's all for today. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the Daily Penny podcast. We're talking a lot about early mornings because I feel like I am the queen of early mornings. I feel like I have mastered them. And my workouts are a part of that. So if you need a game plan, if you want to show up to your home gym or if you want to show up to your public gym and be able to just open your app and hit start, knowing that the workout that you are doing is working towards helping you become fit and conditioned, head on over to my app workout subscription. I'm going to link to that in the show notes and join us today.