Mom Morning Routine That Actually Works When Solo Parenting

I used to think a good morning meant I'd prepped everything the night before. Then I became a mom who sometimes parents solo while her husband is on shift, and that whole plan fell apart.

This episode is about what I actually do instead. Three habit stacks that run on autopilot enough to survive interruptions, missed alarms, and kids who want in on whatever I'm doing. I get into the small stuff that makes a real difference, plus the mindset shift that stopped me from feeling like a failure every time a morning didn't go as planned.

If your mornings rarely go the way you plan them either, this one's for you. Subscribe or leave a rating if it was helpful, it makes a bigger difference than you'd think.

Inside this episode:

• The habit stacking method that beats a rigid routine every time
• My 75 percent rule for the mornings that don't go as planned
• A simple way to start your first stack without overhauling your whole life

If this one hit home, subscribe or leave a rating. It genuinely helps more than you'd think.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I know everyone says your morning technically starts the night before, right? You want to prep for your morning to be successful. And in reality, yes, yes, that's true. They're right. Things do feel easier when you're able to prep the night before. But realistically, that's not always the case, especially right now. So when my husband is on a shift, I'm solo parenting, that's just not always a situation that I can control. And so instead of relying on my ability to prepare for the morning, B whether or not it is successful or not, I significantly have it stack my mornings. So I'm gonna give you my three primary stacks plus a huge mindset rule that just completely changed the game for me in terms of making mornings work when nothing's really in your corner to make sure that it's gonna go smoothly. So let's jump into it. Hey mama, I'm Dana. Welcome to the podcast for entrepreneur moms who are done being overwhelmed and are ready to thrive. This is where we skip the fluff and get straight to what works for moms in the business world. I went from feeling stuck and overwhelmed in my white coat to a CEO running a business I absolutely love. And now I help mom entrepreneurs do the same. You're gonna get the strategy, the mindset, and the straight up honesty nobody else is giving you. So if you're ready to stop surviving and start thriving as a mama CEO, you are so in the right place. Let's get into it. I think people overcomplicate habit stacking a lot. It's basically just attaching the thing that you want to do to something that you already do on autopilot. So it stops requiring as much willpower or memory to get it done. If you really want to nerd out on this, it's straight out of Atomic Habocks by James Clear. Highly recommend. I did the audiobook style, just listen to it in the car. But in addition to just the necessity of habit stacking and how efficient that is, I needed to figure out how to make things work in a way that my kids could mess up and I could still get a majority of it done. So for me, some of my stacks are there just because they have to be there. I just have to get them done in some way. But I've also come to recognize that there are some more ideal things that just make my day feel and run so much smoother when they do happen. So I prioritize those two as much as possible. Now, before I even tell you what this typical morning looks like, I want you to hear me out on something. This whole scenario top to bottom will happen roughly 75% of the time. And that's probably being generous. Some mornings are just less in my control, and I've learned to become okay with that. It doesn't mean that I don't have to aim for something ideal and that everything just has to go out the window. Like I'm still aiming for this type of morning, even though that's not always gonna be the case. So I want you to hold on to that as I review this routine because you don't need another perfect morning layout just to fail at it. You just need to aim for what's gonna work best for you on most days and not be mad when it doesn't work out the way you ideally think it will. So the three stacks that I go through every single morning. Um, the first one's very simple. Just because I wake up so freaking early in the morning, I just need to get myself out of bed. And as I get up and I start to come to the reality that it's a new day, I feel a lot better. But that initial stack is super small because it's just it's a lot. So I wake up at like 4:30, 445, usually one snooze in the morning, and then get up, brush my teeth, and change. So brushing my teeth is like that core habit that you just do on autopilot, and so I change immediately afterwards. That's just like my two connectors, and that changing helps me be able to just signify that we are out of pajamas and we're going to have a productive day, right? Now, because my alarm goes off so freaking early, I have a huge tendency to snooze and sleep through it. So there are some mornings where I just I just don't, plain and simple. But to better equipped me to be able to get up, I use different apps or hacks to make it more difficult to snooze through. So there's a alarmy app that I have used for years. Yes, it's paid, I think it's like eight or nine dollars, but you have to get up and take a picture of something or do some sort of task before the alarm will turn off. And you can automatically preset in snoozes. So I like to snooze a little bit. So I'll say, okay, I can have one 10-minute snooze, and then this alarm goes off until I take a picture of my toothbrush. And so that helps you get into the rhythm of like just getting up because you you have to, and then once you're up, you're up. Other people just put their phone in a different area of the room where they can't reach it, they have to get up, and then they're already up. Just doing something to create that momentum, even if it's so small, is a good first stack to have. Okay, let's jump to the second stack. This is kind of where I start to slowly wake up and start filling my cup. So I I love coffee. I love coffee in the morning. Give me more caffeine, always please. But I recognize that I need to drink water also, and that's important first thing in the morning when you're already dehydrated. So I reduce my decision fatigue. I'm not thinking water or coffee. I do 10 large sips, chugs of water, and then I get my coffee. So 10 sips, and then my coffee is ready to go for me. So that allows me just to say, I'm gonna get in 10. It's already a preset number. Just take those 10 big chugs, and then you can have your warm cup of coffee. After I grab my coffee, I'll go sit on the couch for a little bit. I put my red light therapy masks thing on my face and my chest, and I will read for about 10 minutes out of my morning book. So I love reading. I'm a very slow reader though. I just, I don't know. I don't, I need to read slow and just take it in. So I take about one personal development book a quarter, and that is my morning read throughout the quarter. I like reading personal development in the morning and then reading for fun in the evening if I have time. So right now I'm reading The Burnt Out Bitch and The Regulated Bitch, which is kind of like a combo series by Gwen Taylor. And I will say these books, just because of the titles, I'm either like, I'm either gonna hate this or I'm really gonna like this. And this is actually one that I really like. I feel like she grasps kind of this like overachiever type A, you know, wanting to do more kind of person, and doesn't just explain what that looks like, but also gives things that you can try to be able to combat that in a healthy way. So I'm really enjoying this one. I will link that down in the description. So I'll put my red light mask on. I will read my personal development book for about 10 minutes, like I said, and then I have a little chunk of time. It's usually somewhere between 35 and 45 minutes after this to either go get a quick workout in or get some work done. So it just depends on how my workload is flowing and how I'm feeling, whether I work out or just get some business work done. Now, the third stack is my heaviest stack. This is the typically the one where my kids are starting to wake up and be around as I'm doing this. So I need it to be intentional. So after I work out or get some work done, I'll you know, go to the kitchen, ice roll my face, get my electrolyte water with lemon going, and then head upstairs to get ready. Now, while I'm getting ready itself, I have like a value business podcast playing, and I have my granola app out. That way I can take notes on it and actually implement it later versus just listening and taking it in. I feel like I always listen to something and I'm like, you need to remember that, you should do that. If I just have granola playing, it's taking all those notes for me. I can quickly voice note in what I want to remember and do later and then actually do it versus having to re-listen to anything. Now that's kind of the business side, right? But now the personal side is as I'm getting ready, all of my beauty and health supplements are in my makeup drawer. So I already have my water from downstairs and my supplements are just there. So, like I will, you know, nip on my collagen jelly and take my pills. That way they're just there as I'm getting ready. There's really no excuse. If I'm putting on concealer, I can take my supplements. And so I love having those there together. That way they are just consistently there. Because if you didn't know this, if you don't take supplements consistently, you're not going to see a beneficial impact of them. You're wasting your money. So put them somewhere where you are the most consistent so you can see those benefits. Now, right now my kids are a little bit older, they're four and five. So I wake them up like on my way upstairs to get ready, and they'll get ready alongside me. We usually quote unquote race because we're all Tauruses and just a little bit competitive. But when they are younger, or when they were younger, I would try to get all of this done before they woke up or before I had to wake them up. Or if they just woke up, I would grab them some milk and they would lay in my bed and watch a show while I finished getting ready. That like flexibility was really important for me, especially when I was doing solo mornings. Although it took a little bit of anxiety and time just to get used to it, because I was like, no, I have to get this done before they wake up, versus just letting life be life and saying, you know, 15 minutes of a show and you can just chill in my bed while I finish filling my cup. Like that just worked so much better for me. So it took time, but we got there. But now they just get up, we get ready together, and they can play while mom finishes um getting herself ready. So that's those are my three morning stacks. And I think I'm hoping that after I go through all of those, like those don't seem as aggressive as what you are maybe envisioning these morning stacks need to look like. But within that time frame, I'm able to prioritize myself, prioritize my health, prioritize my mind and body, and prepare myself for the day. And that's really the goal of a morning routine. So we don't need to overcomplicate this to make it valuable. And I think that's really what I want you to take away from here. So be thinking about your mornings and what those core stacks are that really set you up for a successful day. And if you have no stacks right now and you know, no morning routine, that's okay. I also don't want you to jump in and start doing all of this at once because that's realistically not going to work. Just pick a section at a time and start making that habit and that habit stack stick and then add the next one that there's no race here, right? And then just please, please remember this 75% rule or the 80-20 rule, however, is easiest for you to remember. I know people say 80-20 a lot more, but you're gonna aim for this ideal world when you can, but when you can will not be every single day, and we have to internally be okay with that and give ourselves some grace and just shoot and control what we can. Okay, I'm gonna put this at the end where I I know that I shouldn't, but I'm going to anyways. I want to make sure that you're getting value from these podcasts. And if you made it this far, I'm going to assume this topic in some way was helpful for you. So if that is the case, I would love if you took a second to press subscribe or leave me a rating. It helps so much more than you know.