Mornings are not a girl’s best friend. If you’re a morning-hater, you probably wait until the last second to wake up, snoozing the multiple alarms you set for yourself, and then rush to get ready after finally turning off the last alarm. If you want to take the hurried frenzy out of your routine, here are a few tips for a stress-free morning routine.

Start Your Preparation the Night Before

Pick out the outfit that you are going to wear before you go to bed. Even if you don’t physically lay it out or hang it up, keep it in mind so there is no indecision the next morning. While this will become a part of your nighttime routine, it will make things a whole lot easier for your tired and somewhat delirious morning-self.

Another thing to incorporate into your nighttime routine is setting your morning alarm. While many seem to set multiple alarms just to hit snooze on all of them, it would actually be better to just set one alarm at the time you actually need to get up. Think of it this way: would you rather have more continuous sleep, or twenty extra minutes of in-and-out sleep while grumbling about mornings and hating your alarm for existing? Plus, the resistance to getting up will only roll over into your attitude about the rest of the morning. Start your day right!

If you have a hard time making this transition, think about setting an incentive for yourself to get up after only one alarm. Maybe leave your phone in another room for the night, so you have to physically get up if you want to check all your social medias. If you can’t seem to part with your phone overnight, try to set some other kind of incentive as you transition, like actually having the time to make a full breakfast. It won’t be easy to change your typical wake-up routine, but it will be worth it when you no longer resent the sound of your many alarms or risk sleeping through them after continuously hitting snooze.

Optimize Your Morning Routine

Whenever you finally get up, do not skip your morning routine in the bathroom—no matter how lazy you may feel. At the very least, brush your teeth, wash your face, and put on moisturizer. Your future self will thank you. Starting to form good habits is important, especially because we tend to act on “autopilot" in the morning. You want your autopilot-self to have a good routine, not get stuck in a bad one. So set up a routine that works for you and stick with it—before long, you will be doing it without a second thought.

Art by Nina Walat

Fuel Your Body

Eat breakfast! It can be so easy to abandon your first meal when you accidentally laid around all morning and need to hurry out the door, but breakfast is so essential in giving you energy for the rest of the day. Even if you just grab a granola bar on your way out, don’t skip out. There are also ways to prepare breakfast the night before so you don’t have to think about it the next morning, such as various overnight breakfasts and making coffee the night before so you can have an iced coffee in the morning. If you want to combine these two things for an even easier breakfast, try something like this coffee smoothie, which makes for a breakfast that you can drink on your way to work while also getting a caffeine boost.

No matter how lazy you are, there are some small ways to make your morning routine more successful. Never underestimate the power of preparing the night before and making some minor tweaks in your morning routine to completely transform your early morning slump.