Jump Start Your Brain For Maximum Learning And Productivity With These 10 Morning Habits

10 Morning Habits to Prime Your Brain for Genius Thinking and Maximum Productivity

Jim Kwik is part of the Mindvalley Community and founder of Kwik Learning. He can help you to learn quickly by improving your memory and teaching you how to speed read.

One of the most common questions he gets is: “Jim, what do you do every single morning to jumpstart your brain for greater success, greater levels of focus, greater levels of productivity?”

This blog post will answer that question and walk you through Jim's morning routine.
 

Habit #1: Remember your dreams

The first thing Jim does when he wakes up in the morning is to have a process to remember his dreams.

Why do you want to remember your dreams?

The reason why is important is that as you spend your day learning and working and solving problems in your work, in your life and everything else… when you sleep, your mind doesn't stop.

Your unconscious mind is still working on those problems and you come up with incredible insights and solutions.

The problem is, in the morning most people don't remember their dreams. Jim teaches a process of how to do this.
 

Habit #2: Make your bed

The second thing Jim does after he wakes up is to make his bed.

You might say: “Why is that good for your brain?” Two reasons!

Reason #1: A clean environment is important for you. When you clean off your desktop, you clean up your office or your bedroom, you have a clearer mind.

Reason #2: You want to start your day with success because how you do anything is how you do everything. So you start with excellence.

Take two minutes to make your bed. It's really great because when you come home at the end of the day, you come full circle back to success.
 

Habit #3: Drink a lot of water

Your brain is made up of about 80% water and a lot of people dehydrate. Your body uses so much water and it's very important for your brain to be hydrated.

The challenge is, you lose a lot of water when you're sleeping. So Jim recommends hydrating first thing in the morning.

Habit #4: Brush your teeth

You might be saying: Why is brushing your teeth so important (apart from the obvious dental benefits)?

How is that good for your brain?

What you can do to improve brain function is to brush your teeth with your opposite hand (if you're right-handed, brush your teeth with your left hand).

It's been shown that by using your opposite hand to eat or to brush your teeth, as your body moves, your brain grooves.

As you brush your teeth with your opposite hand, it actually creates more neurological connections inside your brain.
 

Habit #5: Do a deep breathing exercise

The other thing besides hydration that's good for your brain, is oxygen. A lot of people get tired and they have brain fog and mental fatigue.

The number one thing is to get oxygen in your body.

And here's the thing, your brain only makes up 2% of your body weight on average, but it consumes 20% of the nutrients and the oxygen.

So it's so important to do deep breathing exercises to get more oxygen into your body. Jim talks more about this in his Free Mindvalley Masterclass.
 

Habit #6: Make a cup of ‘brain tea'

Jim makes himself a cup of what he calls ‘brain tea'. It has gotu kola, ginkgo biloba, lions mane, and some essential fatty acids.

These are really good ingredients that boost focus and memory.

Habit #7: Journal

As Jim drinks his ‘brain tea', what is he doing?

He's actually journaling because if you want to boost your brainpower, it's important to make notes.

And Jim has a whole process where he teaches you the best ways of taking and making notes.

With these notes, you can plan out your day and also write the things that you're most grateful for.

In the morning Jim goes through this gratitude process in his journal because your brain really thrives on gratitude. Because if you can't appreciate the things you already have, you're not going to be given the things that you really want.

So why focus on gratitude first thing in the morning?

Jim has a vision board and his goals to achieve everything that he wants, but he also has a gratitude board. The things that he's most grateful for in his life.

And if you want to feel instant gratitude, just count all the things in your life that you have that money can't buy.

Gratitude is also good for your brain. There is a cover story in Time Magazine on these Nuns, who are living to 80, 90 years old and above.

Where is their longevity coming from? Half of it had to do with their gratitude and emotional faith. The other half had to do with the fact that they are lifelong learners. These two things combined are very, very powerful.

A lot of geniuses wrote in journals like, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein and Marie Curie. Are these geniuses writing in journals because they are geniuses ?

Or is it because they're writing in journals that they become these incredible geniuses of their field.
 

Habit #8: Morning exercise

When Jim has finished drinking his ‘brain tea' and writing in his journal, the next thing he does is morning exercises.

It's not his exercises for the day, but just three or four minutes of high-intensity workout to get your heartbeat going. Because here's the thing: whatever's good for your heart, is usually good for your head.

When you get your heartbeat going you are getting more blood flow, and so oxygen, to your brain and that's very, very important.
 

Habit #9: Have a brainpower smoothie

What's a brainpower smoothie?

There are certain foods that are really great for your brain, and in his Free Masterclass Jim teaches you how to memorize these foods.

He just puts all these brain-boosting foods in a blender and makes a smoothie. This smoothie contains foods like blueberries and avocado.

Habit #10: Reading

So as Jim is drinking his ‘brainpower smoothie', what is he doing?

He's reading. Twenty to thirty minutes a day of dedicated reading, because leaders are readers.

The average person reads only about one or two books a year, but a successful CEO reads about four to six books a month. So you want to get to about a book a week.

So remember, first you make your habits and then your habits make you.

Design the first hour of your day to be brain-friendly and you'll win the rest of the day.

Which one of these daily routines would you implement in your life? Share it with us and leave a comment below!

Join the Mindvalley FREE Masterclass with Jim Kwik and learn how to enhance your brain performance from the expert who trained Hollywood stars on memory improvement. CLICK HERE to find out more!

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