The Anti-Morning Routine

Hey there, 👋🏼

You must have noticed the strange reverence our culture has towards the “perfect morning routine.”

These days it is all about:
Cold plunge. Gratitude journal. 90-minute deep work block. Green juice.

The idea behind it is: if you just stack the right sequence of optimized actions, your creative genius will report for duty. Like clockwork.

But here’s the thing: creativity isn’t mechanical. It’s metabolic.
It doesn't show up on command. It doesn’t obey a checklist. And for many of us, forcing a fixed ritual feels like trying to lasso a cloud.

I’ve tried the morning routine game. And while there’s nothing wrong with rhythm or ritual, I’ve learned that creativity flows best when I started building conditions, not commandments around them.

Here’s what worked for me.

The Anti-Routine: 5 Practices That Keep My Creativity Alive

1. Fall asleep with intention
I don’t obsess over how I wake up—I curate how I drift off.
Sometimes with a book. Sometimes with healing music.
Why? Because what you feed your mind before sleep marinates overnight.
Your subconscious doesn’t clock out. It composts. It plays.
And in the morning, you often wake up with clarity you didn’t force.

2. Let your waking mind wander
Before reaching for your phone, keep your eyes closed.
Instead of scanning emails, scan your feelings.
What are you feeling? What thoughts are surfacing?

There’s science to this. Neuroscientists call the first few minutes after waking the hypnopompic state.
It’s a liminal space between dreaming and wakefulness, where the brain is still rich in theta waves—linked to creativity, insight, and intuition.
Some of our best ideas surface when we’re not fully “on.”

3. Break mid-sentence
If you’re writing, don’t stop at a natural conclusion.
Stop in the middle of a thought.
It sounds counterintuitive, but when you return, you’re not starting from zero. You’re picking up a live thread.
That momentum matters.

4. Capture sparks in real time
Ideas rarely arrive on schedule.
So I write them down as they come—in my notes app, on paper, even in voice memos.
I don’t judge or edit them in the moment. I return later to shape and expand.
Creative momentum is built on trust: trust that your brain will deliver, and you won’t lose it when it does.

5. Kill the artificial deadline
Not all deadlines are bad—but arbitrary, self-imposed ones, often backfire.
When you pressure creativity into a narrow window, you strangle nuance and depth.
Unless you’re someone who can reliably turn anything into art in 15 minutes, don’t pretend you’re immune to time.

✴︎ Creative people are weird. Let them be.

You don’t need to conform to productivity culture to make great work.
Plenty of brilliant minds didn’t.

• Maya Angelou rented hotel rooms just to write. No distractions. No comfort. Just empty space.

• Beethoven counted out 60 coffee beans every morning for his perfect brew.

• Agatha Christie plotted murders while eating apples in the bath.

None of it “makes sense.” And that’s the point.

Creativity isn’t rational. It’s ritualistic. But the rituals should serve you—not trap you.

This week’s SaaS recommendation

Like the newsletter? Would love it if you would share it on your socials and with your marketer and founder friends!

Till I see you next, I hope you get a lot done and post more!

Cheers,

Proma

Answer to Quiz: B. Marcel Proust
Proust famously wrote much of In Search of Lost Time from his bed, in a cork-lined room, often late into the night. He believed lying down helped him access the depth of memory and imagination required for his work.