What is your morning cup of Joe?

I've written a few blog posts about morning routines in the past (see "Today, I was a doofus...maybe I should use a checklist?" and more recently, "Feierabend").  As it turns out, the so-called morning routine is incredibly important, perhaps moreso than I even thought!  

I recently came across an article in the journal Personnel Psychology entitled, "Stumbling out of the gate: The energy-based implications of morning routine disruption."  It's really an interesting study, even if it's a bit lengthy (most cognitive psychology studies are longer than what we typically see in the biomedical science literature).  The investigators base their set of hypotheses on something called cognitive energetics theory (CET), which essentially says that we all have a limited amount of cognitive energy which we draw upon to achieve our goals - think of it as the energy of motivation.  Morning routines allow us to go through the motions at the beginning of our day without expending any of this cognitive energy.  The routine is automatic - we rarely, if ever, have to think about what we are doing.  When our morning routine is disrupted, we have to utilize these limited stores of cognitive energy, thereby depleting this crucial resource for tasks that we do later in the day.  In other words, our ability to perform our tasks at work require a certain amount of cognitive energy.  If we use this cognitive energy to deal with a disruption in our usual morning routine, we will not be successful in completing our work.

I see a lot of parallels here with the infamous radish experiment and the Stanford marshmallow experiments.  These experiments also suggested that we have a limited pool of cognitive energy (in this context, referred to as ego depletion).  In these classic experiments, cognitive energy was used to resist temptations (a plate of chocolate chip cookies or marshmallows, respectively). Once that finite source of energy was exhausted, subjects in the studies could no longer resist temptation.

Let's turn away from radishes and marshmallows and head back to our discussion on the morning routine.  The aforementioned studies found that when workers experienced a disruption in their normal routine (in one set of experiments, having the all-important morning cup of coffee and in the second set of experiments, more in-depth but varied routines, such as walking the dog or exercising), they were less calm (in other words, they experienced a greater degree of stress at work) and more likely to be less engaged at work.  Together, greater stress and less engagement resulted in a failure to complete their job responsibilities at work.  

Collectively, these experiments provide convincing (at least in my opinion) evidence that disrupting our morning routine is incredibly counterproductive!  As it turns out, that morning cup of coffee is really important.  It's not simply an effect of the caffeine in the coffee either - the follow-up set of studies support the notion that any routine is important, whether it's walking the dog, watching the morning news on television, reading the newspaper, or exercising.  

What is your normal routine in the morning?  Stated another way, what is your "morning cup of Joe?"  Whatever it is, these studies suggest that you should continue to maintain this routine in order have a successful day at work!