My alarm rings, and the first thing that happens is nothing.
I lie there with my eyes open and the duvet still pulled up. The radio in my head immediately switches on. Get up or stay here a little longer? What is happening today? Did I forget something yesterday? Coffee first or a shower? These are not three thoughts. There are twenty of them at once, and none sorts itself out.
Then I reach for my phone. Just for a moment, I think. Suddenly it is half past nine, I am still in bed, already exhausted, and the day has not even begun.
For a long time, I thought I was simply lazy in the morning. Now I know that mornings are the hardest part of the day for my brain, and there are reasons for that.
Why mornings are such a hurdle with ADHD
Immediately after waking, the functions I need most are still offline: planning, prioritising and beginning. Those are executive functions, and mine do not automatically start working just because the alarm rings.
There is also the dopamine issue. My brain does not reward me for getting up and beginning the boring part of the day. There is no inner nudge saying, “Go now.” The bed is warm, familiar and requires no decision. Everything else does.
That is where the problem begins. Each small morning question takes real energy. Individually, they seem like nothing. Together, within the first ten minutes, they leave my tank half empty before my feet have even touched the floor. I wrote more about why small decisions can be so expensive with ADHD and autism in my article about decision fatigue.
Why my autistic side does not automatically help in the morning
You might think autism likes routine, so it should help in the morning. It does once the routine exists. Getting there is the difficult part.
Lying in bed is one state. Getting up and moving is a transition. Transitions are the truly difficult part for me. Leaving one state and entering another takes real effort, no matter how small the step looks from the outside.
Without a fixed sequence, every morning step becomes another transition I first have to think through. ADHD means that sequence does not appear by itself. The two sides pull in different directions again, and I remain in the middle, unable to move beyond the bed.
The phone trap
My phone is the greatest risk in the morning, and that is not a coincidence.
It gives me dopamine immediately without asking me to decide anything. No transition, no hurdle and no thought. That is exactly what my brain is demanding in that moment. The problem is that I do not enter the day afterwards; I disappear from it.
Half an hour of doomscrolling feels like a break, but it is the opposite. I do not get up feeling rested. I feel even more depleted, and the sense that I have already lost the morning often follows me through the whole day.
What made the difference for me
Eventually, I stopped trying to become more disciplined in the morning. Instead, I removed the difficult work from the morning itself.
The trick is not to motivate myself from the beginning every day. It is to avoid having to decide anything. On a day when my mind had energy, I wrote down my morning routine once, including every step in a fixed order. Since then, I no longer work out what comes next each morning. I check and then do it.
The autistic side is comfortable because there are no surprises. The ADHD side is relieved because there is nothing to plan. For the first time, both sides move in the same direction in the morning.
What my morning routine looks like
This is not a template you have to copy. I am sharing it to show how specific my routine is. I divided the morning into small blocks that I work through in sequence. I never have to decide what comes next because the next block is already visible.
Block 1, arriving. Open meinsystem. Put in my Loop earplugs. Put on my Apple Watch. Brush my teeth. Sort my supplements.
Block 2, food. Eat breakfast. Take supplements and medication.
Block 3, quiet time. A fixed time for myself and my faith. I explain what that means for me in my article about faith with AuDHD.
Block 4, getting ready. Get dressed. Pack my essentials: keys, wallet, Loop earplugs and glasses.
You may have noticed that my very first step is picking up my phone. That sounds like a contradiction after everything I said about the phone trap, but it is not. Deliberately opening an app that shows me the next step is the opposite of doomscrolling. It is a tool rather than a trap. I do not open a feed in the morning; I open my system.
That is all. Nothing spectacular. The point is not the list. The point is that I do not have to invent it again every morning. The earplugs, glasses and other items are there for a reason too. They are some of my daily essentials, without which I quickly become overwhelmed.
One thing matters to me more than anything else: the first step must be ridiculously small. For me, it means putting my feet on the floor and opening meinsystem. Once the first block begins, the chain pulls me forward. The first moment is always the hardest. Once I have crossed it, the rest often follows almost by itself.
What you can take from this
You do not have to copy my routine. Take only what fits you.
Decide the morning in advance. Not at seven while half asleep, but the evening before, while your mind still has capacity. Write down what you do every morning anyway. Then you only need to follow it.
Make the first step tiny. Do not aim for “the perfect morning”. Choose one action small enough to complete even on a bad day. The rest can attach itself to that beginning.
Keep the phone out of the first hour. Or at least the first few minutes. Otherwise, that one object can take the whole morning.
Use the same sequence. The same steps in the same order each day remove the transitions where your brain might otherwise become stuck.
Do not demand perfection. Completing only three of eight steps is not a failed morning. It is a morning with three completed steps. The routine exists to reduce pressure, not create more.
One small first step for tomorrow morning
If you recognise yourself here, do one thing tonight: write down the first three actions you usually take after waking. Not the whole day, just those first three steps.
Put the note where you will see it first in the morning. Tomorrow, follow those three items without having to think them through.
That is all. No perfect system and no complete transformation. Only the first three steps moved out of your head and onto paper.
If you want to see how I extended this idea from one morning to my entire day, read how I structure daily life with AuDHD. If you miss appointments even when you can see them, you may also recognise time blindness.
I brought all of this together in meinsystem.app. You can explore it for free.