Today’s topic is probably something you’ve thought about, maybe even put some effort and energy into, but you haven’t quite reached the results you want—and that’s your morning routine. This is a place where many of us get stuck, and with today’s guest, Claire Edwards, we explore what a morning routine can open up for your life (hint: it’s more joy!).
Claire is a morning routine writer and speaker who helps nine-to-fivers unlock work/life balance with a powerful morning routine. She helps you find your “yellows,” a term she coined for the things outside of work that light you up. We discuss ways to map your “life pie” for more effectiveness and simple steps to take to keep your yellows and your life seasons in sync.
Her upcoming book, Yellow Morning (coming out spring 2027), guides you to break the eat/sleep/work cycle and find joy one morning at a time. Claire is a firm believer that there is no perfect morning routine, just the perfect morning routine for you!
Join us to learn more about how you can fuel more joy and creativity in your life through prioritizing your morning routine.
Book recommendation:
- The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Get to know Claire:
Follow me on:
- Instagram @stacyennis
- Facebook @stacyenniscreative
- YouTube @stacyennisauthor
To submit a question, email hello@stacyennis.com or join my email list http://stacyennis.com/join and fill out the form on the page.
How to build a morning routine that makes room for joy | Episode 276 Transcript
These transcripts were generated by robots, not writers.
Stacy: Welcome, welcome. Today we are going to talk about something you’ve probably thought about, maybe put some effort and energy into, but maybe haven’t yet gotten the results you want. And that’s actually two things. One is your morning routine, and the other is what that morning routine can open up for you in your life. We’ll learn about a concept called your yellow. I’m really excited about this, especially as somebody who’s not really a quote-unquote morning person.
Stacy: But I’ve found such power in creating really great morning habits to support the rest of my day. I’m really excited to learn from today’s guest, and you’re going to learn a ton too. So let me introduce you.
Stacy: Welcome to Beyond Better, a podcast that explores a simple but profound idea: we all deserve to live lives we love, and that includes our work lives too. I’m your host, Stacy Ennis, an author, book coach, speaker, and longtime location-independent entrepreneur, living in Portugal with my family of four. Join me as I talk business, location independence, writing, publishing, and so much more, all focused on building a life that is beyond better.
Stacy: Claire Edwards is an author and speaker who helps nine-to-fivers unlock work-life balance with a powerful morning routine. She is a TEDx speaker and the upcoming author of Yellow Mornings, a guide to breaking the eat, sleep, work cycle and finding joy one morning at a time. It’s set to publish in spring of 2027. Claire is a firm believer that there is no perfect morning routine, just the perfect morning routine for you. Welcome, Claire. I’m so excited about our conversation.
Claire: Thank you for having me, Stacy. This is going to be a lot of fun.
Stacy: Okay, so let’s start with why you’re so passionate about morning routines and finding your yellow. Maybe you can give us a little bit of your backstory, and also a definition of what your yellow is, so that we can use that as a foundation for today.
Claire: Yeah. So the short of my long origin story is that I was the girl who was taught: you go to high school, you go to college, and you get the big girl job. And I got the big girl job. Super, super thankful for that. But I got there and thought, I think there is more than this. More than just this eat, sleep, work cycle. I liked my job, but I wanted to have some things outside of it. I had other dreams outside of my job. So I started exploring things like yoga, a podcast, and journaling, and they brought me so much joy.
Claire: Having both the work and these creative things outside of it brought me so much happiness, to the point where, many years down the road, I realized these things outside of work are not just hobbies. They’re not just side projects. I coined the term yellows. Yellow is my favorite color, and it felt like it described these things that light us up. Having them outside of work became so important that I just called them my yellows. I think it’s important for a lot of people to find their yellows, the things that build an identity outside of work.
Claire: My book, which I just wrote alongside being in your group, Stacy, is Yellow Mornings, and it’s about using your morning to make time for those yellows. We’re all so busy. When I was working, I would get to the end of the workday exhausted, with no time to do these things I wanted to do, because all of my energy had been expended. So I did all of them, the yoga, the podcasting, and many other side projects, in the morning. That’s where Yellow Mornings came from. It has been such a light in my life, and now I want to use this book to help other people build their own yellow mornings and find an identity outside of work, and find what brings them joy.
Stacy: I love the concept so much. It reminded me that at my son’s school, which is a British international school, they have something called Golden Time. It’s at the end of the week, on Friday afternoons, and you get to do whatever you want. You can play with a toy you brought, you can read, you can play on the computer. It’s your golden time. It reminds me a bit of what you’re describing. My son lights up every Friday. He’s like, what toy should I bring today for Golden Time? He really looks forward to it.
Stacy: And my understanding of the way you run your yellow morning, and the way you teach others to run theirs, is that it’s not, okay, I’ve got to get up, I need to do my gratitude journal, I need to check the box, check the box. You’re creating something that you delight in. I’d love for you to talk us through what a yellow morning looks like. Maybe a little bit for you, but also an example of what it could look like for somebody with a life like mine. I have two kids and I’m running a business. Are there components to it? How do you build it? Give us a breakdown of a yellow morning.
Claire: That’s a great question, and it is such a personal thing. I always say morning routines aren’t the goal. Morning routines are the tool to reach your goals. They aren’t a destination or something you have to do. It’s about how you can use your morning to reach your goals, to do your yellows, to do the priorities that are yours. So it really is personalized, not copy and paste from person to person. But there are frameworks we can all use to help build it.
Claire: One of the things I start with is a concept I call the life pie. If your life was a pie, what are the pieces that make it up? How do you like to spend your time and your energy, and what makes up your identity? Examples could be your family, your work, your yellows, your health. What are the pieces that make up your ideal pie? Then, based on those pieces and the priorities you set, what makes the most sense for you to be doing in the morning?
Claire: What I challenge people to do is this: most of us, not everyone, but most of us, have some of our highest energy in the morning. So what is something on your life pie that takes a lot of effort or energy, that you could move into your morning? That way you’re using your freshest energy on a priority that means a lot to you or really requires it. And conversely, maybe you put your lower-energy, lower-effort activities in the evening to make space in the morning for what you want to do. So it’s not so much about time management as energy management. How are you placing your activities and tasks throughout the day in a way that makes it feel a little easier for yourself?
Stacy: I love that concept. I know a lot of your work is specifically with people in nine-to-five jobs. I have a ton of flexibility in the way I run my day. I can build out more time in the morning, not answer emails until eleven or twelve, and take my meetings in the afternoon. But that’s not the reality for a high percentage of the people listening or watching. Someone might be thinking, sounds great, Claire, but where am I going to find all that time? They’re working, they’ve got obligations. Maybe they have kids, maybe they’re taking care of a parent. How do you really make this work? How do you make space not just for a thoughtful morning routine, but for things that light you up?
Claire: Yeah, amongst all of our other priorities, right? The yellows, the things that light us up, tend to fall to the bottom of the list. And it’s, how do we consistently make time for them? There’s a lot to unpack there, but I think it starts with remembering that doing the things that bring us joy actually makes all the other pieces of the pie better too. When we’re fueling our creativity and our joy, it allows us to show up better in every other space. Remembering that moves it up the list a little, because it’s important and it makes all the other priorities better.
Claire: In terms of time, I like to think about what you could remove from your day to make space.
Stacy: Scrolling on social media, maybe?
Claire: Yes, scrolling on social media. Maybe checking work email again at 9 p.m., or at 6 a.m. when you wake up. What are the non-value-added activities you could remove to make space? Maybe it’s removing 15 minutes of scrolling and adding 15 minutes of journaling. Doing that time swap, that energy swap, is something to consider. It’s not always that this thing that brings me joy is another item on my list. It’s what I can swap out to make time for it, especially as all of us have a lot of priorities.
Stacy: Everything you said. It also reminds me of a tip you shared in our writing group. I’m 99% sure it was you, Claire. I think you’re the reason I downloaded Dumbphone, the app that blocks all my social media apps. I’ve been using it for a while now. Sometimes we actually need to impose boundaries around the things that are sucking energy out of our time. I also dropped out of a bunch of things I had signed up for. Should I be in the PTA? I would like to participate, but I don’t really have time, so I dropped out of two of them. Sometimes you just need to reduce the volume of all the things you said yes to and take back some of your space and time. Honestly, I don’t miss it. You can all deal with the problems and I’ll help where I can.
Stacy: What I really love about your approach is that you’re focused on the delightful parts of the day and on creating space for them. So let me volley a life situation to you, and I’ll share my own yellow that I haven’t made progress on. I’m very musical, but I’m not trained. It’s in my bones, but I abandoned learning when I was a kid. I just didn’t have whatever I needed to stick with it. I really want to learn to play piano really well. I took lessons for about a year and was relatively consistent, and I learned a bunch of Taylor Swift songs.
Stacy: What I’d like to make more time for is singing and piano. I don’t want to be a concert pianist, but I’d like to be able to hear a song and replicate it without needing to look it up. Nothing fancy, just simply. I know that will take time to develop. My current morning routine is very focused on reading. I read, I get some sunlight, I eat breakfast with my kids every day (we sit down together and eat a hot breakfast), and I journal and meditate. I work out in the afternoons. I read before bed, I’m not scrolling, and I’m in bed at about nine.
Stacy: So how would I make space for this in my life, Claire? My morning is very pleasant. I like my mornings and I look forward to them. But I’ve made zero progress on this yellow that I really, really want to make space for.
Claire: That is such a good question. You really want it, you know you want to do it, and you’re wondering where it’s going to happen. In a way, it sounds like you have other yellows already happening in your life. Reading and journaling are yellows too. And your yellows evolve, especially as your life changes: as you have kids, as you get older, as your job changes. We have to give ourselves grace, because we can’t do every single one. Maybe we can do some swapping in the future.
Claire: It’s funny that you tell that story about piano, because I played a little piano as a kid and tried to pick it up again last year and take some lessons. I liked it and wanted to make more time for it, but it fell off. One of the reasons, and I wonder if you’d resonate with this, Stacy, is that I have a lot of other solo yellows that I do by myself, like sitting down and writing, journaling, or doing a yoga practice, unless I go to a yoga studio. I didn’t need another solo yellow. I was actually craving more of a community-type yellow.
Stacy: Interesting.
Claire: So maybe there’s something to unpack there for yourself. With the other things going on in your life, maybe it just doesn’t fit right now. It’s not because you’re lazy or not prioritizing it. Knowing yourself, maybe it just doesn’t fit right now, and when your kids are a little older and there’s less you’re doing for them, that may be your space to be creative. There are phases, and things evolve. We don’t want to wait, but also give yourself grace, because you are investing in yourself through the other yellows you have.
Stacy: I like that perspective. It also makes me think that a lot of my personal pursuits are solitary, and I do crave more human interaction. I think a lot of us are in that space right now, just wanting more humanity in our day-to-day lives. And there are certain things, like getting my small plane pilot’s license, where it’s not the season right now. That’s okay, I’ve made peace with that. Remembering that life is long, and that you can swap things out, helps.
Stacy: The other thing I discovered that made the piano difficult for me was having to go somewhere and only get that one input. One thing I’ve done for my children, and I think I’m going to start for myself, is Hoffman Academy, an online program that’s really well done. I could do it in shorter bursts of time, without needing two hours to get out the door, get over there, park, take the hour lesson, chat a little, and go home.
Stacy: It’s similar to the advice I sometimes give authors who can’t hit their writing goals. Can we lower the bar for success? Does it need to be 30 minutes a day of practice? Could it be 10? That would be more significant than zero. I love that you didn’t just say, let me show you how to fit it in. You said, let’s critically look at this and think about how to create it, if it’s even the right time.
Claire: Yeah, and there’s that paradox where life is short and life is long. But I like what you’re saying about the smaller version of that yellow, like piano, where there’s something you can do online at home, a short burst. With the pilot’s license, my dad has his and worked toward it.
Stacy: Mine did too.
Claire: It’s a long, extensive process and it takes a lot of hours. So even if the two-hour lesson doesn’t fit right now, what podcasts could you be listening to? Are there communities? How can you keep that spark going with little things, like following people on social media so you can continue to learn about it, without requiring all of those hours?
Stacy: I love that. You’re getting input even if you don’t have the time for output at this stage. What about the person listening who’s where you were years ago? They haven’t really started, or maybe they’ve started and stopped some of this exploration of personal growth, fulfillment, and joy. They’re inspired by this conversation and want a really simple first step they could take tomorrow. What would you offer?
Claire: That’s a great question. Maybe you feel like you’re in a rut, really stuck in that eat, sleep, work cycle. Maybe you’re working a lot. I had a season a year or two ago where I was working hours and hours and hours and not doing anything to fuel me. I really craved something creative, something that’s mine, a little bit of time for me. So how do we start making that time? I think it starts little by little.
Claire: I have a chapter in my book about the beginner mode mentality: not starting in beast mode. You don’t go from not writing at all to getting up and writing for an hour four days this week. You start with small steps and small wins, because then the bigger stuff feels easier. Even 15 minutes is huge.
Claire: A lot of people also ask me how they even know what their yellow is. They know they want one, but they’re not sure what it looks like. I have a chapter in my book about figuring out your yellow, and one of the things I offer is to look at the content you’re consuming regularly. Your algorithm really shows what your interests are. Instead of just consuming it, ask what small thing you can do with it.
Stacy: That’s so smart, to use it as a tool.
Claire: Right. We’re all doing a little bit of that consuming. How can you take it and use it for good, so you’re not just consuming, you’re creating? Things like that can spark it. But even sitting down for 15 minutes and remembering that this is making the other parts of your life better helps.
Claire: I feel like I’ve been throwing out so many frameworks, but one of the things I talk about in the book is having an anchor activity in the morning. An anchor activity is something you can do for 30 seconds to five minutes before you go to work, that brings you joy and fuels you. It’s super small, so that even on the busiest days or in the hardest seasons, when you’re working a lot or family needs a lot, you can do something for a few moments to ground yourself and say, hi, this is who I am today, this is my intention. Then you move on. It could be a moment in the shower to take a breath, writing down what you’re thankful for, or writing down your intention for the day. Something small to get the ball rolling and keep the momentum going. I feel like I just answered five questions in one.
Stacy: All of what you said, but I especially love that last tip. I hadn’t thought about this in my own morning, but when I wake up, the first thing I do is open my blinds and stand there with the sun on my face. That’s when I think about the day ahead and try to be grateful. Sometimes I’m more grateful than others, depending on what’s going on that week. I set my intention, to be kind, to be present, and I feel the sun.
Stacy: I love that you said 30 seconds, because sometimes that’s all I’ve got. I got up a little late, okay, I’ll take my moment and go. I never even thought of that as part of my routine, but it’s such an anchoring experience every single morning. I need to open the blinds anyway, and I like to have fresh air anyway. It’s just 30 seconds to maybe two minutes of standing there. Such a great tip.
Stacy: Claire, I know you used your mornings to work on one of your yellows, which is the book we’ve been talking about, Yellow Mornings. It’s no small feat to write a book, certainly alongside a full-time job, and certainly at the pace, focus, and intensity with which you wrote yours. You were so on it and all in on the process. I’d love to hear about that journey, particularly what challenges or bumps you hit along the way, because you’ve been so good at sharing the real side of things, and how you overcame them to be where you are today. As we record, you’re just about to hand your revised manuscript over to your publisher and gearing up for a launch early next year. Take us through that journey and what you overcame.
Claire: The book writing process is something. I used my mornings to make it happen. I wrote 95% of this book between about 6:30 and 8 a.m., before going to work, because I knew that if I wanted to write this book, it wasn’t going to happen after work. I work in supply chain, eight to nine hours a day, and the writing wasn’t going to happen after that. So it had to happen in the morning, which lit a fire under me to get up and do it. But it was a roller coaster. The people in my life would tell you that.
Claire: I was in Stacy’s program, Idea to Draft. We wrote the outline, and by the end of the program I had written my entire first draft. I did that in about four months, which was pretty quick. To be fair, I’ve been writing for over seven years, doing newsletters and other things, so I already had a writing routine. That part was actually the easy part for me, even though it’s the part most people struggle with, getting the words on the page.
Claire: But then I hit a roadblock. In the middle of the writing process, I had gotten some other speaking opportunities, including my TEDx talk, and I didn’t want to say no to those. A lot of other priorities were popping up. So when I went to do my first edit for myself, a couple of months after finishing the draft, I found myself in a total perfectionist trap. It needs to be good, it needs to be perfect, this is my entire identity. Which is ironic, because I talk about how work is not your entire identity. Well, this book is also not your entire identity, but it is an important part. It was so important to me that it was good. I think I edited the full book three times before I handed it to my editor, which was one too many.
Stacy: Yeah, and an energy drain.
Claire: Total energy drain. I actually ended up in my first-ever experience of burnout. By the time I handed the manuscript to my publisher, I was like, my gosh, I am so done right now. Thankfully, I had about three weeks while it was being edited before I got it back, so I could come to it with a fresh set of eyes.
Claire: I learned a lot in that process about perfectionism. Sometimes done is better than perfect, and my eyes will only get it so far, so it’s good to pass it to the next person who can make it better. There can also be phases of the book writing journey where you’re really intense about it, but be careful that it doesn’t become your entire self-worth. There is more to you than that. That was a big one. Now I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the perfectionism, the burnout, and the second-guessing were the largest struggles.
Claire: I’ll also say this, because I don’t think I would have thought of it a couple of months ago. I follow a lot of authors on LinkedIn, because that’s where my interests are right now. I saw authors who are entrepreneurs writing their books and getting them out really quickly, or at least I perceived it that way. And I was like, okay, I’m working a full-time job and doing this. So I had to come to the moment of giving myself a little grace: it’s okay if you’re not publishing this on the timeline you first set.
Stacy: Yes.
Claire: My timeline is not going to be the same as everyone else’s, and that is okay. It took a while for me to get there, and I still don’t know if I’m quite there.
Stacy: It’s such great general life advice. I’ve had similar experiences with other things in my life: I had a goal, I didn’t hit it, and then I thought, but I set the goal, so I can move the goal. Life is life, things happen, other priorities come up, like you said. And just to give you some credit, you’ve still done this with amazing momentum. I love that you shared the burnout you felt. I really resonate with that feeling of wanting to get it to a place of perfection. I remember that vividly from writing my first book.
Stacy: Now, a dozen books later, I don’t even look at my draft before I send it out for feedback. I don’t reread it at all, because my energy is so finite and I have so little time. But that’s easy to say when you have a lot of experience. In the early stage, doing it for the first time, you really want to do a great job, and it makes sense that you’d keep working on it. But you may have just saved somebody today who has completed their draft, maybe done one revision, and is thinking about doing another one. Pause, get some expert feedback. That’s going to be your best next step.
Claire: A hundred percent. Right now I can’t even think about writing another book, but on the next one, if there is a next one…
Stacy: There will be.
Claire: Knowing myself, probably.
Stacy: There will be maybe a few more in your life.
Claire: That is my number one advice: write it, read through it one time, max, and then hand it to the next person, because your eyes will only get you so far. Get that feedback and you will be so happy you did. You’ll be like, oh my gosh, I didn’t even think about that, and it makes the book so much better.
Stacy: One of the things I often tell authors is that in your first round of self-revision, you’re not looking for perfection, you’re looking for completion. You’re focused on filling the holes: the notes you left to yourself, the data you wanted to add, the story you wanted to include. So it’s as complete as you can get it at this stage. Because, to your point, perfection doesn’t exist.
Stacy: I just came across a quote from the person who is now the creative director at Pixar. Around 2001, he had just completed Monsters, Inc. as director, and he said that Pixar doesn’t finish films, they just release them. I thought that was so perfect. That’s just what authors and artists and anybody in a creative field do. It’s never done. You release it at some point and see what happens.
Claire: Which is so scary, but probably more people do that than you think. You just have to release it.
Stacy: Just release it.
Claire: Yeah.
Stacy: Claire, I’ll ask you the question I ask all of my guests to wrap up. If you could recommend one book to our listeners and viewers, a book that has profoundly impacted your life in some way, what would it be and why?
Claire: My easy answer would be The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. So much of what I’ve done has come from that book. She talks about going on an artist date with yourself, like getting flowers for yourself, going for a walk, or browsing a bookstore. She also talks a lot about morning pages, which is morning journaling, something I believe in a lot.
Claire: I highly recommend it, and it could be a great book to read if you’re stuck in that eat, sleep, work cycle and you want a yellow but don’t know what that is. I think The Artist’s Way could unlock some of those ideas. It has some inner child work in it too. I think I’ve read it two or three times now. It’s such a good way to unblock some of the creativity that might be inside of you.
Stacy: Great suggestion. Claire, thank you so much for this conversation and for being with me today. I’d love for you to share with our listeners and viewers where they can find out more about you and where they can get your book. I know it’s still a few months away, so we want them to be in your ecosystem so they’re ready when it comes out.
Claire: The best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn, just Claire Edwards, or on my website, heyitsclaireedwards.com, where you can join my newsletter. I send out a weekly newsletter, so if you want to hear more about yellows, more about morning routines, and hear about the book, that’s the place. I talk a lot about the real stories and pain points of being a nine-to-fiver with all of these yellows and dreams. If you resonate with that, I think you’d really enjoy the newsletter and the book. Thank you so much for having me, Stacy. This was so much fun, and I’m glad we’ve gotten to reconnect.
Stacy: It was such a delight. I’ve been looking forward to this for many weeks. Thank you, and thank you to you, our listeners and viewers, for being with us today. I really appreciate your time, and I hope this has shifted something for you. Maybe you’ll take 30 seconds tomorrow morning to ground yourself and find something that helps orient your day, just like Claire suggested.
Stacy: I want to thank, as always, Margarida for her wonderful production of this podcast. Rita has been on maternity leave for a little while now, and we’re getting used to it, but Margarida has stepped up and made sure this podcast gets out. She is the reason you are listening to or watching this right now. And if you’re still with me, you must have really enjoyed this, so please take a moment to make sure you’re following me on whatever platform you’re on. If you have a moment to rate and review the podcast or leave a comment on YouTube, I would love to hear from you. I will be back with you before you know it.
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