A blank page is a bad place to start a routine. You end up designing the perfect morning, with fifteen steps and a cold shower, and abandon it by Thursday.
So here are five finished templates. Pick the one closest to your life, delete what doesn't apply, and try it tomorrow. If you want the reasoning behind them, read our guide to the ADHD morning routine. This post is just the templates.
How to use these templates
Three rules before you copy anything:
- Cut before you add. Every template here is already short. Make yours shorter if you can. Three steps you finish beat seven you don't.
- Keep the order. Doing the same steps in the same order every day is what turns a routine into autopilot.
- Let the alarm start it. The hardest moment of the morning is the one right after the alarm stops. The first step should be on screen at that moment, not in your head.
Template 1: The workday morning
For a regular commute and a fixed start time. About 35 minutes.
- Drink the water on the nightstand
- Take medication
- Shower, teeth, face
- Get dressed (clothes laid out last night)
- Eat something with protein
- Bag check: keys, phone, wallet, badge, charger
- Out the door
Why this order: water and medication come first because they matter most if you skip them, and the nightstand is where you already are. The bathroom, bedroom and kitchen steps are grouped so you don't wander back and forth.
Template 2: The work-from-home morning
No commute means no natural deadline, which is often harder. This one builds a fake commute. The full day is in our ADHD work-from-home routine. About 30 minutes.
- Drink water
- Take medication
- Get dressed in real clothes
- Eat breakfast away from your desk
- Short walk outside (around the block counts)
- Sit down and open today's first task
Why this order: the walk acts as the commute. It marks the line between home and work, and the last step puts you at your desk with something specific to start.
Template 3: The school-run morning
For parents getting themselves and kids out the door. About 45 minutes. It works best paired with a night-before routine that packs bags and lays out clothes.
- Medication, then coffee
- Wake the kids
- Get yourself dressed while they get dressed
- Breakfast for everyone
- Teeth and shoes
- Bags, lunches, keys by the door
- Car or bus
Why this order: you go first. A parent running on empty forgets the lunchbox. Getting dressed in parallel with the kids saves the fifteen minutes that usually go missing.
Template 4: The early shift
For when you're up before it's light and need to move fast. About 20 minutes.
- Lights on, feet on the floor
- Water and medication
- Uniform (laid out last night)
- Grab-and-go breakfast from the fridge
- Bag and keys
- Out the door
Why this order: light first, because it's the strongest wake-up signal you have. Everything else has been decided the night before, so the morning is just doing.
Template 5: The bad-day version
For when you overslept, slept badly or just can't. About 10 minutes. Everyone should have one of these next to their main routine.
- Medication
- Teeth
- Out the door
Why it matters: routines usually die on bad days, not good ones. If the choice is "the whole routine or nothing", bad days become nothing. A three-step version means you still did your routine, just the short one.
How to make a template yours
Take your chosen template and go through it once with a pen:
- Cross out anything you don't do or don't need.
- Merge steps that always happen together ("shower, teeth, face" is one step, not three).
- Move up anything that causes real trouble if you forget it, such as medication or your badge.
- Time it once on a normal morning. Set your alarm for that time plus ten minutes of slack.
- Write the night-before half. Every template assumes clothes, bags and keys are ready. Our night-before checklist covers that side in ten minutes, and the evening routine guide adds the wind-down.
Then run it for a week before changing anything. A routine needs a few repeats before it gets easier.
Setting up a template in ADHD+
ADHD+ is built for exactly this format. New to the app? Start with the two-minute setup guide.
- Start from Morning Launch, the built-in morning template, or create a new routine.
- Edit the steps to match the template you picked. Drag them into order.
- Attach an alarm, with the time and the days it repeats. Choose a real alarm that rings through silent mode and Focus, or a gentler notification.
- When it rings, start the routine from the alarm. The checklist opens with your first step on screen.
Want a separate bad-day version? Make it its own routine, so on rough mornings you can open the short one instead.
The free version gives you 3 routines of up to 3 steps each, which fits the bad-day version and a trimmed-down main routine. ADHD+ Pro unlocks unlimited routines and steps for the longer templates.
There are no streaks. ADHD+ shows how many of the last 7 days you showed up, so a missed morning is just one day.
The short version
- Don't design a morning from scratch. Copy a template and cut it down.
- Keep the order fixed, and let the alarm start step one.
- Pair every routine with a bad-day version.
- Run it for a week before you change it.
Download ADHD+ on the App Store or get it on Google Play
ADHD+ is an organization tool, not a medical treatment. For questions about diagnosis or medication, including when to take it, talk to a clinician.
