Our mornings were an incident. So I ran them like one.
For a while, our mornings weren’t a routine. They were an incident. Every day, something broke, everyone was stressed, and we walked out the door already behind.
So I did what I’d do at work: I stopped treating it as bad luck and started treating it as a system that needed fixing.
1. Detect: find what actually breaks
Watch one normal morning and write down every time you say “hurry up.” That list is your data. For us? Shoes. It’s always shoes.
2. Triage: fix the biggest fire first
Don’t overhaul everything at once. Pick the one thing that derails the most mornings, and fix only that this week. Small fix, big relief.
3. Runbook: do it the night before
Shoes by the door. Bags packed. Lunches in the fridge. Anything that can move to the evening, move it. Future you is not a morning person.
4. Retro: five minutes on Friday
What broke? What worked? What do we try next week? Let the kids weigh in. They have opinions, and they’re more likely to follow a plan they helped make.
The goal isn’t a perfect morning. It’s fewer surprises. What’s the one thing that always breaks in your house?