Front-Loading: The Tiny Habit That Changed My Life
I’ve always been a bit of a systems nerd. I love a clever workaround, a mindset hack, or a repeatable process that makes life feel just a little more in control. But every now and then, I zoom out, look at how I live my life—and realise that something I’ve been doing quietly in the background for years might be more powerful than I thought.
Today, I want to talk about front-loading: a simple practice that’s quietly shaped my habits, productivity, and mental wellbeing for nearly a decade. And it all started as a way to cope with grief.
Back in March 2016, my mum died. That week is a blur of grief and disbelief—but in the middle of it, I found a book that quietly altered the course of my life: The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.
I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest. The premise is pretty simple: wake up a little earlier and spend the first part of your day doing six activities known as the “SAVERS”:
Silence (meditation or prayer)
Affirmations
Visualisations
Exercise
Reading
Scribing (journalling)
You don’t need an hour. You can spend just a minute or two on each. But the key shift is this: you start the day on your own terms. Before the demands of life, work, family, or the algorithm start clamouring for your attention, you’ve already shown up for yourself.
You’ve proved that you matter.
That routine was the beginning of what I now call front-loading—doing the important things first, before the world gets loud. At first it was just the Miracle Morning. But over time, I noticed I was applying the same principle almost everywhere.
On Monday mornings, for example, I do something I call Maintenance Monday. Within an hour or so, I clean the bathroom, hoover, mop the floors, strip and change the bed, do all the washing. Is it glamorous? Absolutely not. But doing it early in the week frees up a ton of headspace. I don’t spend the rest of the week mentally nagging myself about the laundry or playing “should I mop today or tomorrow?” ping-pong with my own brain.
The same applies to work. If I’ve got a chunky bit of writing to do, I’ll front-load that too. I do my planning and creative thinking early in the day, before my energy and focus start to slide. I even do the washing up and walk the dog first thing—because getting them done early shows me that I can do hard things, and that the things that matter to me deserve my best energy.
That’s what front-loading is really about. It’s not perfection. It’s not hustle. It’s a quiet act of self-respect. It’s giving your priorities the space they deserve before the chaos kicks in.
So I’m curious—could front-loading work for you?
Maybe it’s journalling for five minutes before the rest of your household wake up. Maybe it’s replying to that scary email first thing instead of letting it rot in your inbox all day. Maybe it’s tackling a creative project with your coffee instead of doom-scrolling.
Big or small, it adds up. Front-loading is a mindset as much as a method.
What would shift in your life if you started the day on your own terms?
I’d love to hear your thoughts—hit the comments and let me know how you front-load (or how you’d like to start).
Works for me but only if I keep it bite sized!
My form of front-loading is: At the end of the day, I make a prioritized to-do list for the next day. Then, I hit the ground running in the morning because I know exactly what to do and in what order to do it.