Is the "That Girl" Morning Routine Actually Helping?
You know the format: alarm at 5am, water with lemon, journalling, gym, matcha, laptop open by eight, filmed throughout.
It's easy to dismiss and worth taking seriously, because a large number of people have restructured their mornings around it.
What's genuinely good in it
A consistent wake time. The most valuable habit in the whole video, and the one nobody mentions. It anchors the body clock more effectively than anything you do in the evening.
Getting light early. Often incidental — the gym, the walk, the curtains opened for filming — but real.
Not starting with the phone. Ironically true, even when the phone is what's recording.
Deciding the morning in advance. Removing decisions from the first hour genuinely works, whatever fills it.
What's neutral
The matcha, the lemon water, the specific journal. Fine, pleasant, unlikely to be doing what's claimed. Nobody's life changed because of the lemon.
What's actively harmful
The 5am part, if the night hasn't moved with it.
This is the whole problem. Waking at five is not a virtue in itself — it's a wake time, and it only works if bedtime moved earlier to match. Getting up at five after going to bed at midnight isn't discipline. It's a five-hour night with a filter on it.
And chronotype is substantially genetic. A natural late type forcing themselves to 5am is fighting their own biology daily, and losing — which is not a moral failing, whatever the comments section says.
The videos show you the wake time because it's filmable. They can't show you the bedtime, which is the half that determines whether any of it works.
The second problem: it's a performance
A routine designed to be filmed has requirements a routine doesn't. It needs to photograph well, involve the right objects, and be repeatable enough to post.
That's not a morning. That's a shoot, and there's a specific exhaustion that comes from performing rest.
The honest version
Keep the wake time — whatever hour genuinely suits you. Get outside early. Don't start with the phone. Decide the night before what the first task is.
Then drop everything else, including the five o'clock, including the camera. What's left is most of the benefit and none of the cost.
