Whether or not breakfast is the most important meal of the day is up for debate. What’s not, however, is the importance of mornings. Laura Mae Martin, author of Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Well-being, says those first couple of hours deserve and require more attention than other parts of your day.

“Your main point of control for every day is the morning,” she says. “We tend to naturally use mornings as a place to be productive. You don’t hear a lot of people setting their alarm for 6 a.m. to play video games or binge-watch TV. So that hour in the morning is worth a lot more than an hour in the evening, and I suggest using it to set up the rest of your day.”

Here’s what Martin, Google’s executive productivity advisor, suggests:

START THE NIGHT BEFORE

Productive mornings start the night before. Martin likens it to meetings. “You wouldn’t start a meeting by thinking for the first time how you want to spend the meeting,” she says. “You’ve already lost a huge opportunity to make it effective.”

The same is true for starting your day. At the end of each day, Martin recommends making a daily plan for the next day.

“It’s an hour-by-hour contract with yourself to say, ‘What do I plan to do tomorrow, and when?’” she says. “A lot of productivity gets lost in the morning because you don’t have actual slots on the calendar to get tasks done.”

You will have already cleared a mental block if you’ve said, “At 10 a.m., I’m going to work on this project.” When 10 a.m. rolls around, you won’t be at risk of decision fatigue, trying to decide what to do.

COMPLETE A TASK FOR FUTURE YOU

Martin also does something the night before that she calls a “delightfully done.”

“When you plan your life for future you, you get a lot more satisfaction than current you,” she says. “When it’s 8 p.m., think, ‘What can I do for morning me? What’s something I can set up for myself that will delight me the next morning?’”

For example, you can clean the kitchen, set your coffee machine on a timer, pack a lunch, or lay out your clothes.

“Having something that makes you say, ‘Oh, that’s already done,’ will put you in that good mood right away,” says Martin.

BUILD IN A BUFFER

Once you wake up, make sure you’ve built in time before you start your first commitment to ease into your day. Martin recommends giving yourself at least 30 minutes. Her routine is to wake before the rest of her family, and she calls this time the “Laura 30.”

“I let myself be and do whatever I’m in the mood to do during that time, but the time is consistent,” she explains. “Some mornings I wake up and silently drink coffee and do nothing else. Some mornings, I’m reading a really good book. Some mornings, I have a lot of energy and want to work out during that time. And most of the time, I meditate and maybe journal.”

GO DEVICE-FREE

This tip may be hard to hear, let alone do, but Martin recommends not touching your phone during the first 30 minutes you’re awake.

“It’s like waking up and inviting work into your bed with you at 6 a.m.,” she says. “Wake up to yourself and not your email. When your brain is in that mode of waking up and thinking, What do I have to do? versus What do I want to do?, you don’t get a chance to reflect or fill the energy bank, especially if the first thing you do is start answering emails.”

In fact, she says you should leave your phone across the room, which is part of setting yourself up for a good morning.

“Devices play an important part in our life, but they’ve started to play too much of a part in our mornings,” says Martin. “You should think of your work like your in-laws. You may have them to your house, but you’re not going to invite them into your bedroom at 6 a.m. Treat your phone like a guest, and create boundaries.”

MUSIC AND LIGHTING

To ease into your day, Martin recommends listening to music that puts you in a good mood. “If you start that mood high, you’re most likely to have a better day than if you let yourself get in your own thoughts,” she says.

Pay attention to the lighting, as well. Martin suggests using dim lights when you first wake up, slowing raising the brightness and opening the curtains.

“As I feel myself waking up, my brain is saying, I need more light,” says Martin. “That’s when I hit overhead light. This allows your brain to ease into the day in a natural way.”

By taking the steps to create a productive morning routine, you’ll start your day with intention. No matter what the rest of the day brings, you’ll have filled your energy bank to be better equipped to handle it.