The perfect morning routine: how to build a happy, healthy start to the day – from showers to sunshine

You don’t have to wake at 5am or commit to hardcore exercise. But by working out a handful of habits that suit you, and introducing them slowly, you can change your life

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The first thing to say about the ideal morning routine is that it probably doesn’t exist. Yes, endless influencers promise that they have tweaked, tested and fine-tuned the process of revving up for the day, but how history’s most productive people actually get things done is so varied that it’s hard to draw definitive conclusions. Beethoven, reportedly, used to count out exactly 60 beans for his morning cup of coffee, while Victor Hugo downed two raw eggs after reading a daily missive from his mistress. Mark Wahlberg, on the other hand, wakes at 3am for pre-workout prayer, chasing up his gym time with a few holes of golf and a jolt in the cryo chamber before he even thinks about doing any work.

It is clear, though, that having some sort of routine is key: a set of automatic actions that you do every day, to ease you into your responsibilities with a bit of momentum and a fresh frame of mind. And there is some stuff that seems beneficial enough that everyone should be doing a version of it, even if individual methods differ: one person’s meditative bean arithmetic, after all, is another’s mindfulness. But if you want to finesse your routine, the key is to add one change at a time. “When you focus on a single behaviour,” says the behaviour change specialist Dr Heather McKee, “you build confidence through quick wins, and give your brain the clarity and dopamine hit it needs to automate that action. Once that habit feels natural, you free up mental space to layer in the next change.” But what habits should you be building?

Published: December 26, 2025, 4:00 pm

The secrets of the body clock: how to tune into your natural rhythms – and have a better day

Our circadian cycle doesn’t just affect our sleeping and waking, but our motivations, mood, behaviour and alertness. Whether you are a lark or an owl, here’s how to recognise your own rhythm

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It’s easy to hate clocks. Their unstoppable forward churn wakes us up and shames us for running late. They are a constant reminder that every enjoyable moment, just like life itself, is ephemeral. But even if we rounded up all our time-telling devices and buried them deep in the earth, we could never escape clocks. Because we are one.

We don’t need to have studied the intricacies of circadian rhythms to know that we are ravenous at certain times and not others, that the mid-afternoon slump is real, and if we party until 4am we’re unlikely to sleep for eight hours afterwards, because the body clock has no sympathy for hangovers. But to better understand this all-encompassing daily cycle is to truly know our animal selves.

Published: December 26, 2025, 11:00 am

My weirdest Christmas: on Boxing Day I vomited in the sink – and began to suspect I had a mysterious condition

At first I thought my spinning head and nausea were symptoms of a hangover. But could they be connected to a documentary I had made on Havana syndrome?

Waking foggy-headed and with the room spinning on 26 December is surely not an uncommon condition. Who among us hasn’t felt the effects of overindulgence on Christmas Day?

These were my immediate thoughts when I rose in such a state in my parents’ house in Dublin two years ago. An hour later, the room continued its relentless swirl, nausea was building and it was becoming hard to stand. So far, so Christmas hangover. I remained in bed and waited for things to blow over. They didn’t. Gradually, family members stuck their heads into my childhood bedroom and wondered if everything was OK. I could only say that I felt quite strange.

Published: December 26, 2025, 5:00 am

Experience: I cycled the length of the UK on a wooden bike

With no plans, I set off from John O’Groats to travel down south to Dover. Friends and family didn’t think I’d last a mile

Since coming to England from Ethiopia eight years ago, I’ve lost parts of my cultural identity. I was stuck in a monotonous, isolated routine studying for a biochemistry degree at Imperial College London, without the family-centred lifestyle I was used to. Back in Ethiopia, I’d be surrounded by my aunt, grandparents, friends.

So this year, I took 12 months out and moved to my uncle’s house in Leeds. The change helped me try new things, like cycling: as a child, I had never ridden a bike. I bought one in a charity shop. My friends told me that it was made for a 10-year-old and donated an adult-sized bike to me.

Published: December 26, 2025, 5:00 am

UK campaigner targeted by Trump accuses tech giants of ‘sociopathic greed’

Exclusive: Imran Ahmed says US companies are ‘corrupting the system’ of politics by seeking to avoid accountability

A British anti-disinformation campaigner told by the Trump administration that he faces possible removal from the US has said he is being targeted by arrogant and “sociopathic” tech companies for trying to hold them to account.

Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), is among five European nationals barred from the US by the state department after being accused of seeking to push tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.

Published: December 26, 2025, 3:01 pm

Our king, priest and feudal lord – how AI is taking us back to the dark ages | Joseph de Weck

Since the Enlightenment, we’ve been making our own decisions. But now AI may be about to change that

This summer, I found myself battling through traffic in the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat told me to turn right toward a spot known for its fish soup. But the navigation app Waze instructed us to go straight. Tired, and with the Renault feeling like a sauna on wheels, I followed Waze’s advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A trivial moment, maybe. But one that captures perhaps the defining question of our era, in which technology touches nearly every aspect of our lives: who do we trust more – other human beings and our own instincts, or the machine?

Joseph de Weck is a fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute

Published: December 26, 2025, 5:00 am

The Dominik Diamond alternative game of the year awards 2025

There was no shortage of fun and video games in the Diamond household in the last 12 months. Which ones did we play so much our thumbs hurt? And which one saved my soul? Let the ceremony begin …
• The 20 best video games of 2025

So, how was 2025 for your household? Was it really all as good as you pretended it was on Facebook? Full of A-grades for the kids and riotous themed fancy dress birthday parties for the grownups? Or was it a sea of disappointment with only occasional fun flotsam? And was any of it actually real, or are we all now seven-fingered AI slop beings with Sydney Sweeney’s teeth?

I have gathered my thoughts (and the Diamond household) together, whether they wanted to or not, to reflect on the most important thing in any given year: which video games we enjoyed the most. Without further ado:

Published: December 26, 2025, 10:00 am

Pig organ transplants could one day be superior to human ones, says expert

Surgeon leading xenotransplantation trial aimed at solving shortage of human organs says edits can lessen risk of rejection

A leading surgeon behind a clinical trial of transplanting pig kidneys into living humans has said they could one day be superior to those from human donors.

Dr Robert Montgomery, the director of NYU Langone’s Transplant Institute, said the first transplant of the trial had already been carried out, with another expected to take place in January. Six patients are initially expected to receive the pig organs, which have been gene-edited in 10 places to reduce rejection by the human body.

Published: December 26, 2025, 12:00 pm

Conservative and Christian? US right champions psychedelic drugs

Texas governor among those to call for expanded access to ibogaine, said to help with treating veterans with PTSD

For half a century, psychedelics largely belonged to the cultural left: anti-war, anti-capitalist, suspicious of the church and state. Now, one of the most politically consequential psychedelic drugs in the US – ibogaine – is being championed by evangelical Christians, Republican governors, military veterans, and big tech billionaires.

Many of them see ibogaine, an intense psychedelic derived from a central African rootbark, as a divine technology. In fact, some pointedly do not refer to it as a psychedelic, given the apparent baggage of the term in some circles.

This story was amended on 26 December 2025 to clarify that Americans for Ibogaine was not formed with, and has never received, funding from Rex Elsass.

Published: December 26, 2025, 1:00 pm

The Guardian view on adapting to the climate crisis: it demands political honesty about extreme weather | Editorial

Over the holiday period, the Guardian leader column is looking ahead at the themes of 2026. Today we look at how the struggle to adapt to a dangerously warming world has become a test of global justice

The record-breaking 252mph winds of Hurricane Melissa that devastated Caribbean islands at the end of October were made five times more likely by the climate crisis. Scorching wildfire weather in Spain and Portugal during the summer was made 40 times more likely, while June’s heatwave in England was made 100 times more likely.

Attribution science has made one thing clear: global heating is behind today’s extreme weather. That greenhouse gas emissions warmed the planet was understood. What can now be shown is that this warming produces record heatwaves and more violent storms with increasing frequency.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Published: December 26, 2025, 5:30 pm

Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing

These fungi boost plant growth and restore depleted ecosystems, but federal funding for a library housing them has been cut – and it may be forced to close

Inside a large greenhouse at the University of Kansas, Professor Liz Koziol and Dr Terra Lubin tend rows of sudan grass in individual plastic pots. The roots of each straggly plant harbor a specific strain of invisible soil fungus. The shelves of a nearby cold room are stacked high with thousands of plastic bags and vials containing fungal spores harvested from these plants, then carefully preserved by the researchers.

The samples in this seemingly unremarkable room are part of the International Collection of Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (INVAM), the world’s largest living library of soil fungi. Four decades in the making, it could cease to exist within a year due to federal budget cuts.

Published: December 26, 2025, 5:00 pm