What is your morning prayer routine? Prayer is probably the most important part of our lives, and seeing that it is so important and that we are called to be perfect, is important to perfect our prayer. How do you start your day? How did some memorable saints start their day?

Ideally I try

Wake up
Morning offering as soon as awake
Bathroom if really need to go
Morning prayers

I'm a firm believer that true mental prayer, and heart-felt conversation with God and the saints is THE key to holiness, for lack of a less emetic term, having a "personal relationship" with them.

Even with the Holy Rosary, I try to mediate a few minutes on the mystery before leading into the decade.  I'm a firm believer that Our Lady's primary intent with the Holy Rosary was to teach people mental prayer and meditation, so that by having ad certain part of the mind rooted on and focused on the repetitive words, another (higher) part of the mind can drift off to meditation.  I think that the tendency for people to have turned the Rosary into rattling off words was why Our Lady separately asked for 15 minutes of meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary for First Saturdays, since just rattling through the words without meditation defeats the very purpose she had for it.

It's also very important, IMO, to turn to God very first thing in the morning, obviously after hitting the restroom so you can actually concentrate   ... and perhaps a bit of coffee to help wake you up a bit.  Don't get distracted first by other stuff, turning on the new, or TV, or radio, or focusing on work or the day's activities / schedule.  Try to just focus on God alone for the first 10-15 minutes of every morning before attending to anything else.  If you have a family, it helps to try waking up 15-30 minutes (at least) before anyone else, so you can have the quiet to pray in peace.

So, many of the faithful don't know HOW to do meditation or mental prayer, and that's why I highly recommend those SSPX-type retreats (based on St. Ignatius).  If you can't make those, find a good Traditional book on the Spiritual Exercise of St. Ignatius, since he walks people through it.  Of all the things I came away from seminary with, the most life-changing was learning how to do mental prayer and to mediate via this method (initially).

What's the difference between meditation and mental prayer?

Something like this....
"O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer Thee all of my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day, for all the intentions of Thy Sacred Heart in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, in reparation for all of our sins, for  intentions of our associates, and in particular for the conversion and good intentions of our Holy Father the pope, for the grace of a happy death, for all the holy suffering souls in purgatory especially (names), for the conversion of all poor sinners especially (names), and for..., and for..., and for..., and for..., and for......."

So, since I've made the Total Consecration to Our Lady, per St. Louis de Montfort, I typically make my morning offering to Our Lady, offering whatever worthless merits I have for her to dispense with (again, as per St. Louis), for her to offer them to Our Lord as her own, and then to I ask her (in an unrelated request) to help my family, relatives, friends, those whom I've offered to pray for.  So, among the MANY benefits of the St. Louis de Montfort consecration is the fact that very often we have so many people we want to pray for that we can forget to mention them all, and so with Our Lady taking care of the application of our "merits", we can merely mention "all those for whom I owe my prayers or for whom I've offered to pray", etc.

In terms of offering our "merits", I think of it it this way.  We do NOT have any mertis of our own anyway, as anything of merit comes from Our Lord is in fact the Holy Trinity within us.  So it's like the kids who might save up some of their lunch money to buy their parents a gift for Christmas.  When I was in High School, we (my brothers and I) did that for weeks/months, sometimes going hungry, to buy our parents some beautiful statues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Of course, where did that money come from, since we didn't really have jobs (our dad didn't want us to work but focus 100% on our schoolwork).  Our parents were the ones who gave us the money in the first place, so we're only giving back what they gave us in the first place.  It's the same thing with offering our "merits".  We're only offering back that which God and Our Lord gave us in the first place through Our Lady.  Even though the money (analogy to merit in the economy of salvation) came from them, it's "the thought that counts".  Similarly, with our poor works, it's like a young child of some master artist who works hard to make a picture for his parents, coming up with a poor/crude crayon drawing.  Objectively speaking, it's pathetic, but it's the thought and the effort of the child that the parents see when they receive the picture with love from the child.