Routines and passion

Every weekday morning is the same. Whether I feel like it or not, however much sleep I have had, no matter what I have on that day. I do the same things, in the same order, at the same time. I have chosen to make my morning routine, well, routine. Every morning I don’t have to think about anything much, apart from what I want to. I kick start myself with a coffee. I don’t leave a trail of chaos around the house trying to find clothes to wear. I don’t go to work hungry.

It doesn’t take discipline any more for me to get up at 5:15am when the alarm goes off. It’s just what I now do. The start of my morning routine.

If what you have to do is tough, then make it less tough by thinking about it as little as possible. The prospect of getting up at 5:15am is a lot less unpleasant for me because I know the breakfast table is laid, there’s coffee already ground, and my Mac is sitting there charged and ready to use.

I never thought I’d become this person. A person of rules and routines. But I am because it works. I have modelled myself on success. Regardless of what he had drunk the night before, Hemingway got up and wrote at 5:30am every day. The poet William Auden said, “Decide what you want or ought to do with the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble.”

Routines are straightforward ways to help make it easier to be more disciplined. They are systems that I use to manage my life, so that I focus less on the pain of what has to be done, and more on the pleasure of what I want to do. Like writing this post before the work day begins.

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