On the Importance of Routine

Get up and do the same 5 things every single morning.

I don’t care what those 5 things are, but I know that you’ll get them done every single day if you make that part of your routine.

How easy is it to put things off, to think that you might get to something later on in the day when you’re not as tired, or have a little more time? Very easy. How often does that actually happen? Hardly ever.

You very rarely have less things to do by the end of the day; you usually have more. You’ve taken on more tasks that came up throughout the day, and now you have things that are due tomorrow which simply must be done before you can go to bed. That means the work you put off from the morning is going to get put off for one more day. Sadly, it’ll just have to wait.

But, if you make it a part of your routine, you’ll notice that you get it done without even thinking about it every day. Don’t even allow yourself to think about it. Don’t allow your mind to tell you that something else takes precedence over your morning routine. Spend time thinking about what you want as that morning routine, what you simply must get done each day, what is non-negotiable, and then factor it into your morning routine. The routine shouldn’t take more than an hour, maybe 90 minutes, but it should contain things that are good for your health, your spirit, your finances, and your profession, and it should be done in the same exact way, at close to the same exact time each day.

We all have things in life are just non-negotiable. You’ll get them done every single day no matter what. What are those things? How do you define what’s important to you?

Take a look at your long term goals: what are you trying to accomplish in the next 1–5 years? How do the little steps today factor into those goals?

Long term goals are the hardest to stick with because the end is not immediately in sight. And following the same logic, their steps are hard to sit down and do because we know that at the end of this step there will be another. If you’re looking to lose 50 pounds by the end of the year, you don’t just sit down for 5 minutes and all of a sudden have it done. You don’t just sit down for 2 hours straight and have it done either. Instead, you need to have ongoing steps that do not necessarily produce visible and immediately results in and of themselves. At the end of a longer period of time, however, they will produce drastic and lasting results, and not just temporary ones. Anything that can be done quickly can be undone just as quickly, if not quicker. But a project that takes weeks or months to finish is something that is bound to last.

Think of something that you really enjoy that is obviously a very high quality item. Let’s use the example of a high quality guitar that costs a few thousand dollars, made by a luthier. If that guitar could be pressed by a machine, strung, and churned out of the factory in 10 minutes, it wouldn’t have the same tonality, playability, or feel that the more expensive guitar has. That’s because the more expensive guitar takes a long time for a luthier to build — he has to steam the wood, mold it into the right shape, lay the inlays, and hand finish the neck, fretboard, and strings. All of these are done by hand on high quality guitars, and the sound of the guitar reflects the time and effort that was put it into.

Your goals do not need to be lifelong goals that require 8 hours of work every single day — that’s what occupation is for. They do need to be clearly defined and broken down into much smaller systems that you can input effort into every day: light work that takes time but does not take up your entire day. This is the kind of work that you want to factor into your morning routine.

Jascha Heifetz, famous piano player, was quoted as saying something along the lines of this:

When I skip practice for one day, I notice; when I skip for two days, my critics notice; when I skip for three days, the audience notices.

What he means is that if you let your work slip for a single day, you might get away with it. You’ll know that you missed an opportunity that day to get better, but it’s unlikely that anybody else will be able to tell. Everybody has off days, they might say, if they say anything at all. But you’ll know the truth: you chose not to do your Work that day. You prioritized something else over that and it just simply didn’t get done by the end of the day. Now after two days of ignoring your work, other people in the industry would be able to notice, and anything beyond that becomes obvious that you are simply not doing your Work, anymore.

Even writing this piece after a few days celebrating with friends and family over this past holiday weekend, I can tell that I’ve neglected my work. My ideas come slower, my fingers move slower across the keyboard, I’m making more mistakes as I type. The flow is off. To anyone who would watch me type and create right now, it would be extremely obvious that I have not been doing my Work over the past few days. I’ve neglected it and it shows. Luckily, in writing, the performance is not live, and I’m afforded the chance to review, rework, and edit before it’s published.

The point, however, is that I am noticeably worse than I’ve been the past few months. The reason being I removed this process from my morning routine for the past four days. I have allowed other things to get in the way of it and I haven’t made it a priority each morning. I thought about doing it, and then I thought about doing something else, and I allowed myself to let the mind do the choosing instead of taking direction from me. The mind will always choose the direction of the least amount of work, challenge and possibility of failure because it is directed by the ego and the ego is as fragile as it gets.

So … How do you get writing back into the morning routine? I know of only one way to do this: you must begin to do the routine every morning, without fail. You have to start. Tricks and tips are helpful, but the only way to make something part of your everyday routine is to do it every day. Tracking what you do is helpful. Tracking the streak of how many days in a row you’ve done something keeps you interested in keeping that streak alive, unwilling to sacrifice a day of the streak for laziness. In terms of writing, you can track how many words you wrote that day. For other arts or even time-bound goals that you’re trying to achieve, like finance management or reading a certain number of books in a period of time, you can track the time spent doing that activity. But it all comes down to making it a part of your morning routine and sticking to it in the face of all other options.

A few areas to focus on as you build your morning routine:

1. Get enough sleep. It is very easy to justify shortening your routine when you’re running late and you haven’t gotten enough sleep. If you get up at the same time every day, you should be able to plan on having enough time for your morning routine each day. But if you get to bed late one night, and allow yourself to sleep an extra half hour, or even hour to make up for it, you’ll be forced to throw out some of your morning routine because you just won’t have time to get everything done before you have to move on to your next task, i.e. your job. Go to bed at the same time every day, early enough to get up at the same time every day, and make sure that you give yourself ample time to get your routine done in the morning. An hour and a half should do it.
2. Create triggers to start and finish your routine. You should know the exact order of your routine, which should not vary day to day. The reason for this is because you want to create a habit loop where your mind does not have to think or make decisions while the habit loop is running. The last thing you want is for your mind to have to waste valuable energy every morning on deciding what to do. The routine should be triggered by something simple, like getting into the shower as soon you get out of bed, and should end with something simple as well, like putting on cologne before you walk out the door for work. When the routine has book ends to tell your mind to begin and end, you’ll know when you’ve accomplished your non-negotiables for the day, and you can go about the rest of your day undistracted. Do your Work first and the rest of the day will be gravy.
3. Track your completion of each part of the routine, daily. At first, it is going to be difficult to build your routine. Nobody is going to disagree with me about that, and the only people who say it’s easy either have a meaningless routine in the morning that accomplishes nothing, or have been doing their routine so long that they don’t even notice they’ve created a routine for themselves. Remember, a routine could be something very simple, and it’s totally customizable to you and whatever goals you have. But no matter how simple or seemingly mundane the individual tasks in the routine are, a good tactic is to track their completion each morning so you make sure you get each one done every day. Create a checklist in your phone or computer that you can update each day as you complete the tasks. When you get out of the shower, check off the box that you’ve showered that day. When you sit down to meditate, check off the box that you’ve meditated that day. You’ll follow a simple roadmap through your morning, knock everything out, and go on to tackle the rest of your day with clarity, ease, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing you’ve done your Work that day.

You can change your routine as your goals change and as you accomplish things, but make sure you stick to a morning routine. Your success should be a non-negotiable, and success can always be broken down into bite sized chunks that are easily accomplished daily. Even if your routine is made up of quick 15 minute blocks, each dedicated to a different task, track them, do them, and see what progress you make at the end of the first 30 days, 90 days, or year. You’ll be shocked at how the compound interest of your efforts will build over a short period of time.

By constructing a morning routine, tracking your morning routine, and following up on the goals that are associated with your morning routine, you can literally accomplish anything. I don’t believe that’s an overstatement. I emphatically believe that I can accomplish anything when the goal is broken down into smaller chunks, systematized, and completed with regularity every single day.

So the only question is: what do you want to accomplish, and what can you do every morning to make sure you get there?

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