“A sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed program.”
This is how Google defines a routine. Whether they are intentionally designed or habit by happenstance, we all have routines. They are woven into the fabric of our everyday life.
What are some of your routines?
Most people have a morning routine. Mine has changed quite a bit over the years, but lately my first 90 minutes of the day look something like this:
- Wake up
- Make coffee
- Read my book while eating an almond biscotti
- Shower and brush my teeth
- Leave for work
I’m not always perfect, but that’s the morning routine I try to stick to during the work week. It was designed to help me make progress on my goal to read 30 books this year.
The power of routines
Routines exude a powerful influence in our day to day lives. In the pursuit of accomplishing a goal, or mastering a craft, routines can be one of the most effective tools in our arsenal.
When you look at the top performers in any field, you see something that goes much deeper than intelligence or skill. They possess an incredible willingness to do the work that needs to be done. They are masters of their daily routines.
James Clear
Routines are a source of sustained motivation, time-saving productivity, and they free our mental capacity for creative problem solving.
For example, consider the sprinter who aspires to compete in the Olympics.
Her training will require hours in the gym building strength and agility. Then many more hours at the track. Over and over again, she must choose to push their body through physical pain and exhaustion if she hopes to compete on the world stage.
A well designed routine will remove the day-to-day decision making out of the process. In doing so, it will give her the motivation and discipline she needs to stick with it. A rigorous training schedule becomes manageable when it becomes just part of the normal routine.
In addition, routines discourage us from squandering our time. Like a chemical reaction, completing the first step becomes a catalyst for a sequence of activities that follow with subsequent ease.
In this way, routines are the perfect antidote for the chronic procrastinator.
Finally, we know that routines can be used to combat decision fatigue. Instead of expending mental energy on many unimportant micro-decisions throughout the day, simple routines conserve that energy for creative thinking and problem solving.
Steve Jobs famously wore the same black turtleneck, blue jeans and New Balance sneakers every day. Other famous businessmen and politicians, like Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama, have been known to follow a similar routine. These people choose to delegate what to wear to a standard routine so they can focus on making more important decisions throughout the day.
Healthy routines help us live more disciplined lives. They can make the difficult choice easy, and the trivial decision obsolete.
But is it also possible that a routine, intentionally designed to help us make progress towards a goal, could be the thing that gets in the way?
How routines become an excuse
I believe that it’s possible to put too much emphasis on a routine that it becomes a limitation.
How so?
Well, a few weeks into my new morning routine I became aware of something peculiar. On days that I overslept, I never returned to read my book later in the day.
“I’ll read tomorrow morning.”
This is what I told myself over and over again. I used my alleged morning routine as an excuse to watch Netflix at night instead.
Here’s my mistake.
I had elevated the significance of the routine higher than the activity itself. Reading was coupled so closely to the morning routine that it became very difficult to motivate myself outside of the time I had prescribed.
My routine had become an excuse to put off progress on my goal.
How to prevent routines from becoming mental barriers
So what happens when a well-intentioned routine becomes an excuse? These two tricks have worked for me:
- Make the task less intimidating
- Make the routine less significant
I make the task less intimidating by lowering my expectations. For example, instead of mentally committing to reading one chapter of my book every day, I now commit read just one page.
Committing to one page is a much easier mental hurdle to clear. Even if I skip the half hour of dedicated reading that my morning routine would have provided, I can still feel good about picking up my book quick after dinner and reading a page to feel a sense of accomplishment.
In addition, I’ve tried to make the routine itself less significant by introducing an accountability partner. For me, that took the form of a simple daily task tracker on my phone.
I realized that I couldn’t rely on the routine by itself to keep me on track to reach my goals. Like a sprinter who needs a track coach, I too needed something that would motivate me to make progress, independent of the routine.
Conclusion
Routines can reinforce positive habits again and again. However, I believe that they can also pose a mental barrier to accomplishing those exact goals that we designed them for.
Remember, routines are just a tool. Doing the work is what really matters.
What routines have you designed specifically to help you accomplish a goal? What happens when you skip the routine? Do you have other checks in place to get you back on track?
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