Routines have changed my life
How simple routines help you (finally) take action to achieve your goals
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I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with routines. Being driven by freedom, routines often gave me the feeling of dread and repetition. Two things I was actively trying to avoid.
That’s probably why for the most part of my adult life so far, I didn’t have any routines at all. I woke up whenever I really had to. Started working when I felt “awake”. Holidays? Might as well bring my laptop to get some work done.
Nothing had real urgency. I was surfing on unpredictable waves of motivation.
It actually seemed like this way of life was quite productive. More so, I was convinced that it was the ultimate form of freedom. Living a life free of obligations and routines sounds compelling.
But in reality it's a trap, slowly pulling you into laziness.
Do you know that feeling that when you put your mind to something, you just know you'll do it? This amazing burst of motivation that helps you push through even the most difficult tasks?
After years of mostly neglecting routines, that feeling was slowly fading away. I could feel myself slipping into a vicious circle. Big plans, action, loss of motivation, abandonment. Repeat.
That's when I realized that this so-called "freedom" wasn't free at all. Quite the opposite. It was a habit of laziness, quietly formed in the background and slowly eating away freedom itself.
For freedom is doing what you really love. Not dreaming of what you really love.
Sun & Steel
My entire perspective on routines changed after reading Sun & Steel by Yukio Mishima. Mishima was a Japanese writer and political activist in the post-war era.
Sun & Steel was one of those books that brought the last piece to a complex puzzle that I had been building in the background for years. The final push that transformed my views on routines entirely.
And even though the book has nothing to do with routines, it taught me an important lesson. The lesson of Sun & Steel.
Through years of writing, intellectual development, teaching and exploring philosophy, Mishima became a very capable man. But exactly because he spent most of his life exploring his inner worlds, something felt missing. Words and thought can only do so much.
As he looked at himself through a mirror, he was confronted by what he saw.
Not his ideas or mental world. But his body. His mental world was vast, imaginative and well developed. But in the physical world, he was worthless. He could walk into any room and be seen as a great thinker. But not a great body.
If thought, ideas and dreams are the thesis, he thought, there must be an anti-thesis too. For Mishima, it was muscle. Real-life muscle. Through being outside (sun) and lifting weights (steel), he no longer only existed on the mental world, but in the physical one as well.
Even though Sun & Steel is not about routines, it holds a beautiful truth. Mishima's search for a counterweight to thought led him to finally see the physical world in front of his eyes. Years of having neglected his body.
Thought, dreams or goals only exist in our minds. Don't forget the Sun & Steel.
If you truly want to achieve your goals, you need thought and action. Routines are a reminder to consistently pull dreams from your mind and achieve them in the physical world.
Dream on. Set goals. Embrace the Sun & Steel.
How to build a simple routine
Routines are a profound (and science-backed) tool that allow you to identify goals and consistently put them into practice. Routines are all around us. Like the tides and the seasons.
Think of them as alarm clocks that regularly give you a practical reminder to work on a specific dream, business or goal. Build a good routine, and you’ll reach the goal step by step. But snooze, or forget to set the alarm, and the goal will forever stay in fantasy land.
Let’s be honest.
We all know those people who have lots of ideas but never actually make them happen. We all know some people who are constantly busy, but lack mental direction, never arriving anywhere. Be honest with yourself. Are you one of them?
Routines can help avoid these situations. In fact, many successful people use them to achieve their goals. Stephen King writes at least 1.000 words a day. Barack Obama maintained a regular exercise routine.
This is not about rigid 10-step morning routines with ice baths, special supplements and hours of meditation. There is no one right routine.
I’m talking about simple routines based on your own goals that you can actually maintain without burning out.
Sounds good?
1. Be honest about your goal
Routines exist to help you realize a goal in a structured way. Therefore, it goes without saying that clearly defining it is essential.
Starting a business. Getting more fit. Eating more healthy. Building a new product. Recording a podcast. Making social content... These are just some popular new years resolutions. Guess how many people persevere?
All these "goals" sound compelling, sure. No harm in that.
But why do you want to achieve them? What is the underlying desire?
Building a good routine starts by understanding not only what you want to achieve, but why you want to achieve it.
- Getting more fit becomes Feeling better in my body through exercise
- Building a product becomes Diversifying income streams through a course
- Making content becomes Build a personal brand through video
This is a call to dig deep into the underlying desire and motivation behind your goal. Don't just take any dream at face value. Be real with yourself. Keep asking why until you are satisfied with the answer.
Formulate an honest goal.
2. Find the smallest possible action
Routines should be simple and effective. They are just a tool to help you achieve your goal. Not a means to force them into reality.
Imagine an alarm clock that not only wakes you up 2 hours early, but also starts reading all of your unread emails the moment you open your eyes. It's a routine so challenging and complex that it becomes impossible to maintain.
First: start small.
Instead of coming up with big routines, break them down into the smallest possible action you can take. An action so small that it’s almost laughably easy.
- Posting 4 pieces of content per week becomes recording 1 minute of video every day
- Writing an essay every week becomes writing at least 100 words every day
- Going to the gym 3 times a week for 1 hour becomes going to the gym at least 1 time a week
Notice the “at least”. Create a routine for the bare minimum. The goal is to make it so incredibly easy to start that you have no excuse to break the deal.
Do this for a couple of weeks or months. You'll be surprised of the results.
By completing this small action over and over again, you can literally rewire your dopamine-reward cycle. This is the essential mental and physical groundwork for the next step. The reward? Discipline.
Then: expand.
As the actions you have to perform in order to maintain the routine get easier and easier over time, expand the frequency or the action. Slowly raise the amount of words, the minutes of video recorded or time spent in the gym.
Until you reach your goal.
3. Grow discipline
If a routine is the alarm clock that prompts you to action, discipline is the fuel that powers the clock.
Discipline is not just about honoring the deal you made with yourself in the short term. Like going to the gym this week. Or writing a post on LinkedIn today. It's the mental framework that allows you to actually persevere until you've accomplished your goal.
Implementing a successful routine requires both discipline and flexibility, which may sound like opposites. But it is precisely the overly-strict, difficult routines with no room for error that get abandoned two weeks after New Year's Eve.
You see, even with a deep understanding of your fundamental goal, wrapped in a simple routine... Life will happen. You'll mess up. Your mental framework must account for that and take responsibility.
When that time comes, here’s a little nugget of wisdom from the Stoics.
Every habit and faculty is confirmed and strengthened by the corresponding actions, that of walking by walking, that of running by running - Epictitus
Achieving your goals is an ongoing process. Not a destination.
- There is no point in waiting to write until you're an expert in social media. The path to becoming an expert in social media is in the writing itself.
- There is no point in waiting to build your personal brand until you have learned everything about marketing. You'll learn everything about marketing through building your personal brand.
Don't wait for discipline to build routines. Build discipline through routines.
Pursue.
4. Control the routine
Life is not a straight line.
It's a path full of obstacles, high and lows, storms and clear skies.
There is no one single routine that works for everyone. Experiment with what works for you and be honest with yourself from time to time. Does this routine still serve me? What can I change to get closer to my goal?
Routines are meant to be a tool that help you achieve your goals. But sometimes, you just have to admit that the tool doesn't do the job. In that case:
Arne
On the flip side, a simple routine based on a fundamental goal truly has the power to change your life. They're a proven concept tested by time, used by philosophers, wielded by successful entrepreneurs and backed by hard science.
So, what do you dream to change?
You've got the dream. Now practice sun & steel.
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