Routines: How to Do A Hard Reset On Your Life

It's really hard to have a good day when:

• You wake up tired

• You don't pour your energy into your own creation

• You amuse yourself with social media

• You don't move your body

• You eat shit food

• You don't talk to your friends or family

• You scroll at midnight

More people need to realize — your life is your routine, not the gaps in between.

If you think your life sucks — ask yourself why does my routine suck?

If you want to unfuck your life — ask yourself how can I unfuck my routines?

Two questions more questions to ask yourself:

What are you doing that makes your life worse?

What are you not doing that makes your life better?

The Power of Routines

Really drive this into your head:

Your routines is where your life occurs.

Most of what you do are habits you have done hundreds if not thousands of times. Thread these habits together and you have a routine.

Routines create structure in our lives. They drive off uncertainty. They provide direction for your actions.

They reduce the cognitive load of making decisions.

"Thinking is hard, that's why most people don't" as they say.

There's the danger — Routines are mostly unconsciousness.

You might be primed for a bad habit hours before it occurs because that's the routine you are in.

When we think about routines, we think about mornings, days, and nights.

True, but not limited to these times of the day.

Routines are nested within emotional states, habits you did earlier in the day or the night before. Your brain has made connections between thoughts, feelings habits and routines you are not aware of.

There is a depth to your consciousness, you will never fully understand.

I noticed this for myself:

If work late one night, get little sleep, write in the morning and accumulate irritation at work, by the afternoon i am primed to scroll on my phone.

30 mins later — I transition to the next task: Gym, Meal prep, dinner, youtube work.

Time gets away; I work late. Repeat.

Friday rolls around. The tension built up through the week is released. I relax late.

I wake up late Saturday. I'm already behind schedule. First work block blows out. Gym routine starts late. I haven't eaten yet. Post gym routine commences.

The second work block bleeds into the evening and into the night.

I rest late. Way too late.

I won't bother describing Sunday.

I have done this so many times. It's the natural state I continually fall into if I am not intentionally deciding against it.

It's a routine that's play out over the course a day and a week.

Where's the start or the end point? I don't know.

Was it the late night working, or getting irritated at work, or allowing poor energy and time management?

Who knows?

Shits complicated.

You're in a routine right now. It might be the routine that stretches across the activity, time of day, the entire day, or week.

Are there routines that stretch over a month? We probably need a super Ai to figure that out.

There's an idea

The bottom line is:

You're ___ because you're trapped in a routine where the outcome is being ___.

Replace blank with anything: Tired, undisciplined, lazy, productive, happy, satisfied — it works both ways.

I think this is why it feels like we are stuck in a cycle we can't quite control. Because we literally are in a cycle and it's your routine you will default to.

Intentional Routines

My goal is to be as intentional as I possibly can be with my routines.

That doesn't mean being highly structured. It means being conscious and aware of what I am doing and why. I want to be in control of me.

Routines always start to serve a purpose.

My morning routine of snooze, cold shower, brush teeth, get changed, write, was intentionally made to get me to write these ideas.

Oddly enough, the routine is not attached to a time but to the order of tasks I complete in the morning. That's because my bed and wake times are not consistent.

Some things are a work in progress.

Routines stick when you attach them to a project you care about:

Create a Routine Matrix

Build routines to serve the projects you want to build.

If you really want them to stick, make sure they align with the intrinsic motivators

1. Curiosity - How interested your are about what you are learning and doing.

2. Purpose - Feeling like you are pursuing and contributing towards a cause you truly believe in

3. Mastery - Your desire to continually improve at the thing to achieve excellence

4. Auto telicity - The enjoyment you get from doing the thing. You do it for its own sake rather than for an external reward.

5. Autonomy - Having control over the when, how and why you the thing you do the work

Here are four projects you need in your life. To the right of each is an example project I have

1. A project for your mind: Learning about myself and the world

2. A project for your body: Getting stronger in the gym

3. A project for your relationships: Improving my dating life

4. A project for your business/money/ purpose: Growing an audience

You can build routines for each project and assign them to different times of the day on particular days.

Think about a matrix:

*NR - Not routinised

You can structure your days using the matrix. Very quickly, you will have routines for your projects, including the activity and each time of day.

You will form routines before, during, and after the gym, including routines for nutrition and recovery.

Use the matrix to build out your days and week.

Do a hard reset on your routines.

Now the hard part…

Avoid pitfalls

I'm doing a lot of things right in my matrix. Consistency over the course of a week is not too much of a problem.

But I do have a big problem: Constraining the when.

My time management is poor. Starting on time needs work. Finishing on time needs even more work.

Bad time management leads to bad energy management.

Bad energy management leads to vulnerability to distractions.

Noticing your pitfalls is trial and error.

Experiment.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes

Some words of advice for common pitfalls:

• Consistency — select activities in accordance with intrinsic motivators. You have a stack of whys behind you. A good diet is relatively easy for me because my business, mind and body projects rely so much on it. Never miss two days in a row.

• Focus on enjoyment — how you feel doing the thing is more important than the thing itself. If losing weight is your project, then enjoying your meals is essential. No one is giving you a medal for eating bland chicken and rice.

• Create novelty in your week — your mind craves new and interesting things. If you don't give it to yourself in constructive ways, your mind will seek out in destructive ways.

• Don't try to do too much at once. Decide what you are going to suck at for the next 3 months. Focus on 1 to 2 projects at a time. Do your best to keep the other at maintenance

That's all for today, my friends,

Enjoy your routine.

Josh