Riding The Routine To Better Days

The quickest way to ensure that you don’t succeed is to never build a routine.

A human without a routine is just an overthinking monkey. 

An animal. Pulled here and there by their body’s every whimsical desire. 

When they're not sleepy, they’re hungry, and when they're not hungry, they're horny.

And just like that, they go around in circles fulfilling their animal desires.

But what a routine allows, is that it creates an opening -- it breaks the cycle. It gives you a reason.

It gives you a reason to get off your phone, to not eat that bag of junk food, to not melt into the couch…

But the key word there is reason. And the crucial element of a good routine is not just that it's sustainable, but that it's rewarding. Because if your routine is not rewarding, eventually the monkey brain will take over again.

Of course, there is one exception to this rule, and that is that a monkey can be forced into an unrewarding routine so long as the fear of breaking the routine is great enough -- this is essentially how slaves and prisoners go on… because they have no other option.

But for the person who isn't under the barrel, they have to have a why.

Think of Maslow's hierarchy. Once you’ve got the basics, you need a why.

And unfortunately, I can't advise you too much on that part. I can’t tell you what the why is, because I don't know what yours is.

For one person, their reason to get up early in the morning is because they want to watch the birds feeding from the trees. While, for another, their reason to get up early is because they want to kiss their daughter goodbye before she boards the bus to school.

Your whys will be unique to you, so keep searching. Keep trying things. Keep going until you string together a line of whys that reach from here to the future that you want, and then once that routine is in place, let go.

Let the routine take you for a ride.