My Perfect Morning Routine (And Why You Shouldn't Care)
Takeaway Points:
Routines are a powerful way to automate our behaviors, and make our daily workload more bearable.
At the same time, seeking to emulate or imitate the habits and routines of someone else is a doomed project.
Instead, seek to create your own routine - learn from, but do not emulate, the routines of others.
I did actually manage to nail down something like my ideal morning routine during this pandemic.
My wife and I were recently able to move to a slightly larger place - a proper house, with a little backyard. In the new area, I started going to train at a bodybuilding gym about a 20 minute walk away. Naturally, with the closing up of the gym, I’ve had to completely reevaluate my normal training routine.
Often, the easiest time to change our habits is when there are big changes in our lives. When one big habit changes, so do a lot of others - and with everything up in the air, it’s a bit easier to make the kinds of intentional changes that you’ve always been putting off, if you’re able to seize the moment. This is the power of what are called “keystone habits” - important habits upon which other ones are highly dependent.
Lately I’ve been putting more effort into a basic daily exercise routine, which I wanted to use to establish a baseline for my fitness. I setup a spreadsheet to help track my activity, and started to add pieces to it, bit by bit, as my routine expanded.
Here’s my productivity routine:
8:30a - Wake up, roll out of bed, mess around on my phone a bit, deal with the cat, make my cup of morning coffee, answer emails, etc.
9:00a-9:30a (ish) - Get in some steps for the day. I like to take walks in my neighborhood, which is hilly enough to provide a bit of a challenge. During this time I’ll typically do language flashcards (20-30 min), do a walking meditation with focused breathing (10 min), do a bit of yoga/sun salutations/stretching, and maybe answer emails if it’s something simple I can do on my phone. The morning sun plus the movement really feels amazing, and helps me build energy/momentum for the day.
10:00a-10:30a (ish) - Head upstairs to my office, where I’ll answer longer emails, do a bit of light work as needed, goof around a bit, etc. This is also around the time that I’ll typically start my daily workout, although depending on how lazy I’m feeling I may put it off for a bit.
12:00p - Quick lunch, protein shake, another cup of coffee, etc.
1:00p - This is when my day job hours start. Working from home, from here to roughly 9:00p-9:30p.
9:00p-11:00p - Eating dinner, hanging out with my family, de-stressing, watching television with my wife, maybe doing some light work or foreign language reading depending on how I’m feeling.
Yes, I’m a bit of a workaholic, despite all my arguments to the contrary. This is largely just because I really love the things I do, and a lot of the work I do is genuinely fun to me, as much of a hobby as labor!
11:00p - Doing dishes, preparing for bed, etc.
12:00a - Bedtime.
This is my routine, and it really ties my day together. On days that my routine gets interrupted, I feel like garbage, have lower energy, and am usually not at all focused. On weekends, I still retain the routine up through 10:00a-12:00p (getting in my normal morning walk and workout if needed), but after that point it’s free time, or we’re filming episodes of Himbo Chef.
The powerful thing about routines is that they help us to put our mental self on autopilot - when you’re repeating an action you’ve done many times before, you don’t have to think very hard about it, and this reduces the mental load that these activities place on you. This is how many high performers succeed - they learn to automate those mental processes around things which are normally considered “hard work” - and instead can help convert that work into smaller, more manageable chunks of lighter work over time. Success is not a sprint, and it’s not a marathon - it’s a series of habits.
This is part of the reason why we see daily routines commonly hyped up as much as they are. Celebrities, entrepreneurs, and other powerful people just absolutely LOVE to share their daily routines as part of the “secrets to their success”.
But this ultimately becomes part of what I think is a big problem: we shouldn’t care about other peoples’ routines in the first place.
Recently, Mark Wahlberg posted his daily routine on Instagram, and it went absolutely viral with mockery. Weird quirks like “waking up at 2:30am”, 2 workouts and 2 showers a day, almost no time dedicated to traditional work hours - it’s clear that this is not the kind of schedule that the ordinary person can even attempt to aspire to. Many of us have routines that are in large part built around the necessity of our work schedules, and sleeping from 7:30p-2:30a frankly sounds like the sleep patterns of an absolute monster.
Another problem that I think is likely rampant is outright lying.
If I’m an entrepreneur or “lifestyle coach” who has a vested interest in selling products, I’m not going to create a promotional video that talks about how I have the same normal routine and habits that, for the most part, everyone else has. So instead, I have a strong incentive to lie - it makes way more sense to make up some impressive story about how cool my routine is, even if it’s a little bit absurd and unbelievable. After all, absurd and impressive stories sell, and boring ones don’t, and at the end of the day almost nobody would actually be able to call me out on it if I lied - none of the people who would see this video on the internet, after all, know what actually goes on behind the doors of my home.
It’s likely that many impressive and cool-sounding routines like Mark Wahlberg’s are just stories that are exaggerated or outright fabricated in order to help make money or influence. I think it’s also related to the way that the exact same types of people tend to lie about how much they actually work - it’s way more impressive to lie and say that you work 16 hours a day than to admit that you were really only productive for 5 of those and spent most of the rest of the time doing nothing important.
People have a tendency to overestimate how much time they spend doing “virtuous” activities - working, exercising, going to church, etc. - and underestimate how much time they spend doing un-virtuous activities - because it makes them look good. Due to internal biases, they’re likely not even aware that they’re lying.
Routines are powerful. They help us automate our habits, and since small, consistent levels of effort always win out in the end, a good routine that includes practice for all the major skills we want to improve will absolutely lead to impressive results over time. It’s better to do a half hour practicing a skill daily than it is to put in a couple hours once a week and then forget about it until next week.
But at the same time, you shouldn’t care about anybody else’s routine. After all, your routine is something that you have to make for yourself, based on your existing habits, your normal circadian rhythms, the demands of your job, the demands of your family life, and so on. Some of us have more time to dedicate to self-improvement routines, while others will barely have any time at all and feel constantly rushed and time-pressured for every waking hour. Admittedly, not everyone has the ability to actively manage their routine and make the kinds of changes that they’d like to make.
But a routine does need to be something that you make for yourself, and no one else can do that for you. Your routine needs to be customized and personal, and trying to copy anyone else’s routine is destined for failure.
The next time you encounter a major event in your life, look at it as an opportunity to change your habits, and take the first steps towards a world-class routine. Take inspiration from elsewhere, but don’t ever try to copy someone else’s routine.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
Follow Adam on Facebook or Twitter, or subscribe to our mailing list, if you liked this post and want to say hello!
Enjoy this post? Share the gains!
Ready to be your best self? Check out the Better book series, or download the sample chapters by signing up for our mailing list. Signing up for the mailing list also gets you two free exercise programs: GAINS, a well-rounded program for beginners, and Deadlift Every Day, an elite program for maximizing your strength with high frequency deadlifting.
Interested in coaching to maximize your results? Inquire here.
Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. For more info, check out my affiliate disclosure.
