Some people have elaborate, customized morning routines. Others, like me, hit snooze on the alarm, head over to the coffee maker, and start walking around as it slowly comes to life. There is a flood of early-morning routine content on social media and the pages of magazines, newspapers and books. According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks the appearance of words and phrases in books, the number of “morning routines” has nearly quadrupled over the past two decades. If you don’t follow complicated steps when getting up, it can make you feel like you’re doing something wrong. But the truth is more complex.
Every day when we wake up, we face a chaotic and complex world full of uncertainty. We can’t control the weather. We cannot control other people. We cannot control the emotions we experience moment by moment. If you believe otherwise, try it for an hour and see how it goes. Yet there are some things we can do to create order and get into a rhythm amidst the chaos. This is where the power of routine lies.
Almost every person who achieves excellence depends on routine. Routines provide structure to our days, provide a sense of predictability in a naturally unpredictable world, help us energize when we’re feeling down, and keep us grounded when we’re full of energy. They automate decisions so we don’t waste willpower and prepare our mind and body for performance. Routines support focus, consistency, discipline, patience, confidence and many other factors of excellence. If you exercise, write, sketch, or journal every morning, you don’t have to think about it. You just do it. It becomes part of your daily routine.
Research also shows that the objects we surround ourselves with produce certain behaviors. For example, the more you associate going to a specific coffee shop at a specific time of day with writing, the easier it becomes to enter a productive flow. This is why people find comfort in having a game-day blazer for public speaking, or a special pair of jeans they wear to an artist’s studio. These artworks serve as a cue to step out of the ordinary life and step into your respective craft. The best routines are like easy chairs, writes George Leonard in Mastery. You settle into them, oblivious to the ups and downs of time and the world.
Here’s the problem: Although routines can be magical, there is no magical routine.
Many of the characteristics found in so-called “optimal routines” affect people differently. Some people perform better when listening to music. Others don’t. Some get a boost from caffeine. Others experience anxiety or upset stomach. Some people find a cold bath invigorating. Others remain shivering for hours and find the entire process tiring.
We cannot develop optimal routines by copying what other people do. While it’s true that some behaviors are universally effective — like exercise, social connections, and sleep — there’s no single best time, place, or way to engage in each. Only through subtle self-awareness and experimentation do we discover what works best for us. The remainder of this chapter will show you how.
Different people have different chronotypes, a term used to describe the natural fluctuations of energy we experience over the course of 24 hours. Whether it’s a physically or cognitively demanding task, research shows that most people perform at their best in the earlier or later part of the day. These individual differences are rooted in our unique biological rhythms – when different hormones associated with energy and focus are released and when our body temperature rises and falls. Scientists call those who are most alert in the morning as larks and those who are most alert in the evening are called owls. There is no evidence that any chronology is inherently better. What matters for each of us is to try to align our activities with our energy levels.
in his book daily ritualsAuthor Mason Curry details a typical day for more than 50 of the world’s greatest artists, writers, musicians and thinkers. Almost all of them had tried and tested routines. But the routine itself was quite different. This was especially true when people did their best work. Some people, like Mozart, worked late into the night. Others, like Beethoven, were most productive during the early morning hours. The take-home message was not that most great artists accomplished their best work at a certain time of day or that there is an optimal time for productivity. Rather, each person discovered when they were most alert and focused, and did what they could to design their days accordingly.
designing days
Researchers at the Sleep Research Center at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom developed an evidence-based questionnaire to help people determine their chronotype. Answering the following three questions will help you figure out where you fall on the lark-owl spectrum:
1. “If you were completely free to arrange your evening, with no commitments in the morning, what time would you go to bed?”
2. “You have to work physically hard for two hours. When would you do this work if you were completely free to plan your day?”
3. “You have to take a two-hour exam, which you know will be mentally exhausting. If you were free to choose, when would you want to take the exam?”
This questionnaire is a valuable tool, especially when combined with listening to your body in real time. Over the next few days, you can pay attention to when your energy levels are highest and when you fall into a foggy brain state, where you lose focus and your work begins to suffer. Most people recognize their chronotype after just a day or two of paying careful attention. However, the gold standard is to go seven days without setting an alarm clock or compensating for fatigue with caffeine or other stimulants. Not only will you get accurate track of your chronotype, but you’ll also benefit from a reset period during which your body can return to its natural rhythm.
Once you understand your chronotype, you can take advantage of it by intentionally scheduling your hardest and most demanding work for times when your alertness is at its peak. When your biology changes and your alertness wanes, you can focus on tasks that require less attention, like responding to emails, scheduling inevitable meetings, or doing basic chores around the house. Finally, when your attention span begins to wane completely, you don’t need to force yourself to continue. Rather, you can allow your mind and body to heal.
Of course, there are as many unique situations in the world as there are people. Family, coworkers, teammates, and other obligations place restrictions on what you can and cannot do, and when. But it’s also beneficial to have a general knowledge of your timeline running in the background. For example, I’ve discovered that I do my best work in the first half of the day, and after 6:30 pm my brain essentially goes to waste. Does this mean that I write non-stop from six in the morning until noon every day, or that I never do any work in the evening? No, but I get much closer than if I didn’t mind my chronology. The goal is not to be rigid or perfect. The goal is to make the best use of this information as possible. Instead of thinking about managing your time, think about managing your energy.
Daily, Weekly and Monthly Practice
Another powerful way to think about routine is to develop daily, weekly, and monthly practices. These become the fundamental elements of our life that propel us to excellence. Instead of trying to create elaborate routines with 19 components — and in the process, creating more stress instead of reducing it — we can simplify and focus on what matters most. We can name the main things and call them the main things.
My three daily habits are 45 to 90 minutes of physical activity, doing deep-focused work on a meaningful project at least once, and not fighting evening sleep, which usually means going to bed before 10:00 p.m.
My three weekly practices are taking long walks outside at least twice, meeting with friends at least once, and spending a day completely offline (a digital Sabbath).
At least one part of my three monthly practices involves meditation, contemplation, listening to music, or some other type of intentional reflection on who I am and why I am here; At least one day when I’m mainly outside; And when I’m connected to my local community I go out for a walk at least once in a while.
These exercises and rhythms work for me. Yours will almost certainly differ. But the broader list — movement, sleep, community, nature, meaning — aligns with decades of research on health, longevity, and prosperity.
Another area of investigation is nutrition. What we put into our bodies can have a profound effect on how we feel and what we do. While some people find diet rules unhelpful (and, in the case of disordered eating, quite harmful), others find them beneficial. Examples include eating a certain number of vegetables per day, avoiding fast food, limiting sweets to special occasions, or developing a common menu of options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
It cannot be stressed enough that there is considerable variability from person to person. We may be convinced that doing daily, monthly, and weekly exercises is beneficial, but only you can figure out what those exercises should be.
What makes this kind of approach powerful is its simplicity and concreteness. Developing a few anchors promotes stability, predictability, and strength in a world of chaos, complexity, and infinite choices. I have yet to meet anyone who has not found this framework to be effective, if not transformative. Remember that it’s the small day-to-day routines that create the foundation for great moments and even greatness. Everyone loves to talk about the latter, but we can’t get there without the former.
The simpler our life, the more strict we can be in our daily routine. For someone who lives alone and sets his own work hours, it may be beneficial to get most of his work done at a fixed time and place. Someone with children and a different profession will definitely need a broader and more flexible set of principles. Neither approach is better or worse. Problems only arise when you try to fit a square peg into a round hole. The point is that routines are personal. What works for one person may not work for another. What matters is being aware of the trade-offs and then deliberately choosing the best routine for yourself.
