The Psychology of Daily Routine

There’s a great book called 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think that I’ve been re-reading. One of the essays, The Psychology of Daily Routine, is so relevant to our members that I figured instead of telling you each one-off I’d put it in a Sunday email.

There’s a ton out there on routines, including a bunch of dummies talking about jumping in ice baths and waking up at 5am and whatever else. That’s not what this is about.

The reason for routine in this essay is clear:

“In short, routine is important because habitualness creates mood, and mood creates the “nurture” aspect of your personality, not to mention that letting yourself be jerked around by impulsiveness is a breeding ground for everything you essentially do not want.”

A few paragraphs later:

“Your habits create your mood, and your mood is a filter through which you experience your life.”

And a few paragraphs after that:

“You must learn to let your conscious decisions dictate your day—not your fears or impulses.”

and finally:

“Learning to craft routine is the equivalent of learning to let your conscious choices about what your day will be about guide you, letting all the other, temporary crap fall to the wayside.”

The broader point is such a good one. For entrepreneurs, life feels sporadic. There’s more than we can ever do, which means we prioritize and create hierarchies and end up second guessing what’s most important and jumping between tasks because it’s never clear we’re working on the right thing. I’m not sure there’s a way to get rid of that completely, though we try with the Tacklebox structure.

Which is why routines become important. Just the fact that they exist lets us dictate the day. It’s easy for entrepreneurs to let fear dictate decisions but routines combat that. They also calm us down. They give us the structure to confront hard things.

Then, you get the proof that you can do hard things and it all compounds.

One last quote from Brianna Wiest:

“When you regulate your daily actions, you deactivate your “fight or flight” instincts because you’re no longer confronting the unknown.”

Create and stick to daily routines — regardless of what they are — to get the best difficult work done.