This makes a point against the "CEO morning routine" kind of approach, but from my point of view, it is not that different from that perspective on life. It still talks about "proactively moving towards #1 or top 25%", "be so good they can't ignore you", "10x work", "something extraordinary" etc.
Take that direction if that's what makes you tick. I've decided that that's not how I want to live my life, quit a 'prestigious' position, left the competitive career, and I now work as a teacher with "10x personal satisfaction".
Only semi-related to satisfaction, but I was looking at a chart of suicide rates by industry recently[0]. And the lowest rate for both men and women was "Education services" and "Education, training, and library," aka teachers.
My guesses as to why:
- To teach is to be focused on the future, day after day. This is the opposite of dwelling on the past, which is commonly associated with depression, which is commonly associated with suicide.
- Teachers are surrounded by kids, and kids tend to change and develop drastically over the course of a year, usually for the better in terms of knowledge and maturity. Seeing that might inspire some optimism.
- Teachers are a crucial pillar of an impressionable community of hundreds of children at that. So they're less likely to trend toward suicide, because they feel less alone, more community, more accountability, and more responsibility.
- There's something inherently purposeful about teaching, at a deep biological level. Purposeful work leads to a purposeful life leads to lower chances of suicide.
Or maybe it's easy to just drop out of teaching? Versus a more specialized profession, like dentistry?
Also, you'll notice that the highest suicide professions are also the most physically dangerous. It stands to reason that suicide often follows a life-changing debilitating injury. That would be pretty rare in teaching.
The complexity of a field you are leaving doesnt make it hard to drop out. A dentist is very well prepared to be a hair stylist, but I've never heard of that choice.
Dentists also don't have a lot of job related debilitating injuries, aside from depressions.
But also - you can end up with class of unruly spoiled kids and experience burnout after burnout. You see almost any higher profession have much more money in their lives, despite having a massive amount of free time. But that free time ain't so huge as it may seem - good teachers keep preparing themselves even in their 50s for next day, grading, school bureaucracy etc.
I have a climbing buddy who is US origin and teaches smaller kids in Geneva, Switzerland in prestigious private school, all above applies hard for him. Got off this school year twice from burnout. Normally he has 1-2 bad kids but this year it was 10, every day was pure suffering for him and even with assistant it was above their capabilities. The thing is, its a profession that makes you unemployable elsewhere apart from basic blue collar jobs, so quitting is not really that good of an option.
Just giving perspective, I am not teacher and probably wouldn't enjoy doing it. Preferring work hard and then have some cool time in the mountains during evenings/weekend or travel for holidays. But I consider it massively underpaid profession, those folks deserve same recognition as doctors are getting (with logic that doctors 'just' treat current problems, but teachers literally hold future of mankind in their hands and mold it, and in this world you cca always get what you pay for).
it's certainly possible to be depressed due to dwelling on the future. i guess it'd be anxiety or if you're just in a terrible situation with no easy way out
Is that because of pay and CoL? I imagine if you work hard in your 40s and have a lot of financial success, transitioning to teaching might be less stressful.
If you already have a house and a fat 401k, just paying the bills at a certain age is fine.
The actual teaching is like 10% of the job at best and shrinking, school administrators have to be the dumbest category of people who hold advanced degrees (I don’t level that charge lightly), schools are heavily hierarchical and hard to influence toward improvement if you’re not in admin, constant methodology churn for all sorts of things based on whichever new “system” caught the superintendent’s fancy at their last district-funded drinking getaway er, I mean, conference. Which they’ll go on to half-understand, fail to apply the parts that make them uncomfortable, and of course doom the new program without its even having a chance. While creating a bunch of new work for the teachers and breaking stuff that was working fine. “Office” politics where the median would qualify as quite bad in the private sector.
Politicians and half the parents think you’re the enemy, in a very real way. No support from parents on discipline issues. Admin piss-pants scared of parents, too. Comp-vs-CoL varies wildly over the country, and mostly in the ways you’d expect, so it’s ok some places but it’s terrible in many others.
Yeah exactly. I don’t even think he’s right about how pivotal a lot of them bellwether events he cites are. If you don’t nail the punchline in your marketing you can change the punchline or the marketing. So it’s important but because it can be changed you might find yourself taking another path than “home run marketing” that is still very successful. For all he’s decrying hustle culture he seems very immured in it.
What's funny is I've never been a routine guy but I've fallen into becoming one.
I run 6 times a week because I feel significantly better when I am running every day. The reward for me is so significant that getting myself running requires 0 mental effort or preparation. I live in a very hot and humid climate, if I run even at 8 am it's so hot it's uncomfortable. Because of this I'm waking up and running at around 6:30 am.
I also fall asleep at 11 pm like clockwork. Not because I have a schedule but because I'm so tired I have to sleep then.
I commit code to github almost every single day. I actually really just enjoy programming.
I believe in taking care of myself, in a balanced diet, in a rigorous exercise routine. In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I'll put on an icepack while doing my stomach crunches. I can do a thousand now.
After I remove the icepack, I use a deep-pore cleanser lotion. In the shower, I use a water-activated gel cleanser. Then a honey-almond bodyscrub.
And on the face, an exfoliating gel-scrub. Then I apply an herb mint facial masque, which I leave on for ten minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine.
I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm, followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion.
Yeah, I think if you prioritize one demanding routine, the rest of your life inevitably shakes into place around it without too much effort.
And if it happens to be a routine that demands you be well (alert, rested, etc), most of what shakes out is stuff that keeps you well or at least doesn't inferfere with your wellness.
And similarly if the demanding routine insists on less healthy habits. If your priority is socializing and drinking until 2am several nights, the shake out is going to look like miserable, exhausted mornings and hangovers.
The hustle culture bs is the wellness equivalent of get rich quick schemes: "add this 10 minutes trifle and you'll finally be happy and successful!" --- But no, if you're not close to there already, the changes need to be way more comprehensive and radical.
It's effortless because my actions are aligned with my goals and desires. I used to be very addicted to poker. There was a book I read during that time called "The Mental Game of Poker" that is really good and broadly applicable to life. One of the lessons is to figure out your subconsciously held goals that are negatively impacting your consciously held goals.
For example, someone's stated goal may be to build an amazing startup or open source project. But they constantly find themselves going to founder meetups and conventions, staying up very late and drinking a lot. They may also find themselves posting a lot on social media instead of working on building their thing. I would claim that this person has a hidden goal of seeking attention and fame. They likely would never tell themselves this and this is why self honesty is important. Once you are able to bring these hidden goals to the foreground it's actually easy to manage them. Wanting to be famous and get attention is a pretty ridiculous / base desire.
It's also effortless because your goals and desires are sustainable and bring you prosperity.
My desires are to chill, play music for myself and friends, sleep a lot, have sex, hike, go to concerts and generally go out and drink. Only doing that would, predictably, make me homeless eventually.
Related to what GP said, I think desires are complicated. What you (and commonly you hear) referred to as desire might be something like a "first order desire" -- either what you would desire if there were no constraints or consequences from your actions, or what you desire immediately (and not taking your long term life into account)[1]. I think it's a good idea to visualize the consequences of your desires, because actions have consequences and the world is inherently full of constraints. So you might "desire" (1st order desire) drinking, but not desire hangover or even becoming an alcoholic, or miss some opportunity because of over sleeping (or even increased health as well), so maybe update your desire to 2nd-order desire where the consequences and constraints[2] are taken into account, and if you still desire it (e.g. find sleeping a lot really worth it), then it seems fine.
I believe it's Carl Jung that talked extensively about bringing your unconscious into consciousness. Or Feynman: The first principle is you must not fool yourself, and you're the easiest person to fool :)
(Although I think it's normal to have some amount of internal conflict or inconsistency that we can only resolve as we go along, experiment, work and live)
[1] Maybe we should call those cravings?
[2] I think a more refined approach would add philosophical implications (e.g. ethics, meaning, etc..) as well
Touched on in the article: "There’s endless tips on what successful CEOs do with their mornings, making us feel bad for not executing core loops with machine-like efficiency."
I think what's not said is that some people are just naturally very focused on achievement and moving up the ladder. If you have the drive to be a successful CEO, then adopting the behaviors and routines of a other successful CEOs will probably work for you. If you are not that type of person, then trying to become one by acting like one will just lead to frustration.
I'm not a successful CEO, I have no desire to be one, I don't even want to be a manager of other people. It is not interesting to me. I've done it and can do it but it's not rewarding.
I'm not a "hustler" and have no desire to be one. I don't keep a scorecard of how many checkboxes I ticked each day.
Do what you are drawn to do, and look to other people who are successful at doing those things if you want role models.
I think its harder if you have friends, family, relationship, etc. I like to exercise in the morning but sometimes its crunch time and I really have work I need to get done, other times I've gone out with friends the night before and I wake up late. When I have a partner, I might spend all afternoon or all evening alone with them. I suppose it depends on the rhythm of your life and your life-world. For some, life turns like clockwork; others, move more like the wind and the ocean--and still others probably live as chaotically as the course of the universe, but they may expire rapidly. We're all somewhere in between.
When I was in high school, working at a warehouse, I told my boss I needed a few days off for my brother's wedding.
"What happens more often? Work or your brother getting married?" he asked me.
"Work" I replied.
"Well, there you go. Work is more important."
He and I had the kind of casual working relationship that he could jokingly be an asshole and I took it in the good nature it was intended (and yeah, I got time off for the wedding).
I haven't thought of that story in years, but your advice brought it immediately back.
The morning is my time. I do it so I can spend time with family and friends. But like the OP said, it means I don't drink very much when I go out. I also come home at a reasonable hour. And when it's crunch time at work, that's when working out is most important for me.
I don’t think so. For me it helps to have routines and have them planned out. I keep a daily log, if something changes my routine I just make a note of it. It’s still helpful for me to approach the future with a mindset of consistency rather than trying to adjust to everything that could come up.
And if something regularly interrupts my routine (as kids often do) I just… adjust my routine.
Theoretically, you could adjust your routine until it you can no longer fully comprehend it, which you can't anyway since you aren't privy to all the forces which determine your life. But this would be a liberated existence, where we aren't subject to the regularity and order of the clock.
I forced myself into a routine because with wfh, I woke up 9.50am and started working at 10am, and after the work day I was too tired to do anything, as well as becoming a blob. I joined a gym nearby, started going to the pool 7.30am, got charged 10$ if I didn't go, so I had the external incentive.
Couple of years later (how time flies), I need to go swimming otherwise I'm in pain the next day due to the desk job. I've also added weightlifting 3 times a week, and then swimming, I'm feeling great, and when I finished my day, it feels like I haven't missed anything.
As others have said, it's not exactly a drug, you "just" need to push yourself to do it regularly for a while. In my case, it's a few weeks.
What I've found happens is that I actually get used to it, and if for some reason have to skip a session, I'll get the feeling that something's missing because I actually "felt like" doing it.
Of course, this doesn work 100% of the time. Occasionally, I really, really, don't want to pump that iron or go for a run. But having developed the habit, it's actually much easier to push through the "don't feel like it" sensation and get my ass out there, "'cause I have to do it". And I'm usually very happy I did when I get back home.
You just need to do something enough times that you can identify a positive feedback cycle, and then go from there. Don't expect to wake up one day and consistently start running every morning, that's a really absurd bar to try and hit out the gate. Just try and do it 3 times a week whenever you can and build on that. The overwhelming majority of people who've come to rigid early routine have come to that point either out of necessity, optimization, iteration, or habit, and what clicks is going to vary between people.
People who don't go to the gym at all think they'll sign up at the beginning of the year and from zero make a life-changing routine change by the next week; gyms know this and take advantage of it to the point that many would go out of business if not for people failing to motivate themselves in that first month enough to start doing one of the hardest daily activities first thing in the morning 5 times a week.
If you don't like running, just do something else, sometimes; running sucks if it sucks and doesn't if it doesn't. Optimize if the nature of the activity seems like something you can find doable/enjoyable/rewarding.
It gets much easier to do regularly once you do it regularly, and it also gets easier when you learn how to control your pace and effort.
It's hard (for a while) when you're first starting because most of your runs are pushing your limits -- intentionally or unintentionally -- and you can't help associating the runs with having to push and burn out.
Once you practice for a while (and take the effort to learn pacing), the bulk of your runs feel easy and refreshing and so you want to go do them. And the hard runs that you choose to run for limit-pushing become satisfying because you know you're in control of them and can often see progress in your PR's for pace or whatever.
In other words: you just have to stick with it and it mostly happens on its own. (Unless you're just a type-A person and can't learn to pace yourself)
I would say physical fitness does not fit the thesis of the article. It requires disciplined consistency doing the same thing repeatedly on a regular schedule to see benefits.
the "CEO Grindset" or "daily routine" stuff I see on Youtube and Medium has always struck me as a sort of peacocking for a certain level of the office crowd.
I once worked a construction equipment maintenance job. Basically we'd roll out of bed at 5 am, climb into a big truck, and drive out to wherever someone called us to fix everything from dump trucks to excavators. I cant remember a consistent day, ever. Some mornings its pouring rain and breakfast is a slim jim from the truck stop. Other days youre driving so much it hardly feels like anything is getting done. I started making lunch about calorie counts instead of time of day, and eventually got to just taking a couple of cliff bars for lunch tucked into my overalls. I guess coffee was consistent. we filled four thermoses at the truck stop and that used to cost us about $20. after we fixed the air hose in the parking lot we got all our coffee free. i digress. I didnt have a routine, no "stoic virtue" stuff. the only thing i did religiously was the vehicle check in the morning.
People who obsess over a pattern or "grindset" in life rarely do the work necessary to fulfill the ethic of that said routine. They miss the forest for the trees. Theres way more meaning and reward to being adaptable and resilient than there is in worshipping a pattern or coddling a routine.
I think the audience for those types of videos skew young, as in college kids and new graduates without much real experience. All they know about the working world is mostly second-hand knowledge from their network, or straight from Youtube and TV.
Unfortunately, there is a whole genre of "Day in the Life Of [my job role]" Youtube channels that rack up millions of views. They are made for entertainment, not edification, so hoping to learn something end up focusing on the superficial parts of it.
The Grindset Motivational Speaker industry and Hustle Culture are mostly selling warmed over sports metaphors to young adults still clinging to shit that was important in high school. The stuff in their seminars and videos are straight from your high school football coach. They might as well be talking entirely in vague sports platitudes like "no pain no gain!" and "just do it!" and "never give up!"
I think what you've hit upon, for those of us with enough privilege to set out own schedule and priorities, it takes mental effort and will power to do what less privileged people do just as a matter of necessity.
You didn't have to psyche yourself up to wake at 5am, because you had external forces setting that requirement for you.
If you set your own schedule and work remotely or what have you, getting up at 5am is an act of will.
Without strong routines and habits my life would be a mess and I would still be working at McDonalds. With ADHD I need routines and habits to not fall into the abyss. Maybe it works for some people, but not me.
E: also I used all those habits and routines to achieve my own goals and run a business for a decade.
Personally it takes me a couple days to re-cement a routine after missing a day. Which means I can maintain my routines as long as I don't miss more than a day or two a week. I used to schedule a weekly rest day with no routines and no checklists, but now with kids I just let those days fall as needed.
The real issue is skipping several days in a row. If I drop my routines for a weeklong vacation it takes more than a month to build them back.
One thing I've discovered for myself is that the routine doesn't decay as quickly if I at least maintain a placeholder. For example, even if I don't have time to do an exercise routine I can usually do five pushups. Even if I can't meditate for ten minutes, I can still sit and breathe for a minute. Even if I can't do all the dishes before bed, I can scrape them off. That makes it much easier to resume the routine. It doesn't deepen the rut but it does prevent it from being washed away.
During Covid when my entire routine process was disrupted by work from home where I couldn’t do my daily thing I basically became the least productive person on my team. On days where my morning is severely disrupted basically the whole day is shot.
I generally can adapt to long term new situations by inventing new routines but I fall apart without structure.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge it’s a bad thing but it is what it is. I’m sure the commenter above is similar
You need a certain amount of flexibility anyway. Travel happens, etc, when running a business. I know I will be less productive and just plan podcasts or whatever in an airplane. It’s okay to relax during travel for me. I get my thinking and work done other times.
I guess in that case, it's hopeless, don't try, since you can't have absolute certainty of the imperviousness of your new routine then just continue improv-jazzing through life.
Is that better?
Of course that's utterly insane. If you have ADHD then you should be putting more effort into routinization, not less and certainly not making up reasons that you can't even try.
This reads as needlessly hostile, maybe from assuming the worst interpretation of what kohbo is saying.
Charitably, I read it as 'Telling someone to get good at the thing they are struggling with doesn't work'. This is similar to the oft seen adages of 'just do things to make you happy to fix your depression' met with sarcastic 'gee thanks, I'm cured' responses.
Certain habits, skills, etc, might be more important for some people to focus on than others to manage debilitating effects, but that importance comes with the consequence of those same feats being harder.
“What do you do if your habit framework gets jostled”
“You adapt to it — don’t let fear of inevitable challenges prevent you from starting”
“No thanks I have ADHD”
Okay, what other possible answer is there? There’s no way to guarantee your habits don’t get jostled and there’s no method to correct it than adapting. Any specific adaptation method is also notably harder for ADHD folks too. Yes, it is harder, that’s why in order to succeed at this thing one needs to work harder. Any Quick Tip that’d make this easier for an ADHD person would make it easier for everyone else too, ergo it’d be the default advice, and it’d still be harder for an ADHD person to apply.
I think it's fair to say "you adapt" is ~useless advice for everyone, FWIW.
That is part of ADHD. Knowing you just can’t function the same in some environments. Plan ahead, know your routines and such resume when you are back to a more controlled environment. Set expectations with business partners, work deadlines, etc.
The author lost me when he started talking about "10x work."
I don't need to be more productive. I accomplish plenty in both my work life and my real life. If anything, I need to accomplish fewer things and spend more time living in the moment.
Indeed. Are you going to get 10x pay for 10x work? No. Very rarely, for certain types of contractor. But this particular type of hustle culture is more like buying 10x lottery tickets - you do get 10x more chances to hit it big, but from a low baseline.
Although if I were, I could stop at noon on Monday and do something for me the rest of the week?
(If only it worked like that! Suppose it somewhat does if you're self-employed, sole trader something or another. But realistically even then there's customers or something, some external factor that needs at least some work most days or at a moment's notice.)
Reading things that don't necessarily apply directly to oneself can still be informative, and possibly establish other connections by virtue of secondary points.
This is silly. You do the routine stuff so that when the "10x" opportunities come, you are fit to execute on them. It's like saying pro athletes shouldn't spend all that boring time in the gym - just score some points! Maybe the author is trying to point out that it's easy to think that the routine stuff is the ultimate point, which is fair, but I fear (young) people will read this and think (as I used to) that all they have to do is go with the flow and be naturally brilliant.
Well said. It is much of the "the harder you work, the luckier you get". But with most things, blind execution won't work. Reflection and introspection are needed to shape your ever evolving journey. Do whatever works for you, just do so intentionally!
This characteristic is pervasive in this author's writing, in my opinion. I can't tell if he's willfully missing the obvious underlying truth in order to get contrarian hype clicks or if he really just doesn't notice things like what you're pointing out.
“I don’t believe small changes can build to big ones” - lots of people
The latter is the much more likely error. Apparently or proximally low-impact routines like exercise, meditation, journaling, reading, etc. are frequently advocated specifically because they are extremely high impact but do not look like they are.
Inversely, permanently improv-jazzing through life and frenetically jumping from “high impact activity” to “high impact activity” feels productive, but if you succeed at this you are almost certain to burn yourself out before it really matters. And much more likely is that there really aren’t that many high impact things you can be doing, so what it actually looks like is either 1) waiting for something high impact enough to justify action, which never just comes to you, or 2) shifting your priorities to start treating highly available low-impact things as if they are high impact.
In the event you do have a series of high-impact things to do in rapid succession, you’re going to be totally dependent on your routines to sustain that work, so you had better hope you built them prior.
I'm a routine guy, so I'm biased, but I find myself agreeing with the values in this post, while feeling that a routing enables those values. For example,
> This is why I’m so positive on sending outbound emails to interesting people, hosting dinners and events that bring together smart folks...
I find that I'm much better at this kind of proactive outreach when I have routines that push me towards this.
The non-routine approach tends to break down when you need to collaborate IME (though many companies are successfully asynchronous).
There are several conflated ideas in conflict here. First lets be clear and define 10x work as work on something very impactful, say a business idea, an important piece of art, or a scientific breakthrough. My model here could be Richard Feynman for example. If you 'stumble' on one of these ideas (e.g. after potentially years of routine, hard work training you to have a) the skills required to act on it and b) the knowledge to notice it) the by all means, drop the routine and let the excitement take you.
Any project such as this will have such a phase. Note however that the routine 'grind' (hate that word) was required to get there, and at some point, the proof of concept will be done, and the routine will be required again to keep it going and get it fully out into the world.
I used to hate routine by my kids showed me how necessary it is. Maintenance is essential to life. Routines get the maintenance done, and free up your brain to have ideas and energy for the hard work. An observation: Where I work there is a Nobel laureate who takes walks at almost the same time every day (past my window). I would think he knows about '10x work', and also about the utility of routine.
The only case I see is against "10x" and overachievement in general. My morning yoga routine keeps me in shape and healthy. It's very pedestrian, I don't try to improve much, but it works. Maybe people should learn to relax a little and think about what's really important.
Our careers are defined by the highest moments of its biggest upside swings.
The "highest moment of biggest upside swing" can be likened to winning a jack pot. A not solid career or life advice.
In my opinion, our careers are defined by the "area under curve" of achievements.
Bruce Lee gradually became a megastar by exercising and learning, gradually, not by hitting someone's head in a convoluted flying rotating high knee kick that is not repeatable at all.
Lee chased a lot of opportunities, like any actor looking for a break. And also a victim of a somewhat random early death from cerebral edema, seemingly unrelated to all his martial arts.
The little daily things add up, not doing exercise can significantly impact not only your weight / insulin levels, exercise is to release endorphins for the day to help make better decisions and live a happier life. Daily routines of the .05x stack up. That's the point. 1% better a day in any given area of life is still better than 0. Who cares about the 10x, why is that even a factor? Just be a good human and contribute the most you can, when you can.
For what it's worth, the most productive people I know seem to do basically no planning, but respond to almost everything immediately in the moment. Replying to emails as soon as they see them, making a phone call to have the conversation right now, etc.
By focusing on speed, they are able to accomplish a very large amount and never let a backlog build up. In some ways this feels closely aligned with the author's point. But these people are also spending a lot of time on what the author would call "1x" work (replying to emails, etc).
This also depends on the kind of work you do. If you’re an influencer/contractor/consultant/executive, I can maybe see what he’s talking about it but if you’re a skilled IC or creative… Imagine telling Lebron James what’s really holding him back is his routines.
Sound like the writer didn't like routines and created the logic backwards from there. There are many things in life that are low impact on their own, but have a cumulative effect. Yeah yoga in the morning isn't 10X... I guess the only option is to be a chump or go straight to max dosage of anabolic steroids.
Unfortunately the article mixes the ends with the means.
The key trait that seems to stand out in the most highly regarded people in history is discipline: there is no "10x work" without hard, long term focus, which requires discipline.
"Routines" have the advantage of making that discipline easier.
Does it mean they are sufficient? No, and this is where the article is right.
Does it mean they are useless? No, it's just one way of achieving the level of discipline needed to do the "10x work" that the article focuses on.
Hindsight fallacy here, though the author sort of acknowledges the issue:
> "Imagine the thousands of tasks you did in the past year and sort them by impact. How many of them actually moved the needle?"
If you instead try to predict the impact factor or long-term result of a given task/activity in advance, how good would your predictions be?
> "However, I’m convinced that you can create an environment where 10x work is more likely to come up."
This sounds like the gambler's fallacy of retrospective determinism, which involves looking at historical data and seeing patterns, leading to the erroneous conclusion that these patterns dictate future outcomes. It ignores the inherent randomness and independence of certain events.
The argument for daily routines is that they keep you involved and engaged, so that if an opportunity does randomly arise, you're ready to run with it.
10x work is code for doing the fun stuff and ignoring the grunt work. For every person focused on 10x there are a half-dozen cleaning up all the not-fun work they choose to ignore. Fun 10x work is the stuff that has 10x positive impacts, but ignores all the grunt work that has 100x negative impacts when not done properly. Finding a way to shoehorn the word "AI" into your next product launch: Fun. Talking to Microsoft legal department about the implications of using AI in your product: not fun. Selecting new color swatches for product lines: fun. Sorting out labor contracts to avoid a strike: not fun, but monumentally more important. (See recent Westjet strike and resulting travel disruptions over a long weekend.)
100% agree. I've worked with what could be considered "10x programmers" and their wake was almost always littered with time-consuming tech debt and housekeeping chores they didn't do, or they did something very fast that was off-the-mark because they didn't have the hard "hash-it-out" conversations before plowing ahead with an inaccurate end goal.
One way or another, you will have a routine. We are creatures of habit. It can either work for you or against you.
This seems mostly a diatribe against chasing "productivity" in disguise, with anti-routine as the clickbait hook, bait-and-switch. Habits are powerful in part because they allow you to reduce overhead. If your auto-pilot routine is to doomscroll, why would this be less stressful than a yoga session?
> The question is how to create the most opportunities at achieving that, not how to execute perfect little habits.
Say, wouldn't it be nice if there was some tool we could leverage to do that?
Yoga and meditation isn't about advancing your career.
> Our careers are defined by the highest moments of its biggest upside swings.
The author makes this logical attempt to "refute the paradigm of fitter, happier, more productive routines as the secret to success" but starts with this completely subjective premise which is kind of hidden in this word salad sentence.
"Success" by other definitions can be greatly enhanced by routine and regularity. If I define my career by the time I have available to myself while making enough money the a routine helps tremendously. I can focus and get things done so I can stop working. That's success!
There's no "one size fits all" solution. Some folks work best when they highly structure their time, some folks with less or almost no structure. Experiment and find what works best for you.
Personally, I find it best to block out some time for things I want to get done and things I must get done. Those are my daily routines. :) Everything else, I fit in on the fly.
Cal Newport tells stories about some amazing people in the past that we think of today as A+ players and very productive. But by today's standards, they would be considered loafers!
People fall en masse in the productivity = output/time trap because they have no direction. We are all chasing money and status, and it shows. People we regard as great past personalities are considered great for the outcomes they obtained, not for 'griding/hustling' non stop.
I honestly think that the necessity to busy ourselves is a symptom of a deep malaise. Very few people even feel able to consider greater collective outcomes. We need to keep the wheel spinning and the creditors at bay.
I always felt morning routines were a bit ridiculous, but the thing is if you have a regular job to you go to, you kind of automatically end up with a routine and it's easy to take that for granted, and on top of that there are so many external forces that ensure you keep working that choices don't matter very much.
It's a stark contrast when you're self-employed and there are zero things to provide structure to your days unless you them there yourself. It's a life circumstance that provides you with a lot more agency, and just how you structure the day can have a fairly tangible impact on not only your productivity, but also your physical and mental well-being
I felt like I would agree with this article more than I did.
I'm definitely one of those people who has fallen into the slump of do a bunch of the same things every day, rinse, and repeat, largely driven by the requests of others. I do despise it, but at the same time, I wish I worked some more routine into my day so I can make more progress on the things that matter to me. But largely I feel burnt out from the routine of others that is imposed upon me, and it causes an almost visceral reaction to adding more planned time to my day.
But I think where I really didn't connect was the framing. The "productivity" thing, as if my goal in life should be to maximize output. The author frames routine as a robotic state, but I'd argue productivity maximization is an even more robotic trait.
It's really okay to have some hours in your day where you both don't have a routine and don't "accomplish" anything.
Right. As usual, YMMV. Routines are an absolute necessity to stay grounded for those of us who are naturally unhinged enough to be unable to snap out of their 100x streaks. But, sadly, cargo cult is a thing. When people see 100x performance, they associate it with whatever outbound behaviors of the high performer. Alas, it’s usually a coping mechanism, not the source of prosperity.
One advantage of having a fixed routine, especially for thinks like your daily yoga practice, is that without a fixed ring-fenced slot other things will inevitably push it out of the way. “Today is a special situation, I just really need to do this thing … etc.” In my personal experience that leads to your practice (or whatever it is you want to do for yourself) becoming sporadic.
The cashier at the supermarket doesn't do life changing "move the needle", 10x heroics. Yet they need to get shit done.
Most of us need to get shit done so we keep getting out paycheck and not get fired. Routine is pretty much the only way to survive the chore long term. Push it to subconscious and don't think about it anymore.
Structure is meant to be broken. But the breaking of structure only works if you have it.
I struggle to have a good routine but spontaneity happens more often when I do.
If I go to the gym at 5:30 and do chores at 7 and go to work at 8 and eat lunch at noon and read at 6 and eat dinner at 7 and work on personal projects at 8 and go to bed at 10:30 then if something comes up I can say "I have an hour at lunch, lets meet" Or "I will skip my personal projects today and go to so and so's house"
If I'm just constantly chaotic then I'm always feeling harried and like I don't have time for anything. And even if I do make time for something spontaneous, then I'm feeling like I'm stealing time from myself even though I didn't really have anything planned during that time anyways.
Also 10x work is a silly idea to me. Progress happens in almost all areas because of consistency. Research, fitness, home life, relationships, work. They grow or produce or increase because you do them regularly not because you had some magical insight and suddenly need to disappear into a hole for a week to work on it.
His section on breaking routine feels like it completely misses the point.
"Serendipity loves randomness and hates routine"
There's also a saying that luck favors the prepared.
Rarely have a read a piece that is mostly well-written that resonates so poorly with me. It's like every insight he has is the opposite of my lived experience.
For me, routines are used to provide a strong stable foundation so i can take on new, unexpected, unfamiliar things on a daily basis, and stay resilient and mentally healthy. It is a means and not an end
Yeah! Embrace serendipity! Flip a coin to decide whether to take your antipyschotic today!
On a more serious note, I've found that routines are necessary for me to be happy. Once I've established a routine, I can break it, but if I don't have a routine, I'll usually just do nothing. I sense that the author is coming from the opposite perspective. He's probably a very conscientious and energetic striver and is trying to break free from that.
You often don't know which work was "10x" except in retrospect, so this advice is a little like recommending people only invest in the stocks that are going to go up.
Take that direction if that's what makes you tick. I've decided that that's not how I want to live my life, quit a 'prestigious' position, left the competitive career, and I now work as a teacher with "10x personal satisfaction".