Tag Archives: habits

Routine Ownership

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I heard this quote by Alex Hormozi from Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom podcast:

“…if you cannot function without your routine, your routine owns you, you do not own it. Full stop.”

At first this hit me hard. I’m so committed to my routines that I thought he was talking directly to me… a metaphorical gut punch of insight that I needed to hear. That was my first instinct. Now I see it differently.

Basically this is true if you are obsessed with your routine, but otherwise it’s healthy. Only if your routine is costing you your wellbeing or your relationships with others would I agree that a routine owning you is an issue. Beyond the routine costing you in a very unhealthy way, you need the routine to pull you, to ‘own’ you in a way, or it wouldn’t be a routine.

We have some routines that are non-negotiable commitments. For example, if you have kids, you need to feed them. You don’t break the routine and not feed them dinner. But if the routine (or habit) is something negotiable, like meditation, or working out, or a minimum number of steps in a day, for example… Then there are always reasons to break the routine, or break the streak. If you don’t let the routine own you, it will quickly not become routine.

The routine needs to own you or it will no longer be something you regularly do. It’s that simple. If I’m headed to bed, exhausted, and I haven’t written my daily blog post, it’s easy to say, ‘I’ll just skip today.” But then it’s easier and easier to have other ‘acceptable’ excuses… And I would not have recently achieved 7 years of daily blogging. It’s not that I can’t function otherwise, it’s not an issue that the routine owns me more than I own it. In fact, this is precisely what is needed to ensure the routine continues.

I’ll end where I started just two days ago when I said about ‘Streaks and hard things’:

1. Our streaks are part of our identity. They don’t define us, we are defined by the act of keeping them.

2. Do hard things. The effort is its own reward. I don’t know anyone with a hard-to-keep streak who isn’t also doing well in other aspects of their lives, and ‘crushing it’… A life with intentional hard things begets a life where challenges are met and overcome rather than seen as barriers and limitations. 

There might be a reason to stop in the future… but until then the streak will keep streaking.

And the routines will keep routining… but they’ve got to own you a bit for this to happen.

Streaks and hard things

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I read Chris Kennedy’s post this morning, ‘Still Running – A Long Read’. It might be long, but for anyone who uses streaks to make a commitment, it’s a great read.

This is my comment. I think each of the points will eventually be a post on their own, but for today, I’ll leave them as I wrote them:

Two thoughts come to mind.

1. Our streaks are part of our identity. They don’t define us, we are defined by the act of keeping them.

2. Do hard things. The effort is its own reward. I don’t know anyone with a hard-to-keep streak who isn’t also doing well in other aspects of their lives, and ‘crushing it’… A life with intentional hard things begets a life where challenges are met and overcome rather than seen as barriers and limitations. 

There might be a reason to stop in the future… but until then the streak will keep streaking.
💪😄👍

Habit revamp

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Summer is here and I’m don’t have a morning routine anymore. I’m currently between sets at a gym I don’t usually go to, because last night I stayed with a cousin in a nearby city. I’m here 3 hours later than usual, which is perfectly ok, I really don’t need to be out of the house at 5:45 anymore… or anytime in the foreseeable future.

I don’t care about the actual time I work out, or write my daily blog post, or meditate, or take my vitamins, but I do care that I actually do these things very regularly. A perfect example is that today I went directly from cardio to weights and only now realize that I skipped my stretching routine… a key ingredient to keeping my back healthy and ready to do weights.

Basically I had a habitual routine that was rock soiled while I had a work schedule to plan my routine around, and now that’s gone. I’m not going to figure this out today, and new habits take a while to form, but I want to figure out a kind of flexible routine in terms of times of day, location, and summer plans. I don’t actually know how to do this, so it may be messy for a while. Even so, I know me, and if I don’t have systems in place I miss getting things done.

There is a saying that if you want something done, give it to a busy person. That was me for a long time, now that I have more time I really need to create systems that will ensure all the healthy habits I developed are part of my new patter and pace of life.

I can’t wait

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Yesterday after work I wrote a longer, rather dystopian post about the future of AI. I developed the idea and the start of the title the night before. I thought up the end of the title, the 3 scenarios, on the drive to work, and I sat at my desk at about 4pm and wrote the post in just over an hour. This was a rare opportunity where I was able to sit, completely uninterrupted for that long, and just wrote a piece, start to finish… I did need some edit time after I published it because I had another work event in the evening, so I couldn’t sit longer and do the final edits.

And that’s what I can’t wait to do when I retire. I want dedicated, uninterrupted writing time. Not like right now, when I’m rushing to get most of this done before connecting with a friend to get a pre-work workout in. Not a 30 minute window where I try to get everything down, create an image, post and share online. Instead, I want an hour or more of undisturbed writing time.

This doesn’t always happen in the summer. I’ll often still feel rushed, with family commitments and other daily activities getting in the way. But it is my hope that in retirement I can actually schedule time to write, make it a priority, and a regular part of my daily routine.

Since joining a gym back in November, I’ve felt very rushed with my writing. It only takes about 12-15 minutes to get to the gym, but the commute costs me roughly a half hour more than my regular morning routine before joining. My workout is also a bit longer than it used to be. So the cost in time has come at the expense of my writing. And often I have to push my daily write to the evening when I’m tired and just want to get it done for the day.

I can’t wait to have more time just to write!

Battery recharge

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Next week is going to be extremely busy. I’ve got something on the go every day, and a couple of those days will take a lot out of me. I think this coming week will be the busiest of the month. I’m going to need to maximize my rest and be very efficient with my time.

I find weeks like this exhausting not just because the schedule is crazy but also because I end up getting less sleep. I head to bed wired and thinking about what I still have to do, and that results in me staying up later, and not getting as much rest. I am aware of this, and yet I can’t seem to break the pattern.

I’m me of my biggest goals in retirement is figuring out a better sleep pattern. I know that not having an all-day work agenda should make things better… but I fear that heading into summer, I’ll actually just stay up later. This is normal for me during the summer, when the days are longer.

My challenge is to find a routine where I’m fully recharging my battery because this is one aspect of healthy living I have not figured out. I can eat well and work out regularly with minimal effort now because these are habits I’ve developed. They don’t take motivation and discipline, they just get done as part of failing living.

A good night’s sleep still requires effort, and the discipline to go to bed early enough. I have to figure out how to routinize sleeping, rather than relying on motivation… Because my motivation isn’t strong enough. And weeks like the one coming remind me that sleep can make or break the kind of week I end up having.

And on that note… I’m off to bed.

A new groove

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It wasn’t that hard getting up on Monday morning at 5am to get to the gym. Coming back from a two week break didn’t hurt that much. But getting back into the routine of writing before I got to the gym at 6am has been a struggle.

It’s almost 11pm now and I’m laying down on my couch rattling this off to keep a commitment to myself to write every day.

The thing I am most looking forward to with retirement is time to write. The idea that I can schedule writing time that isn’t rushed excites me. Not having to think up ideas on the toilet first thing in the morning, or while washing my face and brushing my teeth. Not having to edit my work while on a treadmill. Actually sitting at a laptop with a coffee in my hand rather than hunting and pecking away on my phone… these are things I can’t wait to do as part of a daily routine upon retirement.

Before the March break people would ask me if I’m excited about my pending retirement and I’d answer honestly that I haven’t thought much about it. Now, after the break, I can’t say that anymore. I am thinking about it. I’m wondering how to design my days? I’m looking forward to finding a new groove that doesn’t involve a 5am wake up time and rushing to get my whole routine done before starting a long day at work.

The real test will be next September, when everyone is back at work and I’m home. I’m confident that I’ll build a routine that works. I’ll find my groove.

Coming home

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I spent the day travelling today and now I’m home. What a fabulous holiday my wife and I had. It was wonderful to visit with my mom and sister. Unfortunately I spent the entire 10 days with a cough that I still haven’t shaken, but that helped me see the importance of rest.

Normally when a holiday is filled with a lot of down time, I end up feeling guilty, like I wasted the holiday. Not this time. I truly relaxed. I even took time away from my regular routines like meditation and working out… and I did this without the need to beat myself up about it. I just took the time to recover. And as a byproduct, my sciatica has completely gone. I’m not sure if it will return with more activity, but I am thrilled to not feel pain just from standing for a few minutes.

And now I’m home, and the routines return. I’ll be back in the gym early tomorrow. I’ll get back to daily meditation. I’ll start back at work on Monday, ready to enjoy my last 3 months before retirement.

Coming home after a break can often feel like a bit of a slog, but I’m excited to be back, and I’m looking forward to returning to my usual routine… Especially since it’s coming from a desire to get back to my good habits, without beating myself up because I took a bit of time off.

Cat ritual

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Meet the co-author of this blog, Oliver the Cat. He greets me at the couch at around 5:15am, and will meow if I don’t put my legs up on the table. When they are horizontal, he jumps up on my legs and waits for a good head scratch. Once he’s satisfied, he turns around to face my feet, and stretches out along my legs.

Alas, it only lasts about 3-4 minutes, then one little adjustment or shift in my body position is enough for him to get off me. But not until I’ve started tapping away words on my phone.

Oliver is probably the only part of my morning routine I don’t have control over. He can choose to sleep in, and avoid my lap for a morning. He can decide how long he wants a head scratch & massage. He can have the nerve to jump off me before I’ve written anything. Still, any time he chooses to run through this little ritual, I’m happy to make sure it happens.

Oliver isn’t just my cat, he’s very often my writing companion… there to support me in my daily writing, stealing just enough of my attention to put me in a good mood, but not too much of it to distract me from the reason I got on the couch… which is to write.

It’s 6am, let’s go!

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We’ve fully reached the stage of finding reasons to go rather than finding excuses not to. I’m not available this weekend to do our weekly walk up the Coquitlam Crunch, so Dave and I met in darkness at 6am to start our trek up the hill.

I’d say we reached this stage a full year ago. It was 2025 that we went from our commitment to doing the climb at least 40 times a year, matching the weeks of a school year, to ensuring we never missed a week. This wasn’t a voiced decision, it’s one we just found ourselves doing.

Now it’s something we just do… And yet it’s a lot more than that!

It’s a chance to to talk, to rant, to seek advice, to share, to listen, to connect.

It’s a commitment to a friend.

We now regularly meet at 6am for workouts anyway, and we often do multiple crunches at a time training for Everesting the Crunch, so to meet on a cold Thursday morning and just go up and down the Crunch once, actually feels like a rest day.

To pick up, put down

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We’ve heard this all before regarding habits, goals, and projects: Before you pick something new up, you need to put something else down.

The conference I went to back in October was led by Simon Breakspear who shared his Pruning Principle. He guided us to ask, “What is on my ‘Stop Doing’ list? What can I Delay, Delegate, or Dump?”

Adding a gym membership has been great, but it has come at a cost. The 15 minute commute each way means I’ve lost 30 minutes of time from my morning routine. I also spend a bit more time at the gym compared to my home workout. The question I now find myself asking is what am I going to give up to make up that time. I already get up at 5am and moving that to 4:30 would not be a healthy option for me.

I’ve decided that I’m dumping my online distractions. I’m leaving behind Wordle, Strands, and an online game that I usually play. I’m also doing zero social media in the mornings. Even 5 minutes can detract from a longer stretch or cardio workout. I’m keeping my Daily chess puzzle (while doing my bathroom duties), but not allowing any other online distractions in the morning.

I’m not sure that will be enough, but I also started writing this post last night and that’s going to help a lot too. Often the longest part of my morning is coming up with an idea to write about. If I get my idea started in the evening, that’s probably going to be the biggest contributor to not feeling rushed in the morning. I know online time in the am is also a huge distraction, especially when I’m stuck coming up with an idea. I’ll often distract myself online which is more of a delay than it is ever an inspiration.

While my gym membership has only been for a month, and two weeks of that were holidays, I know that adding the membership to my morning routine has been disruptive and unsustainable without a change. I need to prune distractions from the things in my routine that really matter.