Breaking The Cycle: How To Quit Wasting Your Time: Building Healthy Habits

Routines are the invisible architecture of a productive life. They are the systems that make good behavior easy and automatic rather than effortful and willpower-dependent. And this distinction matters enormously, because willpower is a limited resource. Research consistently shows that willpower depletes throughout the day as you make more decisions. Every time you have to decide whether to work out, whether to eat well, whether to start your most important task, whether to go to bed on time — you are drawing from a limited account. Routines eliminate those decisions. They automate your best behaviors so that willpower is preserved for the moments that actually require it.

Think about the most successful, productive people you know or have read about. Almost universally, they have strong routines — particularly morning routines. Not because they are naturally more disciplined than the rest of us. But because they have deliberately designed their environment and schedule so that their best behaviors happen almost automatically, without a daily battle of willpower. They are not choosing to exercise at six in the morning because they feel like it. They are exercising because it is simply what happens at six in the morning. The decision has already been made. The only choice is showing up.