Not again.
Not another morning routine.
As you scroll your phone for the umpteenth time today, you're met with a video from hustle culture influencer #482 describing his morning routine.
"First, I wake up at 5 AM. After getting out of bed, I immediately take a 2-minute cold shower. Next, I do my morning meditation for 30 minutes. Then I go outside, exposing myself to natural light to set my circadian rhythm. Finally, I prepare my high-protein, Instagram-caption-ready breakfast consisting of only organic, whole foods and various supplements that I'm sponsored by. Now, I'm ready to start the day."
Sound like something you want to emulate?
I don't blame you if you do. I subscribed to that kind of rigid routine myself not too long ago.
But after going to bed at 8:30 PM and waking up at 5 AM every day for over a year, I realized my life was still the same.
I didn't achieve all my goals. I didn't meet my own expectations. It felt like I wasn't getting what I wanted out of life.
The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.
—Naval Ravikant
If you're thinking that the best way to start your self-improvement arc is by getting out of bed before the sun has even risen, this letter is for you.
Routine for routine's sake is slavery
One year ago, I went on a self-improvement tear.
Early bedtime. No phone in bedroom. Early wake up time without an alarm. No video games. Grayscaled phone. Phone screentime reduced to minutes a day. Gym seven days a week. Reading almost one book a week. You get the point.
I'm glad I did it.
It helped me break a lot of my bad habits, gave me more energy, and most importantly, it got me investing more time into doing meaningful things.
Thanks to my self-improvement streak I finally started writing online consistently, began building my personal brand, and took my first crack at entrepreneurship.
No way any of that would have happened had I still been going to sleep at midnight after queuing one too many games of VALORANT.
But long after I started seeing results from my routine, I still kept it up.
I told myself that I needed to keep up my routine, or else all my progress would vanish (as stupid as that sounds in hindsight).
So I kept going to bed early, even if it meant sacrificing time I could have spent with friends. I kept taking cold showers even though I had gotten used to them. I kept hitting the gym every day, even though I knew it wasn't helping me make more progress than I had just gone three times a week.
I served my routine, even though it stopped serving me.
I became a slave to routine.
Breaking free of the shackles of routine
It was only in the past few weeks that I decided to intentionally violate my strict schedule.
I stopped heading to my bedroom to wind down for an hour before sleep. I cut down my gym routine to half of what it was. And I didn't care that my wake up time started deviating from its norm.
The result?
Nothing. Or at least, nothing compared to how I had imagined it.
The way I pictured it, I was on a train that was taking me to where I wanted to go in life. And if I started being more spontaneous—and less disciplined—that the train would throw me off. And I'd have no opportunity to hop back on.
But that wasn't reality. In reality, there was no train.
I was walking toward my destination with my own two feet. I wasn't reliant on anyone else, on anything else—to take me where I wanted to go.
There is no master key
After breaking my routine, I reflected on why I even got myself started on that ultra-rigid schedule in the first place.
The answer was simple:
I wanted to get more stuff done.
I knew that my bad habits (mostly staying up late and mindlessly consuming) were getting in the way. So I saw my routine as a way to drop those bad habits. To unblock myself.
And adopting that routine did just that.
Once my bad habits were gone and I started being more productive, I was too scared to see what things might look like if I broke my routine. If I stopped using the key that got me here in the first place.
But that's the problem. You can't get to where you ultimately want to go by using the same key over and over again.
You'll encounter new doors on your journey, all with different locks. And if you keep trying to unlock them by using the same key from a previous season in your life, you'll only disappoint yourself.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no master key in this journey.
You'll never find one key that "does it all." One key that unlocks any door you come across. One key that solves all your problems.
It doesn't exist.
But what does exist is your ability to constantly find new keys and test them out.
If that new key doesn't unlock the door in front of you, so what?
You can always try again.