The Secret to Success Lies in Your Daily Routine
4 Reasons Why a Daily Routine Is Critical to Success
👋 Hi, I’m Irene! Welcome to The Happiness Diary Entry 11.
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Do you ever:
Wait to feel creative before you write?
Feel like you never have enough time?
Feel anxious, stressed, far from inner peace?
Feel like you wasted a day being unproductive?
If so, the problem might lie in your daily routine.
Let’s explore the 4 reasons why a daily routine is critical to success.
Creativity
I used to write whenever I felt creative.
The catch?
It didn’t happen often. So I wasn’t writing as often as I would’ve liked.
The result? I barely wrote and published anything. And so I never got better at writing.
But a few years ago, I read something in Think Like A Monk by Jay Shetty.
He wrote, if you want to have more creativity, you need to have a daily routine. Why?
Because a routine creates room for discovery. For creativity. For inspiration.
And it’s why having a routine was critical to Kobe Bryant’s work.
Kobe said, “Creativity, a lot of times, comes from structure. You have those parameters and that structure, and within that, you can be creative. But if you don’t have the structure, you’re just aimlessly doing stuff.”
Simply put, rules and routines ease your cognitive load so you have the space to be creative.
Since then, I’ve created a daily routine.
And as a result? I, now, publish 1-3x a week.
Because a daily routine created space for me to have more creativity.
Time
I never had a routine in university.
As a result? I felt like I never had enough time to write my lab reports. To read studies. Or to study for midterms and finals. So I never did as well as I could’ve.
It felt like a constant battle against time, procrastination, laziness, and distraction.
And so what I’ve learned from life and Ryan Holiday is this: If you wake up whenever you want and do whatever you want, you’ll never have enough time.
So if you don’t want this to be the case, you need to have routines. And you need to have discipline and stick to them.
That’s how you’ll make full use of your time on this Earth.
Inner Peace
The alarm goes off.
You press snooze (at least) 5 times. You wake up. You look at all your phone notifications. You drag yourself out of bed. You feel like you didn’t get any sleep.
And you spend every minute of your morning making decisions as you rush to work, “What should I wear today? What should I pack for lunch? Should I get a coffee at the nearby store or wait until I get to work to order one?”
Then, you rush to work and you’re in reactive mode all day. You forgot to prepare your lessons so you rush to do that in the office before class starts. Your supervisor asks for a sudden meeting. Your partner suggests you go out for dinner after work, and you say sure.
By the end of the day, you, one, are freaking exhausted. And two, you feel anxious, stressed, and guilty because you didn’t do anything you needed to do like journal, work out, or write.
Sound familiar?
I’ve been in that position one too many times. It’s exactly what happened when I didn’t have a routine or follow my routine.
Because here’s the truth: Life will drag you by the hand if you don’t have a routine.
As a result, you’ll never feel at peace.
How could you? When you’re squandering your brain power reacting to everything? When you never have time for yourself? When you don’t do what you need to do?
Your mind will be in absolute chaos without a routine.
Productivity
I sit in my chair at my desk beside the window at 9 AM (almost) every day.
That’s when and where I write.
Once I start my Pomodoro tracker, I’m instantly pulled into focus mode. This means no checking emails. No looking at social media. No music. And no phone.
It’s just me and my Google Doc to write because I’ve trained my brain to work distraction-free at this time and place.
How? Because time has memory; location has energy. (I learned this from Jay Shetty.)
When you do something at the same time and place every day, it becomes easier and more natural for you to do it.
This is a game-changing productivity hack.
Final Thoughts
If you don’t want to:
Be creative
Have more time
Have inner peace
Be more productive
Then, don’t have a daily routine.
Today’s Action Step
Read:
The Key To A Productive Morning Starts The Night Before to build your evening routine.
7 Time Management Tips To Help You Consistently Create Content While Working Full-Time to manage your time better.
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