Today let’s focus on routines. Are they important? Do they matter? What do routines have to do with success?
The answers are yes, yes and a lot. Here are a few varied examples:
University of Alabama fans are probably well aware of Nick Saban’s meal routine. He has two Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies for breakfast and an iceberg salad with turkey and tomatoes for lunch. Every day.
Then there’s perennial all-star basketball point guard Russell Westbrook who begins his pregame routine exactly three hours before tip-off. First, he warms up. Then, one hour before game time, he visits the arena chapel. Next, he eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (Toasted wheat bread, Skippy peanut butter, strawberry jelly, cut diagonally.) Finally, six minutes and 17 seconds before game time, he begins the team’s final warm-up drill.
Winston Churchill would wake up around 7:30 a.m. daily and stay in bed for most of the morning. He’d have breakfast, read his mail and national newspapers and dictate to his secretaries. Around 11 a.m., he’d bathe and take a walk in the garden. He’d have a three-course meal with family and friends from 1 to 3:30 p.m. Then he’d work until about 5 p.m. when he’d take a nap for an hour and a half. At 8 p.m. it was time for dinner, and after that he’d go to his study and work for an hour or so.
David Karp, the founder of Tumblr, has a much simpler routine that works for him: No matter how busy he is, he doesn’t check his email until he gets in the office around 9:30 a.m. He told Inc. Magazine, “Reading emails at home never feels good or productive. If something urgently needs my attention, someone will call or text me.”
So what do all these wildly diverse routines have in common? They all create structure. They also cut down on the number of decisions that these successful people have (or had) to make. And that not only helps them avoid decision fatigue, but it also allows them more time to focus on fewer and bigger decisions.
For instance, cutting out daily decisions about what and where to eat makes Coach Saban more efficient and frees him up to concentrate on more important things like football.
So What Does This Have to Do With You?
Recently, while in a coaching session with a client who has been struggling with the day-to-day distractions I call “the swarm,” I asked him to tell me about his Monday to Friday routine. I said, “Where are you spending your time each work day?”
Well, he started to ramble, and pretty soon his failure to answer told me that he didn’t have a routine at all!
Here’s the thing: If you don’t have routines in your life, you’re not going to be as productive—and successful—as you could be. The swarm will eat up your daily productive time. You’ll waste precious hours texting, returning voicemails, answering questions, resolving vendor issues and getting stuck in meetings. Then there are the countless out-of-the-office activities that demand your attention like taking care of an aging parent, attending children’s events, faith involvement, exercising, lunch with a friend, etc.
Now, that’s not to say you don’t need to do those things. You most certainly do. But you definitely need to set limits and establish a routine that makes sure these things don’t consume your entire day.
Establishing routines is pretty straightforward actually.
They need to be simple—just enough to provide structure.
They should be realistic—you know your limits. Set doable routines!
They should be sustainable—make your routine something that fits nicely into your everyday life.
The point is: Your success comes from your ability to set and keep routines, disciplines and good habits in place. Make sure your routine is a routine of success and not one of being a slave to the swarm.
Do this, and you’ll do what you do better—both in and out of the office.