Why Your Routine Might Be Working Against You

Routines are great. Every peak performer relies on them. However, there's a trap that people too often fall into, ourselves sometimes included. And that is we're not trying to be a world champion of having the most intricate, complex routine. We're trying to be a world champion of what we actually do. We're trying to be the best athlete we can be, the best leader we can be, the best creative, the best writer, the best artist, the best parent that we could be.

We want to make sure that we're not working for our routines, but that our routines are working for us. So today we are going to talk about routines. We're going to talk about... how they are incredible, and how they can help us, but also the common pitfalls that we fall into when we get too caught up in the form, the aesthetic of the routine, and not enough in its function. This, my friends, is Excellence Actually.

I'm one of your hosts, Brad Stahlberg, joined as always by Clay Skipper and Steve Magnus. So let's get like right into it right away and give everyone one big takeaway. And this is, I think, one of the keys to... thinking through routines and where a lot of the conversation goes wrong. A routine is about function, not form. I'm going to say that again. A routine is about function, not form. What do I mean by that? A routine ideally should get us into...

the mental and physical state to perform or function a specific task, right? A pre-race routine helps an athlete get ready to compete, right? Both physically and mentally. They warm up. they get themselves in the right headspace. A morning routine for an employee or worker can get you in the specific headspace you need to be.

to be productive for that day. The routine is the tool that gets you to the function. It teaches you what it feels like to be in the state you need to be to perform on whatever your task is. What often happens is that we worry about preserving the form even when it goes against the function. So say your morning routine is you meditate every day for 10 minutes because it helps you be calm.

And you can't get your 10-minute meditation in. Now you're really anxious about like, oh my God, I didn't get my meditation in. How am I going to be calm? Well, now the worrying about the form is getting in the way of the actual function, right? So routine should enhance your sense of capacity to do what you need to do.

not enhance your desire for control. Routine is about form, not function. The way I like to see it is this. It is the hustle bro culture of someone like Ashton Hall. The person who went viral for his routine, you've probably seen the video, right? Wakes up at 4 a.m., pours a bottle of Saratoga water in some ice, dunks his face in. The ice puts on his nasal strip or whatever it is, does some crazy stuff. And the whole thing is about the routine itself. That is the form Clay was talking about.

Compare that to an actual athlete. The routine is serving a purpose. It's getting them ready to play the game. It's getting them prepared to run. the race. We know that we need to warm up and jog or move to increase muscle temperature to make our muscles function better and get our aerobic system primed by breathing a little bit heavy so we're not going from zero. It serves a function. The function, the point, is not, I need to execute this routine precisely.

In fact, if you talk to elite athletes, they'll say this is the danger when you go from a routine that serves a purpose to a superstition or ritual where you start freaking out if you're like, oh my gosh.

I didn't do my warm-up in the precise order. That's when it starts to be catastrophic. That's when it starts to get in the way. So I think seeing it and framing it that way is really important because I think too often now more than... ever before is because of social media and culture, the well-intentioned sometimes emphasis on routines, we start to make that the main thing when it's just the thing that's supposed to serve.

a purpose. I always think of routines as they should be training wheels. Take the example of an athlete. They want to get to a specific state mentally and physically. And the routine hopefully...

that trains you over time to feel like what state you want to be in physically mentally so say you do meditate for you know 10 minutes before your race and you want to run strides you want to do certain activations right the point of that is so you know what it feels like in your body to be physically ready and mentally ready when that all goes out the window

The point isn't how can I recreate the form exactly? It's I know what it's supposed to feel like mentally and physically to be ready. So if I can't do my strides and my activations, can I do a minute of jumping jacks? How can I get myself to that state? even without the usual...

the usual way I can do it. And this is a great example, right? With that high school freshman, what do you do? You put on the training wheels and you say, hey, here's your precise routine. It's written down. Do all these drills in this order and you're going to be good. Why do you give that? Because they're clueless.

They don't know really what kind of state they're getting in. They don't know the different tools to get in that state. So you put the freaking training wheels on. But over time, as athlete learns, as individual develops...

You give them optionality. You say, hey, you've been here. You know how you're supposed to feel. If you want to do strides, great. If you want to do jumping jacks, great. If you want to do X, Y, and Z to get yourself ready today because you feel like... I need this, then that is the transition from beginner or novice to master, where you understand that you have a variety of tools to play with, and it's your job.

to figure out those tools. I think a part of getting to that state too is the pairing of what you're doing with what comes next. There's all sorts of research. The field is called affordances. That essentially says that the objects around ourselves, and I would also say the behaviors that we engage in, they afford our brains certain pathways as to what's coming next. We've talked about this time and time again on the show, that the brain is predictive.

So the brain is constantly predicting what's going to happen next and preparing for those predictions. So if you make the same pot of coffee and light the same smelly candle... Before you sit down to write, your brain, when you start making that pot of coffee and lighting that smelly candle, is going to start saying, all right, it's time to get ready to write. If you go through the same...

six deep breaths, close your eyes, say a mantra before you take the stage to public speak, your brain is going to say, all right, now it's time to public speak. So it's serving these two purposes simultaneously. The first is to give you a sense of... predictability and to help shepherd that state in. And then the second is you're connecting the desired outcome or the desired action with something ahead of it. Now, what happens is if it takes a 37-step routine just to get started for the day...

What you're doing is you're essentially saying in order for me to feel awake, like I can start the day, I have to go through these 37 steps. But there's nothing special about those 37 steps. So I think that... Way too often, we think that it's the one magic mushroom tea that your podcast host is telling you that's actually going to start your day. There's nothing about the mushroom and the tea unless they're actually magic mushrooms.

But it's the act of making the tea itself and the fact that you pair that with starting the day. So this is another important takeaway. What makes a good routine is two things. It's one that it, yes, it actually shepherds you into the state that you want to be in. The second is that you're reproducing it enough. So every time you engage in it.

You rely on the science of affordances. You rely on the predictive brain and neuroscience speak, and you set yourself up for the next behavior. You prime yourself to groove into what you're doing. And if you have those two things, like... That's the crux of routine. And that's true for a pre-performance routine. I'm about to public speak. I need something I can replicate. But that's also true for a general, I need to start the day routine.

I think that also knowing what the state you're trying to achieve is allows you to... And we'll get into some tools, but this is one tool you can already use. It allows you to bulletproof your routine a little bit. Because take the example of... coffee right like okay you drink the coffee because you want to it helps you switch maybe mentally to be in the right state it also gives you some caffeine so you feel a little more upbeat

There are going to be times when maybe you can't have coffee, right? And so maybe there's an argument to be made that once a week, you should have tea or nothing at all. and figure out if you can find a different way to get there mentally because that way you're not relying on the coffee. You have other bridges, other forms to get you to this state of...

being activated, being awake. Maybe it's you do 20 push-ups. But the point is, if you know where you're trying to get and you have multiple roads to get there, then when one road gets closed, you can't have your coffee because you're... I don't know, you woke up somewhere, you don't have access to coffee, then you can still get to the state, right? And I think that's ultimately what we're trying to do is you're trying to train that adaptability, that flexibility.

that self-awareness knowing what you need to be ready rather than training hey i'm really good at driving this one route to get to the same destination i think what often happens on that knowing the state is we just lump them all together

And what I mean by that is people think I'm going to have one magic routine that gets me in that space when there's a variety of states that... that we need to get into. And it depends on the goal. So using the athletic example, and I see this all the time, both on social media and with real life people and novices is... They'll treat an easy run and a hard workout with the same routine. Meaning...

You go watch the novice and they'll go through an elaborate warm up and stretches and other things for easy run. And then they'll do that exact same thing for trying to run 400 meter repeats on the track. And you go over to, I don't know. random professional runner or even East Africa and you watch East African get ready for easy run, what do they do? They drink their tea and then they start the run at a very slow pace. They just get going.

Because they realize that easy run doesn't require the same state as cranking out 400s on the track. And I think that too often we lump everything up into performance instead of starting at what step one is, which is like... What state do I need to be in? Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, Steve. I'm going to make you really happy, Steve. I'm going to use a running metaphor here.

It's the difference between running a 400 or a 200 or a 100 and running a marathon. And if you're running a 100, you can't let the race come to you. You have to come to the race. So this is where, yeah, you know, splash your face in cold water because you need to be freaking psyched. Go. But if you're running a marathon and you go out psyched, it's actually a terrible...

pacing nervous system strategy for your marathon. Like you want to let the race come to you. So this notion that you should wake up at 4am and get yourself so psyched for the day and get your nervous system just firing on all cylinders makes no sense because the day is a marathon.

So what ends up happening? I see this all the time because I know some of these people. You get the 37-step routine. You get the cold plunge. You're super psyched. You start the day and you have a great start to the day. You really do. Like you crush that first couple hours. But then by noon, you need a Celsius. By two, you need a Zin. And by four, you need a Red Bull. And I think that there's a reason that so many of the Optimization Bro podcast are sponsored by Celsius, Red Bull, and Zin.

Because in order to live your life like that, you're constantly fritzing out your nervous system. So yeah, is there a time and a place to get ready to flip that switch? Absolutely. But it probably isn't the start of the day. Unless you happen to be someone whose job requires one hour of extreme output, and that one hour of extreme output is between 8 and 9 a.m. There's a reason that the 100-meter world record isn't set at 6 a.m.?

Because like we're literally not meant to like fire on all cylinders right out of bed. Yet if you're trying to get your brain and body to do that all the time with your whatever.

fancy cold plunge, whatever, all the stuff to get you feeling like hyped at 6am. Guess what? Like, it's probably not going to work that well. So sometimes we also have to... work with our body's natural rhythms, which will all be a little bit different to understand like, hey, it's not normal to be psyched at the crack of dawn.

So let's not just break things down. Let's also build things up. And I think this is really important. So let's talk about like what is a good start to the day routine. In the vast, vast, vast majority of instances of the reporting that I've done on this, so I'm not just pulling from what I think works, but in talking to a lot of elite performers in different crafts, I've yet to meet someone that has a truly intricate or complex morning routine.

The most common morning routine is I make a cup of ice water and a pot of coffee. Then I check my email. Or then I sit down at my computer and I do 45 minutes of deep focus work. Or then I read a book. Or then I've got young kids and I'm just trying to corral them out the door for school. Now I will insert myself and say, I have one other step in my routine, but you can't guess it. I light an incense. Why?

Because there's something about that smell filling up the library that tells me like, all right, like a new day is here. It's the start of the day. If I'm going to sit down to write like, great, that smell tells me it's like it's a new day. It's time to wake up and ease into the day.

There's nothing special about the incense. I mean, there's this one person out there that says like peppermint is associated with focus. Like, I don't think that's true. My incense, not peppermint. I think I focus pretty well. It's the act of doing the same thing, and it's the fact that, oh, now I smell something that is nice and novel that then tells my brain, all right, it's ready to wake up and start the day. I think that the more compact you can make your morning routine, the better.

Because it breaks that trap of like your routine stressing you out. Are you working for your routine versus your routine working for you? And you don't want to get into that situation where the whole reason you're waking up at four is because your routine takes two hours. Just wake up at six and make the coffee and sleep two more hours. Yeah, this is something that I've seen in every elite athlete I've ever worked with is they make it easy to get going, especially in the morning.

There's not 55 steps. If I look at my own routine, what is it? Drink some water, go to the bathroom, feed the kids, get them dressed, go on a run pushing the stroller. That's it. I don't have an incense candle either. You should get when you'll focus better if it's peppermint. It would probably distract my toddler and then we'd spend all day with the candle instead of getting out the door to go run. But the point is like...

It's got to connect you to that action. The other part, to be honest on the productivity side of things, is I think sometimes you can do things that just prime yourself for that activity. So if you're going to go in a deep writing session, spend 10 minutes reading good writing because it'll get your mind out of like social media, Twitter land, Instagram world and into like, oh yeah.

This is what good humans sound like. You can do things that kind of prime you towards that state. And too often what happens is instead we default towards picking up our phone, scrolling. And then expecting to go from mind-numbing, feel-good hits of dopamine and other things and multitasking to deep-focused work. If you want your brain to get in deep-focused work, you've got to bridge that gap.

with something that sends the message and signals like, hey, it's time to pay attention. It's not time to, you know, see a cat dancing, someone die, murder, war. tiktok dances all in a row it's focus time i don't want us to come across as like smug assholes because i don't think that we are

If you have like a seven step routine and it works for you, that's great. And maybe my life would be better if I actually had additional steps in my routine. I don't know. The point isn't that seven is bad and two is good or nine is bad and four is good. The point is just like really ask yourself, are these things actually making a difference to help me start the day or to help me with this activity? And if they are, and the cost in terms of finance or energy is minimal.

then you should do them. And there's nothing wrong with doing them. But if they're not and you're just doing them out of mimicry or because you think that you need this elaborate routine, then that is where you should scale back. And the other part of this is I know we do a lot of kind of...

I don't know, I may be bashing to a degree, but our point is to help people. And what I would say is if you're listening to this and you've got an elaborate routine and it takes 45 minutes, and sometimes you're going to need that 45 minutes, right? If you're listening, what I'd suggest is go back to basics. Is just try to start small with one or two things. And then if that doesn't put you in the right state, then slowly add until you say, hey, you know what?

I've tried these couple things. This works. I don't need 24 things. And then adjust along the way to say, hey, is there a different way to get in these states if I can't have my coffee? What am I going to do? And I used to do this as a coach all the time, both in practice and for early season races, is I'd intentionally put them in places where I'd said, you know what? Your warmup is constrained to this field right here.

like figure out how to do it. So think of it like this is sometimes you have to do suboptimal things to create the capacity and the tools.

to use when your main thing doesn't work and you still need to figure out how to get into that state. All right. So we spent a lot of time talking about performance routines, pre-performance routines, priming yourself. I want to go back to something that is going to affect all listeners. And that is just setting yourself up to have like a solid foundation to feel your best and perform your best.

And here, I want to plug something that comes directly from my forthcoming book, The Way of Excellence, that I started doing maybe three years ago when I was struggling to figure out, you know, what is my routine? And what I decided is actually like, I don't need a routine. What I need is like three daily practices, three weekly practices and three monthly practices. And if I shoot 70% on these, I'm going to be in a really good spot.

to feel my best and perform my best and execute on my values and my goals. So I'm going to go through an example to make it really concrete, which is from my own life. And there's nothing magical about these. I encourage you all to come up with your own. But what I love about this framework is it's so simple and it's so attainable.

And it really forces you to ask, like, what are the main things that I need to do to support my mental, physical health and flourishing? So my three daily practices, here they are. 45 minutes or more of movement.

That can be a formal gym session, but that can also be walking the dog. I just need to move my body for 45 minutes at least every day. Number two, at least an hour of deep focus work. On great days, it's four or five hours. But if I don't have an hour... where I'm working without distraction on something important, and that can be reading too, like where I'm intellectually pushing myself and I'm focused, I tend to feel like I didn't actually accomplish anything throughout the day.

So even on my busiest days, when I'm recording podcasts, I've got meetings, I've got coaching clients, I've got to carve out an hour for deep focus work. And then number three is not fighting evening sleepiness when I'm tired. If I do those three things 70% of the time, day to day, I'm great. Then I have these three weekly practices. What are those? I try to take at least three walks of over an hour outside. Generally, this is on the weekend. It's with the dog.

That can often be my day's movement. So on the days I don't go to the gym, my movement is I'm walking outside, but I try to get outside for at least an hour, three days a week. Number two, I try to have social plans. I try to hang out. Not just like go to the gym with my friends, but actually hang out. Have another family over for dinner. Go get a beer or a coffee. Something that is just hanging out for the sake of hanging out once a week.

Not more than that because life is really full, but I don't want to be isolated and I want to maintain my friendships. And then number three is this notion of a digital Sabbath. Steve used the brick, but essentially have a 12 to 24 hour period in the week where I'm not online.

My devices are not a part of my life and I'm kind of reconnecting with myself and my lived experience of what is in front of me. Those are the weekly practices. Then I have three monthly practices. At least once a month, I try to reconnect with my spiritual place in the world.

And for me, this tends to be listening to a music album that I really love in an undistracted way. And often I'll do this while I'm walking. But it takes me to a place where I kind of transcend the day-to-day moments. I appreciate good art. Okay, that keeps me grounded. If I do that once a month, I'm good. Number two, I try to spend at least a half a day doing something that is very community oriented. So maybe it's volunteering. In youth sports, it's coaching youth sports, right?

Saturdays, they're all lined up with coaching. It could be going to a barbecue, but so much of our work is national. And that's incredible that we have a national audience and we can work at that level. And it's really important for me to stay really grounded local. So that's another monthly practice. And then...

My final monthly practice, in addition to the kind of spiritual reflection and community involvement, is I try to have a day where I'm outside for a couple of hours. So every week I try to be outside for an hour a couple of times, but... If once a month I can go on like a half day hike or something, it's just really good for the soul. And I'm not perfect. But again, if I shoot 70%, I tend to feel well and it sets me up to perform. And it's so simple, especially those daily practices, right?

Come up with daily, weekly, monthly practices for yourself. Stick to them. And my goodness, can you cut through so much of the noise and really set yourself up to be your best day in and day out? I love this idea of having practices.

instead of routines and i i think this is such a useful framework but i have two questions for you One is how do you maintain, to go back to our original point of like you want to optimize for function, not for form. How do you make sure that these routines, daily, weekly, monthly, are still serving what you need?

Because sometimes it's worth updating them, right? And then secondly, I think we should discuss like one of the things I think is people are looking for routine because they're overwhelmed and they need something to like...

sort of focus them right and so i feel like for someone listening who already feels overwhelmed building a routine can feel like something else to do and i'm wondering if we can think of ways to simplify it for them how they should think about starting a routine or updating the routine if they're feeling like

already chaotic and overwhelmed and don't know where to start. But let's start with the first. How do you review and reflect and make sure those are still... getting you to the state you want to be in i'd say my daily practices are just like so fundamental to my mental and physical and just spiritual overall health where i know that like

When I don't move and when I don't do deep work and when I fight sleepiness and therefore I'm tired all the time, I just feel like crap and I don't perform well. Could I add things? Yes. But then it gets too complicated and too complex and I can't stick to it. So this is just like fundamental to who I am. So like have some time for deep focus, move my body and go to bed when I'm tired.

The weekly and monthly practices, I constantly have to reevaluate. And by constantly, I mean a couple times a year. I don't mean every day, right? And those do change. In book launch season, which I'm walking into the door of right now, that digital Sabbath is probably not going to hold because you got to sell books seven days a week. It's a sprint. It's a time to be all in.

You know, the weekly practice might be sit on Instagram and DM 300 people to ask them if they've bought your book yet. Like it is going to shift and it is going to change. So I think that it has to have some reflection to ensure that it's serving what the main thing is. That's your first question. Your second question is you could just start with one. So if three is overwhelming, just kind of ask yourself, like, what's the one thing? And on days when I do it, I feel good.

And then how can I try to right size it so that I can do it consistently? The other thing that I'd add in is I think the way I look at it is like you tie the important things or practices to... periods of time that are pretty consistent in your life for instance nearly every morning as i said one of the first things i do once i get the kids ready is go for a run why do we do it in the morning

Because if I do it in the morning, there's like a 99% chance I'm going to get it in. If I say, oh, I'll get this later, you know, after nap time or when my wife gets home and blah, blah, blah. It gets to like 50-50 because life gets busy and things get in the way. So tying it to first thing in the morning, more likely to get done. The other thing I think with people feeling overwhelmed, I think that occurs.

for a couple different reasons. And I think routines are important here because they give us a sense of control. So when we feel overwhelmed, it feels like our life is out of control and often we grasp onto anything that makes it feel in control again. This is why people who do crazy elaborate routines are actually giving themselves away.

They have a low sense of control over how things are happening. I think you can do this in a number of different ways, which is A, make your life simpler and easier in terms of the decisions you make. Have what you're going to wear be a simple decision. Guess what? We learned this with our toddler. If we let her choose anything, getting dressed is a disaster. If we pick it the night before, smooth sailing.

Do the same for yourself. A nutritionist might disagree, but I know Brad does pretty much the same. Our breakfast and lunches every day are pretty much the same things or same couple of things. And the same goes. for our work as well as i think a lot of times we feel overwhelmed because there are so many things that the modern world demands we do and our email inboxes are always with a thousand plus people and them and

Lord knows I never respond to anyone. What you have to do is simplify that decision-making. I approach every day and say, what am I building and what am I maintaining? Whatever I'm building... Meaning the focus, it could be a book that I'm writing. It could be promoting it. It could be some other project. It could be coaching. Whatever I'm building for that day gets done first. Why?

Because it's the important thing. And then after that, then I'll go into maintenance mode that are the things that, yeah, I have to do every once in a while or respond to, but aren't pressing and need to do right. I think having some sort of system to simplify that feeling of overwhelmed and tie it to actions that actually make progress.

will go a lot longer than saying, hey, I need to have 15 steps to get me in the state of mind to get ready to perform this thing or go on this run or get this work done.

Yeah, you're talking about reducing cognitive load, right? And I think that's one of the most important things, aspects that routines can fill. And it's resonating with me because you know what the most important part of my... morning routine when the most important part of my morning routine happens the night before because if i the single best thing i figured out for my routine is if i lay out my next morning the night before i go to sleep

then my mornings are so much more dialed because I'm someone, and again, this goes back to knowing yourself and knowing what you need. I can get overwhelmed pretty easily. And if I wake up and I don't know what I'm doing in the morning and I look at everything I have to do, I kind of can just freak out and I can procrastinate. And so what is most effective for me and honestly what my morning routine is...

I make sure I lay out my morning. I sometimes time block the whole day, but I lay out my morning and I know that the day might go off the wall. So I leave it open that I might need to change the afternoon. But the morning is pretty locked in. And I don't have kids, so I'm able to do that. I have that ability. And I wake up and I will try to meditate for 10 minutes every morning because as Steve said, if I don't do it first thing, I tend to not do it. But if I really have a big work day...

And I know I'm going to be overwhelmed. I make coffee and I sit down and I do the hardest thing I have to do that day for 90 minutes if I feel I can go 90 minutes, two hours, two and a half hours, depending on how I'm feeling. Set a timer and I just do it.

And my morning routine is like, get into the hardest thing and do it. But to your point, Steve, I reduced the cognitive load of having to figure that out the morning of by just figuring out the night before. I think that's a lot of what we're talking about here is like, how do you build the scaffolding?

such that it makes it easier for you to do the work you need to do. That's where routines can be really helpful. But again, for me, if I had a really elaborate morning routine, I think for me, that would just be a means of procrastinating and trying to... put off this feeling of like i don't know if i can do this work or how hard is this work going to be or like if i have imposter syndrome so for me like a routine can actually get in the way of just like

getting down to business and actually doing the hard work because i feel like first thing in the morning is when i'm most prepared to deal with like the difficult emotions that sometimes come from hard work, right? So again, it all goes back to what you need and what state you need to be in to perform for whatever your job is.

And I think the best routine is the minimum to get you into that state. Because again, the goal isn't to say that you have the best routine. The goal is to be the best at whatever you want to do. So if all it takes you is a cup of coffee and a mantra, then that's the best routine. So it's the least amount of ancillary stuff that you have to do to get to that state where you want to perform best. An important inside baseball edit.

Yes, Steve and I both eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch. I don't know what Steve eats for breakfast, but I can share that we both eat turkey sandwiches for lunch. But Steve is so, so dialed in. to bringing the people the best YouTube running content in the world, that he doesn't take the time to put cheese, lettuce, or mayo on his turkey sandwich. Steve is a dry guy. And Clay knows this because at the last Growth Equation offsite...

Steve, just give me two pieces of bread and a fistful of turkey. I eat cheese. Whereas I'm a big believer in melting some Swiss cheese on that bread, spreading out some mayo. This is all a lie. It is cheese and turkey. Slander. Cheese and turkey. There's nothing else on it. No mayonnaise, no lettuce. But there is cheese on this. Don't take my cheese away. Don't tell me you use American cheese. No, pepper jack. Alright, thank goodness.

One thing I think is worth sharing here is like, I think if you are someone who is really into having routine, when it falls apart, that can cause a lot of anxiety. And I would just encourage... for people who for who that is the case look at that moment of anxiety and sort of having to work with that chaos and all the negative feelings that come with it

as like an opportunity rather rather than a burden so when you're like oh crap i can't i can't do my routine and you're sort of freaking out instead of saying like how can i get my routine back try to try to at that moment like switch it so you're like oh I now have a moment to try to be flexible and work with chaos.

In this moment, rather than trying to get back to like a place of having to do my routine step by step so that I feel good like that, that freak out is actually a signal to yourself that you have the opportunity to work right there with chaos and make yourself more flexible and more adaptable.

And so that's actually, that's not necessarily a bad thing. That can be like a playground and a laboratory to experiment with your ability to adapt on the fly. Yeah, it's a learning opportunity. I mean, this is the crux of a growth mindset. And it's a very concrete way to apply it, which is when things break down, you have two options. You can freak out that they broke down or you can tell yourself, here's a chance to practice being resilient and durable and anti-fragile.

And you might not have your best day when your routine breaks down, but can you show up and get a little bit out of yourself? Can you at least get started? And I think that that's it. The days that I don't get to move my body because I'm traveling all day or whatever it is, do I feel as good as the days I train on? Of course not. But am I able to say, all right, this is what my mind-body system's got today. Let's rock. Absolutely.

And is the performance results noticeably different for anyone on the outside? Absolutely not. I just feel a little bit more off. And I think that's another problem with routine culture is that we can get addicted to this idea that we've got to feel great to perform well.

But you can perform well when you don't feel great. Those two things are often disconnected. The best days, we feel our best and we perform our best. But I can't tell you how many trips I had recently for recording podcasts for this book. where I got off a plane or I'm in back-to-back interviews and I feel like shit. But I show up and I give a great conversation or a great interview and the podcast does numbers.

Whereas if I had to feel a certain way and I said, oh, I'm not going to perform well because I don't feel well, then I would have a self-fulfilling prophecy that wouldn't lend itself to a good conversation. And that's true for anything.

It also goes back to this idea we've talked about before of like, are your bad days getting better? Like, I think if you're looking for, am I getting more resilient, more psychologically flexible? A good question to ask is like, when my routine does fall apart, how is my ability to perform on that day?

And if you're getting better at that, then great. The routines are working and helping you sort of cultivate the mind states that you want to be in, regardless of whether you can do the routine or not. If you're finding yourself getting more obsessed with control and rigidity and having things be a certain way and you actually fall apart more when your day goes to crap and everything's chaos, that might be a sign that you want to...

Work. Work on that ability a little bit. Yeah. It's the ultimate rule of routines, which is have routines and rely on them, but also be willing to let them go. I mean, people have kids. People get cancer diagnoses. People get divorced. People experience natural disasters in their town. People get the flu. Like, life happens. And you can't control away life. And if you're using a routine to get back to where we started to try to squeeze the uncertainty out of life...

You're just going to make yourself more stressed out and miserable on a quest that is a fool's errand. Now, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The whole point of routine is to... Make things predictable. So do it to the extent that you can, but don't get addicted to it because life is going to take that addiction and shove it in your face. Before we close out today and summarize everything we've talked about.

I'm going to implore you to share the show today. If you found something useful in here, please share the show with me. one or two or three other people you think might also find it helpful. We want to grow. We want to make the show bigger. We want to help as many people as we possibly can. If you are finding it helpful, there's a good chance that someone else will find it helpful too. And we just ask that you please share it with them.

All right, then we would just say to go back to what we said at the very beginning, there are no gold medals for having the best routine. You want to have a routine that allows you to win a gold medal in whatever craft or pursuit you are chasing excellence in.

And so routine at the end of the day should really be about function, not form. If you are so worried about hyper-controlling the external circumstances so you can have the exact routine you want versus cultivating an ability to be psychologically flexible and adaptable in any circumstance.

that might be a sign that you've become a little too attached to the routine, which is not a problem, but it might be something you want to work on. And again, I think one of the frameworks that was most useful from today is Brad's idea of having three daily, weekly, and monthly practices. things that you anchor your days, your weeks, and your months to. So if you're just starting out, think of one thing you can do. And then maybe after a month, you do two daily practices.

And then maybe you add in a weekly practice, but just thinking like, what are some of the things I can incorporate into my life that will get me into the state mentally and physically where I need to be to perform my best at the things I care about most. Thank you as always for listening. Thank you, Brad and Steve, for all your great insights today.

Again, one last time, please share the show. It means a ton to us. If you don't want to share the show, totally understand. Maybe leave us a review. It means a lot. That's the best way you can support us. And if you listen to the show, if you made it this far, I think you probably...

Appreciate what we do. And we just ask for your support in that way, review or sharing the show. We'll be back next week with another episode. As always, thank you. Take care of yourselves and be excellent to one another.