Ditching systems
For long I’ve been trying to come up with sustainable routines for my days, I was trying to do everything in the book.
And then I recently learned it's not about optimization, but obsession.
I thought WHAT? It makes sense, and it blows everything out of context.
Years ago my internet rabbit holes were about: morning routines, productivity boosts and whatnot. BORING stuff. And then around Covid 2020 I came across this video by James Jani. I thought he maybe onto something but I didn’t pay much attention. Just reduced my consumption of self-help stuff and focused on what I could implement.
Just until recently, when I realized optimization is for those who don't know what to do, like me 2-3 years ago. Wake up early, beware of time you waste, weigh every minute of every hour of every day, eat 100% clean, optimize optimize optimize.
No room for mess, only 100% everything because we're seeking sUstAinaBiliTy and we're building for what's to come. Bullshit.
Not only that but I would later find out that 80% of any self-help book is clutter. Top-sellers in these category should just be long-from articles around the gist. But no, instead, we got 300-page books like atomic habits, power of habits, the miracle morning & etc.
Yes the 20% about building good habits & eliminating bad ones is valid ✅ but everything else about optimizing your day around the hour & maximize productivity is bullshit.
Why? because productivity is subjective; subjective to timing and to personality.
What is productive to you isn't necessarily the same for me.
And that's important to note!
People on twitter brag about maintaining a hard routine for 5 6 7 years straight. Sleep 10pm, wake up 6am, morning ritual, few hours of deep work, have a few meetings, brag about the trajectory of peak success & sense of fulfillment this brings them. This feels so void to me.
It's about time I realize what really matters is obsession.
Obsession enables a quick run, a few months or a few years run.
A few years where you execute on a vision that puts you in a state during which you totally lose sense of time & place.
How am I supposed to adjust my working hours and sleep schedule and not fcuk with my creativity? Don't these people see the clear inverse relation between routine & creativity? Like do I have to stop working because bedtime hour has come OR wake up in the middle of cold weather because it's 5 or 6 am and then get to sleep again mid-day because I was just trying to catch the first sunlight?
A few-years sprint means doing art, following an unplanned & unjustified track.
Peak art is always on the line between genius and madness; and what mad genius do we know of that maintains a sleep schedule and reads 5 pages of a book everyday?
In contrast, if you look closely, all documentaries & stories of great companies and top winners, almost all of them, that’s what they show just before the story takes off: crazy all nighters, totally unhealthy lifestyles, random schedules, packs of red bulls, ideas that don't fit within a sane brain, and even drug addiction in some cases. Everything that is exactly the opposite of what we can find in self-help books.
I obviously don't promote this behavior and in no situation would I want to live like this. And I know these stories represent outliers.
But the takeaway is: There isn’t just 1 way of doing something. If this type of extreme works then sure as hell every other lifestyle can work as well.
If you optimize your day around the things you love, things you want to do & things you want to be, live the ideal life, pay attention to every macro, every relationship, do not mess up anything, well that's good for you, you're doing what most conscious people are doing but 10x, you're top 1%, great example, but that's it.
Stories I'm talking about? They are the top 1% of the top 1%. Mathematically this is top 0.01%.
Maybe the day I become a billionaire I would focus on doing 10-minute yoga as part of my perfect morning ritual, but until then, this is my new data, and my clear sign to go routineless because routines are boring af.
One thing I know now is "constraints limit creativity" and I wouldn't want to put any constraint on my thinking patterns at the exact time I should be roaming freely, expressing & writing down ideas whenever they come, and allowing for compounding based off of that. Creativity poses risks and this is part of the agreement most creatives seem okay to accept, I’ve yet to meet a creative individual that is also organized & structured.
I know, it all depends on multiple factors, but my point is it's time to ditch "CEO morning routines" and stuff that follows this type of narrative; not helping.
My experience with ditching systems
In recent months, I ditched almost all of my routine practices, in an exciting experiment to see how shall this turn out. As a disclaimer I didn't consciously alter all my habits, things just followed each other in the same time I was trying to optimize for only one thing: creativity.
Here are some things that changed in my life during the last 3 months:
- Working out a minimum of 4 times/week → 0/week (injury)
- Sleeping before midnight everyday → sleeping whenever I have no more work input for the day
- No blue light 1 hour before bedtime → using my laptop until bedtime everyday
- Wake up before 9 am → wake up whenever I feel like it, no alarms
- No Netflix → 1 hour everyday
- 80% healthy diet → 60% healthy diet
- 1 cup of coffee everyday → 2 cups
Results:
- More flow sessions per week, averaging *two* deep work sessions per day for weekdays; this number is unprecedented for me, I believe I was doing 1 every two days (talking about serious work stuff, most of the time I was just ticking boxes, as opposed to being extremely conscious about what I'm working on)
- More structure into my notes: a paradox I didn't know was possible. The more random I got on the outside, the more organized my brain became. It showed when it comes to expressing & organizing ideas; during these 3 months I believe I was documenting at a much faster pace. Correlations & connections come easy, and are clear like never before.
- More intention into my todo list: while being void of a "system", the only system I had when it came to managing my tasks during the week was just getting them all out on a paper and keep the paper throughout the week, there was not a review day or anything. Every few days I would tick a ✅ or an X in front of task items.
- Consistent journaling: 2023 is the first time I've been consistent with journaling. Every 7-10 days I would document what is happening, what's exciting, what I am thinking, places I have visited, and may be people I've met, etc – working like charm.
- A compounding waterfall of ideas, inspiration strikes more often, and at different times!
- More work hours yet more balance: I work 9-10 hours/day, but I also have time for my dogs, my family, and my circle. So I don't need atomic habits and I don't need the 6 am club.
So this is just a summary of my experience with ditching systems.
In my experience, the only systems you'd want to maintain are digital systems. Not habit systems, cues, or routines.
May be this stuff works for someone searching for a quick upside, a dopamine strike due to committing to some habit or whatever. And there was a time when I was yearning for that stuff, but not anymore. I now have something to lose.
My head is filled with ideas that are worth a lot of money and I have what I can lose to time! So maybe optimizing my daily routine is not the catalyst I need right now. But don’t take my word for it.