Here is a thought I've been having for a while now: I really need a routine. Why? It seems like no matter what you want to achieve in life, it's achieved through repetition.
Success (whatever it means for you) is never the result of one single event. You achieve your goal by repeating the same action multiple times, tweaking it using what you learned from your failures, until one day it has no other option than to work. As I read recently in Dan Koe's book The Art of Focus, "Focus is what separates action from distraction. […] Focus is the habit of habits."
I'm always extremely optimistic about the fate of people around me who keep "doing." They just keep posting on social media, working on their business, making music, no matter the feedback (or absence of it). And I believe that if they keep up that rhythm for long enough, they will have learned so much from their mistakes that there will be no option left to try other than the one that will lead them to their goal.
Lately, I have not had a routine. I wake up, not knowing what I am going to do that day. Maybe I'll work on something, maybe I'll go outside, maybe I'll hang out with friends, maybe I'll make some music, maybe I'll plan out my next project idea… you get it.
This indecisiveness means I will first have to think about what I want to do in the next hours before I can start my day. Of course, this decision has to take into account multiple parameters like sunlight, how good my body is feeling, whether a friend texted me back or not, whether I feel inspired or not, and obviously the things I need to prioritize that day.
All in all, it's a mess. So much information I need to analyze and process before I can even start with my day. This wastes not only a lot of my time but also my mental energy. Sometimes, it can feel overwhelming because the sun will be setting (Berlin winters, am I right?), yet I will feel like I've done nothing useful thus far. And even though my friends will tell you that I do create and work on lots of things, that daily stress is not the greatest feeling, and I could probably do better without it.
Now, why haven't I implemented a routine yet? For one, I love change. It gets me excited about the future as I think about all the new possibilities that come with it. If I keep doing the same thing for too long, I get bored and doing that thing becomes unenjoyable work.
Then, there is my body. See, I have IBS (for now) and that means two things: (1) I have to cook very often to accommodate my complex diet, which seems to be that of a spoiled princess. I swear, it's ridiculous — there are so many things I can't eat without suffering from it later, and it seems like I cannot eat the same dish more than once in the same day. (2) When my stomach happens to hurt, it will drain most of my energy and leave me in a painfully unmotivated state for a few hours, sometimes more.
Because that wouldn't be fun on its own, I also have problems falling asleep, so it means I might waste a few hours doing nothing in bed before actually falling asleep. The problem with that is that if I fall asleep too late, I usually have to sleep in because otherwise my stomach will hurt from the lack of sleep.
Enough complaining though, I am working on fixing both with meditation, yoga, my diet, and reading about sleep, so that should get better soon hopefully.
My last reason for not implementing a routine is the fact that I have been changing paths very often in the last year. I left my creative studio in April, started working on some content creation projects, stopped around July to work more actively on building a business/startup, experimenting with many ideas, to then realize in November that what I truly wanted to do was produce music. Since then, I'm trying to balance that with the need to make money on the side.
This means every time I started getting used to a routine, I had to redo it completely.
In the end, I think I would have gotten bored of those routines anyway because I wasn't working on something that was meaningful enough to me. The pursuit of money as a motivation would have died out before getting to my first million for sure.
This time, I believe it will be different. I am pursuing a path where the process itself is truly rewarding, not relying on the money reward to give me the focus and motivation necessary to continue.
I am starting to plan my next routine by setting minimum amounts of time I want to be spending on each of my tasks (whether that's music production, content creation, business, or health). This will hopefully provide me with enough flexibility, yet enough structure to know what I could be working on next, without having to think too much about it. That minimum amount of time will help me dedicate enough time to a single task, without mindlessly hopping from one task to the next.
When it comes to the order of my routine, like which task I should start with and when I should work on each, I hope it will define itself through experimentation. For example, I might not want to work on music when I don't feel inspired. So, I will be experimenting with different times in the day for a single task and take notes of what works best, until I find the best structure. That structure will be a guideline for my day, as opposed to a strict schedule, because I still want the freedom to play around when I want to. But it will hopefully provide enough structure for me to not have to think so much about what to do next.
I've also noticed lately that my creativity/inspiration seems to be peaking around the time I go to bed. It's probably the worst moment my mind could choose to be inspired because I feel tired and just want to go to sleep. So there I am, lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, but all these great ideas keep popping up in my mind. My perception of the likelihood of realizing those ideas and the possibilities they enable for my future is also extremely positive. I guess it's probably because I am so close to the dream state that my mind is simply working on realizing my dreams in the real world. I love being in that state because everything seems possible and there is nothing and no one telling me that something is not achievable.
At some point, I do eventually fall asleep, my ideas written down on some notes or dictated to Siri. And then I wake up the next morning, in a totally different state of mind. Everything seems harder to achieve, less doable, less realistic. It will take all day again to climb back to the state I was in at the end of the previous day.
I wish I could always wake up in the same state that I went to sleep in: motivated, focused, and excited about my ideas. I think it's possible, so I need to work on that. I started reading this book about sleep: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. Maybe the answer to my question lies in there…
P.S. This is my first attempt at blogging, so I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback! :)