The Power of Consistent Routines for Productivity

“I'm not gifted. I'm not smarter than everybody else. I'm not stronger. I just have the ability to stick to a plan and not quit.”

That’s a quote from Jonny Kim. A Navy SEAL, Harvard educated medical doctor and NASA Astronaut. All of which was achieved before he was thirty five. 

Now the key part to that quote is “the ability to stick to a plan and not quit” And that’s the topic of this week’s podcast.

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Script | 383

Hello, and welcome to episode 383 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. 

It took me many years to learn that the best things in life never happen by accident. They are the products of slow steady work.

Becoming a lawyer or a doctor is not about making a decision in middle school and then miraculously ten years later you’re performing in the Supreme Court or surgery in a top hospital. 

It takes years of slow steady study, experiencing ups and downs and frequently wanting to quit because it’s hard. 

Yet that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s hard because as human beings we thrive when we have a goal that requires us to work hard consistently. 

Jonny Kim is remarkable because he did three incredibly hard things. Yet, to achieve all of them required him to follow a simple process of study and preparation. It wasn’t impossible. All it took was a steely determination to achieve these things, being consistent and, to take control of his calendar. 

And that’s what this week’ question is all about. How to do the the hard things consistently so you start to see progress. 

So, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Joe. Joe asks, hi Carl, the one thing I find incredibly hard to be is consistent. I’m great at setting up task managers and notes apps, but after a few days, I stop following the system. How do you stay consistent?

Hi Joe, thank you for your question. 

There could be two parts to this. The first is what I call the “Shiny Object Syndrome”. This is where you see every new tool on YouTube or in a newsletter as something that promises to solve all your productivity and time management problems. 

We all go through this phase. In many ways, I think it’s important to do so. This way you learn the limitations of tools and find out, the hard way, that no tool will ever do the work for you. 

You also discover that the more addictive the tool (I believe they call it “sticky”), the less work you will do. 

For me, Notion was a classic example of that. When Notion first came onto my radar around 2018, I was fascinated. I downloaded the app and began setting it up. It was exciting. Far more editable than Evernote or Apple Notes. 

There were all these cool things you could do with it. Change the font, the colours, the background, create increasingly more complex dashboards and so on. 

On that first day, I spent eight hours “setting it up”. It was later that evening I realised that if I were to use Notion I would never get any work done. I’d always want to play with it and try and get it to show me what I wanted to see, when I wanted to see it. A goal I was never likely to achieve. 

So, I deleted the app. 

It came down to one very simple thing. Do I want tools that will help me do my work or not? 

Well, the answer was I wanted tools that got me to work fast. And that was not going to be Notion. 

The tools that best promote solid work are boring. They have no flamboyant features. They just do what they are meant to do. In other words they are so featureless the only thing you can do is get on and do the work. 

I rather envy those people who have the time to be constantly changing their apps. I know from experience that transferring everything to a new app takes time. And then there’s the learning curve, although I suspect that’s where the dopamine hits come from. 

I certainly don’t have the time to do that. I’d prefer to spend my free time with my family, walking or playing with Louis or reading books. 

The other area where a lack of consistency comes in is when you have no processes for doing your regular work. 

Humans work best when they follow a pattern. 

If you’ve ever learned to ride a bicycle, you will remember it was difficult at first. You were wobbly, probably fell off. Yet, if you persisted, today riding a bicycle doesn’t require a thought. You jump on and off you go. 

There’s an illustration that Tony Robbins talks about. When a child learns to walk it’s a painfully slow experience. There’s the crawling, the pulling itself up on a chair, the inevitable first step and the constant falling over. 

Yet, no parent would ever say stop! Give up. You’ll never be able to walk. 

We persist and after a few days or weeks the child is walking everywhere. 

If you want to be consistent with something, there will inevitably be a period of a few weeks or months where things don’t go smoothly. Mistakes are made, plenty of falls and a lot of frustration. 

That’s the initial learning curve. We all have to go through it. 

Recently, I updated my iPad to the new operating system. I do this annually to get to know what’s new in preparation for updating my Apple Productivity Course. 

This year, Apple has significantly changed the design of the operating system. It’s slick, fast and very different to what I am used to.

Now, each morning, I clear my email inbox on my iPad. I’ve done this for years and it’s automatic. Write my journal, then grab my iPad and clear the inbox. 

Over the last few days I’ve felt a little frustration. The layout of Apple Mail has changed and buttons have moved. For two days I was trying to get rid of the sidebar (a new feature). I done that now and after a week, I’m beginning to get used to the new layout. 

The issue here is that those changes slowed down my processing speed. This in turn threw out my routine a little. 

It reminded me why changing apps all the time destroys ones productivity. But more importantly it reminded me that consistently following processes ensures speed—which ultimately is what reduces the time required to do the work. 

The problem with following routines and processes is that doing so can be boring. Yet, anything worthwhile is going to be boring at times. 

But boring is good for your brain. It doesn’t have to think too much and it gives it a chance to relax. 

Constant stimulation, problem solving, learning to use new apps, messing around with routines and processes that work may be exciting (dopamine hits), but they don’t get the work done. 

This one of the reasons why having a regular morning routine is a great way to start the day. By following a set routine every morning from the moment you wake up, allows you to do healthy things that do not require a lot of thought. 

A morning routine could be making yourself a cup of coffee, doing some stretches, brushing your teeth and taking a shower. 

Or it could be a little more with meditation, journal writing or exercise. These are your morning routines, so you get to choose what you do. All that matters is that whatever you choose to be your morning routine, you consistently do it. Every morning (including weekends) 

Another way to bring consistency into your life is to put some stakes in the ground. In other words, build some structure around your day based on meal times, for example. 

I do the family’s laundry when I go down to cook dinner. The washing machine is in the area of the kitchen, so it seems natural to take down the laundry and do the washing while I cook dinner. Once dinner is done, the washing is finished and ready to be hung up. (I refuse to use a dryer as it destroys clothes). 

With work, I try to protect 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. each day for doing the most important work of the day. It’s not always possible, sometimes I need to be in a meeting, but I will fight tooth and nail to protect that time where possible. 

It took a year or so to consistently protect that time, but now, even my wife respects it. She knows not to disturb me when I am doing my focused work. 

It’s just two hours a day. That still leaves me with six hours for emergencies, customer queries and team requests. 

You can also do this with your communications and daily admin. If you were to protect the same time each day to respond to your actionable emails and do whatever admin is required it makes things so much easier for you.

If, you were to choose 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. For your communication and admin time, and got serious about protecting that time each day, after a few weeks it would feel very strange if you were not doing it. 

This is how Jonny Kim managed to do what most people would consider impossible. It wasn’t because he was smarter than anyone else. He never graduated top of his class. Instead it was down to ruthlessly protecting time to study and train. 

It’s how averagely talented athletes win Olympic gold medals. They prioritise the small things. The long boring runs, the hours in the gym, or practicing their serve over and over again. 

It’s boring, yes. But it gets results, every time. 

And yet, if you were to look at how much time you spent on these routines, it’s tiny. Out of twenty-four hours, you’re using two to four hours a day on doing the basics. 

It’s when you don’t do that, that you need to find eight to twelve hours just to catch up. And because you don’t have a regular process for doing the work, it’s slow, feels laborious and horrible and you have to repeat multiple times each month. 

When you’re consistent, you don’t think about it. You just do it. It’s neither boring nor difficult. It’s just what you do. 

Think about brushing your teeth and washing your face. It’s boring right? You do it two to three times a day, yet it’s something you just do. You don’t think about it. 

That’s how being consistent with doing the important things—keeping backlogs at bay, dealing with messages and emails and doing your core work works. 

It’s exciting the first time you do it, less so the second time until it’s just boring. Then suddenly, it’s something you just do. It’s neither boring nor exciting. 

Getting there is the challenge. That why kids argue with their parents about brushing their teeth or washing their hands before meals. It’s boring and unexciting, until it isn’t. It’s just something they automatically do. 

So there you go, Joe. You will have to go through the valley of despair, go through the boredom stage until suddenly, it’s just something you do. It’s then when you know you are now consistent. 

Good luck. Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening. 

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.