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The case against morning yoga, daily routines, and endless meetings
- martopix 2y agoThis makes a point against the "CEO morning routine" kind of approach, but from my point of view, it is not that different from that perspective on life. It still talks about "proactively moving towards #1 or top 25%", "be so good they can't ignore you", "10x work", "something extraordinary" etc. Take that direction if that's what makes you tick. I've decided that that's not how I want to live my life, quit a 'prestigious' position, left the competitive career, and I now work as a teacher with "10x personal satisfaction".
- throwaway173738 2y agoYeah exactly. I don’t even think he’s right about how pivotal a lot of them bellwether events he cites are. If you don’t nail the punchline in your marketing you can change the punchline or the marketing. So it’s important but because it can be changed you might find yourself taking another path than “home run marketing” that is still very successful. For all he’s decrying hustle culture he seems very immured in it.
- jewayne 2y ago> and I now work as a teacher with "10x personal satisfaction". I don't know what country you're speaking from, but here in the US teaching seems to have an extremely low job satisfaction rate.
- HPsquared 2y agoHorses for courses, maybe.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoIndividuals aren't statistics!
- VirusNewbie 2y agoIs that because of pay and CoL? I imagine if you work hard in your 40s and have a lot of financial success, transitioning to teaching might be less stressful. If you already have a house and a fat 401k, just paying the bills at a certain age is fine.
- vundercind 2y agoWork conditions. The actual teaching is like 10% of the job at best and shrinking, school administrators have to be the dumbest category of people who hold advanced degrees (I don’t level that charge lightly), schools are heavily hierarchical and hard to influence toward improvement if you’re not in admin, constant methodology churn for all sorts of things based on whichever new “system” caught the superintendent’s fancy at their last district-funded drinking getaway er, I mean, conference. Which they’ll go on to half-understand, fail to apply the parts that make them uncomfortable, and of course doom the new program without its even having a chance. While creating a bunch of new work for the teachers and breaking stuff that was working fine. “Office” politics where the median would qualify as quite bad in the private sector. Politicians and half the parents think you’re the enemy, in a very real way. No support from parents on discipline issues. Admin piss-pants scared of parents, too. Comp-vs-CoL varies wildly over the country, and mostly in the ways you’d expect, so it’s ok some places but it’s terrible in many others.
- Omniusaspirer 2y agoSounds like hospitals, but at least healthcare pays.
- vundercind 2y agoI suspect nursing is exactly where a lot of would-be teachers have been going (education degree enrollment has been trending down).
- csallen 2y agoOnly semi-related to satisfaction, but I was looking at a chart of suicide rates by industry recently[0]. And the lowest rate for both men and women was "Education services" and "Education, training, and library," aka teachers. My guesses as to why: - To teach is to be focused on the future, day after day. This is the opposite of dwelling on the past, which is commonly associated with depression, which is commonly associated with suicide. - Teachers are surrounded by kids, and kids tend to change and develop drastically over the course of a year, usually for the better in terms of knowledge and maturity. Seeing that might inspire some optimism. - Teachers are a crucial pillar of an impressionable community of hundreds of children at that. So they're less likely to trend toward suicide, because they feel less alone, more community, more accountability, and more responsibility. - There's something inherently purposeful about teaching, at a deep biological level. Purposeful work leads to a purposeful life leads to lower chances of suicide. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7250a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7250a2.htm
- LoganDark 2y agoit's certainly possible to be depressed due to dwelling on the future. i guess it'd be anxiety or if you're just in a terrible situation with no easy way out
- jewayne 2y agoOr maybe it's easy to just drop out of teaching? Versus a more specialized profession, like dentistry? Also, you'll notice that the highest suicide professions are also the most physically dangerous. It stands to reason that suicide often follows a life-changing debilitating injury. That would be pretty rare in teaching.
- tardy_one 2y agoThe complexity of a field you are leaving doesnt make it hard to drop out. A dentist is very well prepared to be a hair stylist, but I've never heard of that choice. Dentists also don't have a lot of job related debilitating injuries, aside from depressions.
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- bitexploder 2y agoWithout strong routines and habits my life would be a mess and I would still be working at McDonalds. With ADHD I need routines and habits to not fall into the abyss. Maybe it works for some people, but not me. E: also I used all those habits and routines to achieve my own goals and run a business for a decade.
- candiddevmike 2y agoWhat happens when life circumstances make these morning routines difficult or impossible to perform occasionally?
- rqtwteye 2y agoThen you adapt to the new reality. If you worry about changes making something impossible you can't start anything.
- kohbo 2y agoThis is a very non-ADHD mindset
- llamaimperative 2y agoI guess in that case, it's hopeless, don't try, since you can't have absolute certainty of the imperviousness of your new routine then just continue improv-jazzing through life. Is that better? Of course that's utterly insane. If you have ADHD then you should be putting more effort into routinization, not less and certainly not making up reasons that you can't even try.
- viridian 2y agoThis reads as needlessly hostile, maybe from assuming the worst interpretation of what kohbo is saying. Charitably, I read it as 'Telling someone to get good at the thing they are struggling with doesn't work'. This is similar to the oft seen adages of 'just do things to make you happy to fix your depression' met with sarcastic 'gee thanks, I'm cured' responses. Certain habits, skills, etc, might be more important for some people to focus on than others to manage debilitating effects, but that importance comes with the consequence of those same feats being harder.
- andrewfromx 2y agothis was excellent https://youtu.be/TA5gYCCuYWs https://youtu.be/TA5gYCCuYWs Cal Newport tells stories about some amazing people in the past that we think of today as A+ players and very productive. But by today's standards, they would be considered loafers!
- namaria 2y agoPeople fall en masse in the productivity = output/time trap because they have no direction. We are all chasing money and status, and it shows. People we regard as great past personalities are considered great for the outcomes they obtained, not for 'griding/hustling' non stop. I honestly think that the necessity to busy ourselves is a symptom of a deep malaise. Very few people even feel able to consider greater collective outcomes. We need to keep the wheel spinning and the creditors at bay.
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- chrisbrauns 2y agoI'm a routine guy, so I'm biased, but I find myself agreeing with the values in this post, while feeling that a routing enables those values. For example, > This is why I’m so positive on sending outbound emails to interesting people, hosting dinners and events that bring together smart folks... I find that I'm much better at this kind of proactive outreach when I have routines that push me towards this. The non-routine approach tends to break down when you need to collaborate IME (though many companies are successfully asynchronous).
- ingen0s 2y agoThe little daily things add up, not doing exercise can significantly impact not only your weight / insulin levels, exercise is to release endorphins for the day to help make better decisions and live a happier life. Daily routines of the .05x stack up. That's the point. 1% better a day in any given area of life is still better than 0. Who cares about the 10x, why is that even a factor? Just be a good human and contribute the most you can, when you can.
- bovermyer 2y agoThe author lost me when he started talking about "10x work." I don't need to be more productive. I accomplish plenty in both my work life and my real life. If anything, I need to accomplish fewer things and spend more time living in the moment.
- pjc50 2y agoIndeed. Are you going to get 10x pay for 10x work? No. Very rarely, for certain types of contractor. But this particular type of hustle culture is more like buying 10x lottery tickets - you do get 10x more chances to hit it big, but from a low baseline.
- jimbokun 2y ago> Are you going to get 10x pay for 10x work? If you own the company, quite possibly yes. Otherwise, very very unlikely.
- RankingMember 2y agoThis weird obsession with "10x work" is very off-putting to me, hustle culture nonsense still infecting people.
- rchaud 2y agoThe author is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, so this is exactly the sort of thing they look to cultivate.
- OJFord 2y agoAlthough if I were, I could stop at noon on Monday and do something for me the rest of the week? (If only it worked like that! Suppose it somewhat does if you're self-employed, sole trader something or another. But realistically even then there's customers or something, some external factor that needs at least some work most days or at a moment's notice.)
- jimbokun 2y agoThen this article doesn't apply to you.
- sandworm101 2y ago10x work is code for doing the fun stuff and ignoring the grunt work. For every person focused on 10x there are a half-dozen cleaning up all the not-fun work they choose to ignore. Fun 10x work is the stuff that has 10x positive impacts, but ignores all the grunt work that has 100x negative impacts when not done properly. Finding a way to shoehorn the word "AI" into your next product launch: Fun. Talking to Microsoft legal department about the implications of using AI in your product: not fun. Selecting new color swatches for product lines: fun. Sorting out labor contracts to avoid a strike: not fun, but monumentally more important. (See recent Westjet strike and resulting travel disruptions over a long weekend.)
- RankingMember 2y ago100% agree. I've worked with what could be considered "10x programmers" and their wake was almost always littered with time-consuming tech debt and housekeeping chores they didn't do, or they did something very fast that was off-the-mark because they didn't have the hard "hash-it-out" conversations before plowing ahead with an inaccurate end goal.
- paulcole 2y ago> Our careers are defined by the highest moments of its biggest upside swings. The author makes this logical attempt to "refute the paradigm of fitter, happier, more productive routines as the secret to success" but starts with this completely subjective premise which is kind of hidden in this word salad sentence. "Success" by other definitions can be greatly enhanced by routine and regularity. If I define my career by the time I have available to myself while making enough money the a routine helps tremendously. I can focus and get things done so I can stop working. That's success!
- drdrek 2y agoSound like the writer didn't like routines and created the logic backwards from there. There are many things in life that are low impact on their own, but have a cumulative effect. Yeah yoga in the morning isn't 10X... I guess the only option is to be a chump or go straight to max dosage of anabolic steroids.
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- thenoblesunfish 2y agoThis is silly. You do the routine stuff so that when the "10x" opportunities come, you are fit to execute on them. It's like saying pro athletes shouldn't spend all that boring time in the gym - just score some points! Maybe the author is trying to point out that it's easy to think that the routine stuff is the ultimate point, which is fair, but I fear (young) people will read this and think (as I used to) that all they have to do is go with the flow and be naturally brilliant.
- snarf21 2y agoWell said. It is much of the "the harder you work, the luckier you get". But with most things, blind execution won't work. Reflection and introspection are needed to shape your ever evolving journey. Do whatever works for you, just do so intentionally!
- llamaimperative 2y agoThis characteristic is pervasive in this author's writing, in my opinion. I can't tell if he's willfully missing the obvious underlying truth in order to get contrarian hype clicks or if he really just doesn't notice things like what you're pointing out.
- jimbokun 2y agoIf your routine has you spending your time on low impact activities, the "10x opportunities" are unlikely to come at all.
- llamaimperative 2y ago“Build a routine of useless things” - no one ever “I don’t believe small changes can build to big ones” - lots of people The latter is the much more likely error. Apparently or proximally low-impact routines like exercise, meditation, journaling, reading, etc. are frequently advocated specifically because they are extremely high impact but do not look like they are. Inversely, permanently improv-jazzing through life and frenetically jumping from “high impact activity” to “high impact activity” feels productive, but if you succeed at this you are almost certain to burn yourself out before it really matters. And much more likely is that there really aren’t that many high impact things you can be doing, so what it actually looks like is either 1) waiting for something high impact enough to justify action, which never just comes to you, or 2) shifting your priorities to start treating highly available low-impact things as if they are high impact. In the event you do have a series of high-impact things to do in rapid succession, you’re going to be totally dependent on your routines to sustain that work, so you had better hope you built them prior.
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- anticorporate 2y agoI felt like I would agree with this article more than I did. I'm definitely one of those people who has fallen into the slump of do a bunch of the same things every day, rinse, and repeat, largely driven by the requests of others. I do despise it, but at the same time, I wish I worked some more routine into my day so I can make more progress on the things that matter to me. But largely I feel burnt out from the routine of others that is imposed upon me, and it causes an almost visceral reaction to adding more planned time to my day. But I think where I really didn't connect was the framing. The "productivity" thing, as if my goal in life should be to maximize output. The author frames routine as a robotic state, but I'd argue productivity maximization is an even more robotic trait. It's really okay to have some hours in your day where you both don't have a routine and don't "accomplish" anything.
- beachy 2y ago> a grinder might work 100 hours/week versus a mere 30 hours for an oaf. I suspect many oafs do a lot less effective work than that during a week. Source: have been such an oaf after a period of burnout
- rqtwteye 2y agoThe only case I see is against "10x" and overachievement in general. My morning yoga routine keeps me in shape and healthy. It's very pedestrian, I don't try to improve much, but it works. Maybe people should learn to relax a little and think about what's really important.
- eschneider 2y agoThere's no "one size fits all" solution. Some folks work best when they highly structure their time, some folks with less or almost no structure. Experiment and find what works best for you. Personally, I find it best to block out some time for things I want to get done and things I must get done. Those are my daily routines. :) Everything else, I fit in on the fly.
- dkurth 2y agoYou often don't know which work was "10x" except in retrospect, so this advice is a little like recommending people only invest in the stocks that are going to go up.
- Matticus_Rex 2y agoI am much better at identifying 10x work when I'm in a good daily routine. YMMV.
- slothtrop 2y agoOne way or another, you will have a routine. We are creatures of habit. It can either work for you or against you. This seems mostly a diatribe against chasing "productivity" in disguise, with anti-routine as the clickbait hook, bait-and-switch. Habits are powerful in part because they allow you to reduce overhead. If your auto-pilot routine is to doomscroll, why would this be less stressful than a yoga session? > The question is how to create the most opportunities at achieving that, not how to execute perfect little habits. Say, wouldn't it be nice if there was some tool we could leverage to do that? Yoga and meditation isn't about advancing your career.
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- npilk 2y agoFor what it's worth, the most productive people I know seem to do basically no planning, but respond to almost everything immediately in the moment. Replying to emails as soon as they see them, making a phone call to have the conversation right now, etc. By focusing on speed, they are able to accomplish a very large amount and never let a backlog build up. In some ways this feels closely aligned with the author's point. But these people are also spending a lot of time on what the author would call "1x" work (replying to emails, etc).
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- thesz 2y agoFrom the article: Our careers are defined by the highest moments of its biggest upside swings. The "highest moment of biggest upside swing" can be likened to winning a jack pot. A not solid career or life advice. In my opinion, our careers are defined by the "area under curve" of achievements. Bruce Lee gradually became a megastar by exercising and learning, gradually, not by hitting someone's head in a convoluted flying rotating high knee kick that is not repeatable at all.
- sabrina_ramonov 2y agocounterpoint: routines that help you be consistent over time benefit from long-term compounding which will eventually 10x whatever-is-important-to-you
- nimbius 2y agothe "CEO Grindset" or "daily routine" stuff I see on Youtube and Medium has always struck me as a sort of peacocking for a certain level of the office crowd. I once worked a construction equipment maintenance job. Basically we'd roll out of bed at 5 am, climb into a big truck, and drive out to wherever someone called us to fix everything from dump trucks to excavators. I cant remember a consistent day, ever. Some mornings its pouring rain and breakfast is a slim jim from the truck stop. Other days youre driving so much it hardly feels like anything is getting done. I started making lunch about calorie counts instead of time of day, and eventually got to just taking a couple of cliff bars for lunch tucked into my overalls. I guess coffee was consistent. we filled four thermoses at the truck stop and that used to cost us about $20. after we fixed the air hose in the parking lot we got all our coffee free. i digress. I didnt have a routine, no "stoic virtue" stuff. the only thing i did religiously was the vehicle check in the morning. People who obsess over a pattern or "grindset" in life rarely do the work necessary to fulfill the ethic of that said routine. They miss the forest for the trees. Theres way more meaning and reward to being adaptable and resilient than there is in worshipping a pattern or coddling a routine.
- jimbokun 2y agoI think what you've hit upon, for those of us with enough privilege to set out own schedule and priorities, it takes mental effort and will power to do what less privileged people do just as a matter of necessity. You didn't have to psyche yourself up to wake at 5am, because you had external forces setting that requirement for you. If you set your own schedule and work remotely or what have you, getting up at 5am is an act of will.
- rchaud 2y agoI think the audience for those types of videos skew young, as in college kids and new graduates without much real experience. All they know about the working world is mostly second-hand knowledge from their network, or straight from Youtube and TV. Unfortunately, there is a whole genre of "Day in the Life Of [my job role]" Youtube channels that rack up millions of views. They are made for entertainment, not edification, so hoping to learn something end up focusing on the superficial parts of it.
- high_na_euv 2y ago>Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. Top25% is nowhere even close to being very good
- wdh505 2y ago"A 75% is still an A" - my sarcasm agreeing with you. "Remember that no matter what you do, there is always an Asian better than you. And this applies even if you are an Asian." -my sarcastic Asian friend in college "If you re not first, you're last" -rickybobby
- brigadier132 2y agoWhat's funny is I've never been a routine guy but I've fallen into becoming one. I run 6 times a week because I feel significantly better when I am running every day. The reward for me is so significant that getting myself running requires 0 mental effort or preparation. I live in a very hot and humid climate, if I run even at 8 am it's so hot it's uncomfortable. Because of this I'm waking up and running at around 6:30 am. I also fall asleep at 11 pm like clockwork. Not because I have a schedule but because I'm so tired I have to sleep then. I commit code to github almost every single day. I actually really just enjoy programming. I should become a hustle culture influencer
- whamlastxmas 2y agoI am very annoyed how effortless this seems for you
- brigadier132 2y agoIt's effortless because my actions are aligned with my goals and desires. I used to be very addicted to poker. There was a book I read during that time called "The Mental Game of Poker" that is really good and broadly applicable to life. One of the lessons is to figure out your subconsciously held goals that are negatively impacting your consciously held goals. For example, someone's stated goal may be to build an amazing startup or open source project. But they constantly find themselves going to founder meetups and conventions, staying up very late and drinking a lot. They may also find themselves posting a lot on social media instead of working on building their thing. I would claim that this person has a hidden goal of seeking attention and fame. They likely would never tell themselves this and this is why self honesty is important. Once you are able to bring these hidden goals to the foreground it's actually easy to manage them. Wanting to be famous and get attention is a pretty ridiculous / base desire.
- throwawyroutin 2y agoIt's also effortless because your goals and desires are sustainable and bring you prosperity. My desires are to chill, play music for myself and friends, sleep a lot, have sex, hike, go to concerts and generally go out and drink. Only doing that would, predictably, make me homeless eventually. Effortful actions it is for me, I guess.
- iamthepieman 2y agoStructure is meant to be broken. But the breaking of structure only works if you have it. I struggle to have a good routine but spontaneity happens more often when I do. If I go to the gym at 5:30 and do chores at 7 and go to work at 8 and eat lunch at noon and read at 6 and eat dinner at 7 and work on personal projects at 8 and go to bed at 10:30 then if something comes up I can say "I have an hour at lunch, lets meet" Or "I will skip my personal projects today and go to so and so's house" If I'm just constantly chaotic then I'm always feeling harried and like I don't have time for anything. And even if I do make time for something spontaneous, then I'm feeling like I'm stealing time from myself even though I didn't really have anything planned during that time anyways. Also 10x work is a silly idea to me. Progress happens in almost all areas because of consistency. Research, fitness, home life, relationships, work. They grow or produce or increase because you do them regularly not because you had some magical insight and suddenly need to disappear into a hole for a week to work on it. His section on breaking routine feels like it completely misses the point. "Serendipity loves randomness and hates routine" There's also a saying that luck favors the prepared. Rarely have a read a piece that is mostly well-written that resonates so poorly with me. It's like every insight he has is the opposite of my lived experience.
- steve1977 2y agoI think routine enables or facilitates feedback and control. If I do the same exercise routine for example, it’s easier for me to detect changes in my body (positive or negative) and react to them.
- photochemsyn 2y agoHindsight fallacy here, though the author sort of acknowledges the issue: > "Imagine the thousands of tasks you did in the past year and sort them by impact. How many of them actually moved the needle?" If you instead try to predict the impact factor or long-term result of a given task/activity in advance, how good would your predictions be? > "However, I’m convinced that you can create an environment where 10x work is more likely to come up." This sounds like the gambler's fallacy of retrospective determinism, which involves looking at historical data and seeing patterns, leading to the erroneous conclusion that these patterns dictate future outcomes. It ignores the inherent randomness and independence of certain events. The argument for daily routines is that they keep you involved and engaged, so that if an opportunity does randomly arise, you're ready to run with it.
- slibhb 2y agoYeah! Embrace serendipity! Flip a coin to decide whether to take your antipyschotic today! On a more serious note, I've found that routines are necessary for me to be happy. Once I've established a routine, I can break it, but if I don't have a routine, I'll usually just do nothing. I sense that the author is coming from the opposite perspective. He's probably a very conscientious and energetic striver and is trying to break free from that.
- b_emery 2y agoThere are several conflated ideas in conflict here. First lets be clear and define 10x work as work on something very impactful, say a business idea, an important piece of art, or a scientific breakthrough. My model here could be Richard Feynman for example. If you 'stumble' on one of these ideas (e.g. after potentially years of routine, hard work training you to have a) the skills required to act on it and b) the knowledge to notice it) the by all means, drop the routine and let the excitement take you. Any project such as this will have such a phase. Note however that the routine 'grind' (hate that word) was required to get there, and at some point, the proof of concept will be done, and the routine will be required again to keep it going and get it fully out into the world. I used to hate routine by my kids showed me how necessary it is. Maintenance is essential to life. Routines get the maintenance done, and free up your brain to have ideas and energy for the hard work. An observation: Where I work there is a Nobel laureate who takes walks at almost the same time every day (past my window). I would think he knows about '10x work', and also about the utility of routine.
- marginalia_nu 2y agoI always felt morning routines were a bit ridiculous, but the thing is if you have a regular job to you go to, you kind of automatically end up with a routine and it's easy to take that for granted, and on top of that there are so many external forces that ensure you keep working that choices don't matter very much. It's a stark contrast when you're self-employed and there are zero things to provide structure to your days unless you them there yourself. It's a life circumstance that provides you with a lot more agency, and just how you structure the day can have a fairly tangible impact on not only your productivity, but also your physical and mental well-being
- gbuk2013 2y agoOne advantage of having a fixed routine, especially for thinks like your daily yoga practice, is that without a fixed ring-fenced slot other things will inevitably push it out of the way. “Today is a special situation, I just really need to do this thing … etc.” In my personal experience that leads to your practice (or whatever it is you want to do for yourself) becoming sporadic.
- broast 2y agoFor me, routines are used to provide a strong stable foundation so i can take on new, unexpected, unfamiliar things on a daily basis, and stay resilient and mentally healthy. It is a means and not an end
- creaktive 2y agoRight. As usual, YMMV. Routines are an absolute necessity to stay grounded for those of us who are naturally unhinged enough to be unable to snap out of their 100x streaks. But, sadly, cargo cult is a thing. When people see 100x performance, they associate it with whatever outbound behaviors of the high performer. Alas, it’s usually a coping mechanism, not the source of prosperity.
- techostritch 2y agoThis also depends on the kind of work you do. If you’re an influencer/contractor/consultant/executive, I can maybe see what he’s talking about it but if you’re a skilled IC or creative… Imagine telling Lebron James what’s really holding him back is his routines.
- jowdones 2y agoThe cashier at the supermarket doesn't do life changing "move the needle", 10x heroics. Yet they need to get shit done. Most of us need to get shit done so we keep getting out paycheck and not get fired. Routine is pretty much the only way to survive the chore long term. Push it to subconscious and don't think about it anymore.
- zzzbra 2y ago“It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
- AlbertCory 2y agoAnother way to put this is "live in the moment." It takes a lifetime to learn to do that. Some people are lucky enough to be naturally that way.
- asimovfan 2y agoRobots do not need discipline or yoga/meditation training.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago>Yet we routinely see people who are 100x or 1000x more productive than others No, no we don't. And no, you don't either. Are you conflating productivity with wealth? I routinely observe people 100x or 1000x wealthier.
- rapht 2y agoUnfortunately the article mixes the ends with the means. The key trait that seems to stand out in the most highly regarded people in history is discipline: there is no "10x work" without hard, long term focus, which requires discipline. "Routines" have the advantage of making that discipline easier. Does it mean they are sufficient? No, and this is where the article is right. Does it mean they are useless? No, it's just one way of achieving the level of discipline needed to do the "10x work" that the article focuses on.
- jimbokun 2y agoThe point of the article is that you can be incredibly disciplined at doing things of low importance, and you will accomplish very little.