Designing Your Routine: A Practical Blueprint
Understanding the theory is one thing; putting it into practice is another. The goal here is not to create a rigid, hour-long gauntlet of tasks that you’ll abandon in a week. The goal is to design a simple, resilient, and even enjoyable system that serves you. Let’s build your new waking up routine piece by piece.
Start with the Minimum Viable Action
The single biggest mistake people make when building habits is starting too big. We get a surge of motivation and decide to meditate for 20 minutes, go for a 3-mile run, and journal three pages every single morning. This approach is fragile. The first day you’re short on time or low on energy, the entire routine collapses, and feelings of failure creep in.
Instead, we will use the concept of a minimum viable action (MVA). This is the smallest, most laughably easy version of your desired habit. It’s so simple that you can’t say no.
- Want to start a meditation habit? Your MVA is to sit down and take one deep breath.
- Want to journal? Your MVA is to write one sentence.
- Want to exercise? Your MVA is to put on your workout clothes.
The MVA isn’t the end goal; it’s the starting line. Its purpose is purely to build consistency and get you past the initial resistance. Anyone can take one deep breath. Anyone can write one sentence. By making the barrier to entry almost zero, you make the act of showing up automatic. Once you’ve shown up, you’ll often find you want to do more. But on the days you don’t, completing the MVA is still a win. It keeps the streak alive and reinforces your new identity.
Conduct a Friction Audit
Every habit in your life has a certain amount of friction associated with it. Friction is anything that makes a behavior harder to do. To check your phone in the morning, the friction is very low if it’s on your nightstand. To go for a run, the friction is high if your shoes are buried in the closet, your clothes are in the laundry, and you don’t know where your keys are.
Your job is to become an architect of friction in your environment.
- Decrease Friction for Good Habits: Make your desired actions as easy as possible. If you want to drink a glass of water first thing, put a glass and a water bottle on your nightstand before you go to bed. If you want to read, put a book on your pillow. If you want to exercise, lay out your clothes, shoes, and socks the night before. Prepare your environment to make your MVA effortless.
- Increase Friction for Bad Habits: Make your undesired actions as difficult as possible. If you scroll on your phone in the morning, the best thing you can do is move your phone charger to another room. The simple act of having to get out of bed and walk across the house to turn off your alarm and get your phone introduces just enough friction to break the automatic loop. It gives you a precious few seconds to make a more conscious choice.
Leverage Your Environment and Habit Stacking
Your environment is filled with cues that trigger your habits. The good news is that you can design these cues intentionally. The most effective way to introduce a new habit is to link it to an existing one. This technique is called habit stacking.
The formula is simple: “After [current habit], I will [new habit].”
Your existing morning routine is already full of reliable habits: you get out of bed, you use the bathroom, you brush your teeth, you make coffee. These are solid anchor points for your new MVA.
- “After my alarm goes off, I will place my feet on the floor and take one deep breath.” (MVA)
- “After I use the bathroom, I will drink a full glass of water.”
- “After I start the coffee maker, I will write one sentence in my journal.”
By tethering the new, desired behavior to an old, automatic one, you don’t need to rely on memory or motivation. The old habit becomes the cue for the new one. This is how you weave new morning habits for productivity seamlessly into the fabric of your day.
Introduce Gentle Accountability
While the goal is intrinsic motivation, a little external support can make a huge difference, especially in the beginning. Accountability doesn’t have to mean pressure or judgment. It can be as simple as telling a friend or partner, “I’m trying to not check my phone for the first 30 minutes of the day. Could you ask me how it’s going at the end of the week?” You could also use a simple habit tracker—a calendar on the wall where you put an ‘X’ on each day you complete your MVA. The goal isn’t to achieve a perfect streak, but to bring conscious awareness to your progress and commitment.
