The More Routine My Life Gets, The More Freedom I Have

Good morning. Happy Monday. It's absolutely beautiful morning for July. It's supposed to be really hot, but it's not.

It's beautiful this morning. Um, so continuing looking through the concepts that we talked about yesterday with deming and reducing variation specifically as one of the um things I noticed in my journal here. I was looking at in my daily life where I could remove variation and get consistency. And I think that that's really um I think removing variation is really about setting up consistent deliberate systems and not just random.

My natural thing is just to be uh natural and free and and have the thing. But I've learned as I'm looking at it that the freedom is in the constraints. And uh as I was looking through my journals, there were um there's five different levels of variation that I areas of variation that kind of overlay with the zones that I've been uh working with in as far as my schedule. m.

That's not me. I've never I've never been that. In 1996, my natural thing was I wanted to be in bed at midnight and up by 8. And now here uh in 2026, my I've shifted just a little bit where 11:00 is the time and 7 or 7:30 is the time to uh to wake up.

So, I've noticed that how I measure that now is my goal is to reduce variation and get sleep crowns with my uh with my aura ring. I wear my aura ring every day and I'm looking for double crowns. I want to get a crown for readiness and a crown for sleep. And I noticed that if I've really trained my body, especially over the last 60 or 90 days as I'm really embracing this um leaning into ritualizing and reducing variation that 11.

Do you remember when you're a kid and you play the the you know the floor is lava and you can't touch the floor, you have to jump from the sofa to the ottoman or whatever? m. So, it's often like right at the last minute, but I don't know why it kind of it tricks my brain into gifying going to bed. m.

So that means I'm up between 7 and 7:30. I shower, I get ready and get in the car at 8:00. that morning routine is really now involving doing these videos that every day now we leave the house at 8:00 I arrive at honeycomb not today on Monday honeycomb's closed so we go to first watch but go have the same um have uh breakfast and then at 9 or as close to 9 as we can we turn on the camera and do this video. And that's all part of this first, you know, hour and a half of the day is get in the car, get to Honeycomb, get breakfast.

I look through my journal and figure the uh insight for today, record, and uh then come right over here, record the video, and then go across the street. And by 9:30, we're sitting in Concord Coffee with a pourover from Honduras or Guatemala or wherever it is. I've I've trained myself to like uh to like pourovers now and get into that the ritual of that. m.

I'm ready for my first focus session of the morning where I have those 2 hours that 2hour period blocked for my creative work for doing the things that I want to do. Um, we've been along with the the reducing variation of having the phone safe to put my phone in the safe so that we don't have the distraction of the phone between that 10:00 and 12:00 um hour. And then I mentioned that part of my the biggest um u thing that now I I work on is what am I actually going to do in that 10 to 12 time. It's time where I have complete freedom to do whatever I want but I recognize that often I don't choose the thing to do.

And so I'm us I'm sometimes writing but I'm always advancing um stuff in there. Then my zone of reducing variation in my schedule by containing all of my appointments, all of my Zooms, all of the things that involve other people between Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 1:00 to 6:00. That's the zone where everything happens. So I'm reducing all that all that variation there.

And meals meals is another thing of reducing variation. This is a this has been um you know a great period of dialing in a carnivore uh you know compliant system where the rituals that are routine that I know exactly what I'm having for uh breakfast and then bookend the day with we've been doing uh cubed either fillet or ribeye in the air fryer. And if you haven't done that, in the words of Jeff Foxworthy, if you put a bowl of that on your head, your tongue will beat your brains out trying to get to it. So good.

And then there's two or three lunches that I have that we know um you know what to do. And the bottom line is in the last uh you know 60 or 70 days I've lost almost 20 lbs from this kind of attention to the detail of sticking with removing variation from my um from my eating. So that is a um that's a a great way to approach the variation. m.

m. where we start that's the zone one for the next day of doing my being a professional sleeper uh ritual. But in this things I never have any uh I never have a problem uh there's no procrastinating in your personal time because you're doing whatever whatever I want. It's not I don't have any expectations of the time.

So, I do uh whatever we want. I love to watch a good Netflix series. I love to uh do things like that. Um go to movies, all of that stuff.

But it's fun to look back and realize that you know 30 years ago I discovered this idea of reducing variation and seeing now that all the success all the things that I've uh been able to do have been from reducing that variation. even writing in my journal. The only way to be in 2026 with a giant pile of 160 journals is to have daily consistently removed the variation and written in my journals. So that's my encouragement for today.

See how you can reduce variation in sleep, in the morning routine, in your work, in your meals, and your personal time. And let me know how that works out for you.