In this episode, we discuss the importance of routines and how
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista, where my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how your routine is either helping you thrive as a person or it’s making you fragile as a person. We are creatures of habit and we tend to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Whatever is the easiest thing for us to do, that is what we are going to do, but if we are used to doing something then we tend to do that over and over again with ease.
If you look at basketball players, they practice the same move over and over again until it becomes second nature. Some players have rituals for when they shoot free throws and they just follow the same process every single time. Routines are helpful to help us get things done.
There is a great book called Switch: How To Change Things When Change is Hard that talks about the three things we need to have a successful routine. Those things are your pre-frontal cortex, the amygdala, and the environment.
The amygdala is like an elephant. If left under its own devices, it would just do whatever it pleases which is fun stuff like eating, watching television, playing video games all day, and other things that don’t really move the needle on your progression.
The pre-frontal cortex is like a rider that controls the elephant. It is responsible for pulling the reins so that the elephant continues down the path. If the rider has to constantly pull on the reins all day, the rider can get exhausted and the elephant is free to do what it wants to do. This is why if you’re super ambitious to do a bunch of work after work, we tend not to do it because our trainer is tired and we end up ordering take out and scroll on social media while we watch television.
Your environment is like a path. If your path is filled with a bunch of obstacles and sticker bushes and uneven terrain, then the elephant is not going to want to go down that path. So if you want to meal prep, but you forgot to buy groceries, you have no Tupperware, and all your dishes are dirty, then your environment is setting you up for success.
If you want to get more stuff done, then you have to have a routine that makes the trainer or your prefrontal cortex and your path, your environment, make sure your elephant or amygdala doesn’t take over. I would save the fast way is to set up your environment in a way where there is the least amount of obstacles and the path is flat.
For me, I know I have to write every day to develop content for Grow With Joe. So I make sure I read for 30 minutes so I can start taking in information. Then I start writing. I make sure my laptop is charged or that my charger is nearby, I try to limit distractions so that I focus on writing, and I have a cup of coffee that I can sip on while I write. I do this pretty much every single day and I’m making my trainer stronger so that I don’t allow my elephant to grab my phone and start scrolling through social media.
If you want to get better at working out, it’s probably for the best that you do it in the morning because there will be the least distractions but to this, you need to make sure that you have the perfect triad going. You’re going to bed at a decent time so that you’re not getting four hours of sleep when you wake to go to the gym. You have your gym bag ready. You know the workout you’re going to do. By having this setup and you just follow it over and over again, you’ll just make the path easier to navigate and you’ll get the outcome you want, which is to exercise.
Do anything enough times and it will become a routine. Like if you have a pre-bed ritual where at a specific time you brush your teeth, floss, rinse, wash your face, and then read for 20-30 minutes before you go to bed, then it will get a little bit easier each day. It’s when you’re sporadic with the activity that it doesn’t stick. You also have to realize that your environment could be ruining your success without you realizing it. If you look at a screen, make sure the blue light filter is one so that it doesn’t mess with your melatonin production which helps you fall to sleep. If you’re trying to get something done but you allow the one-minute interruption to disrupt you, which doesn’t seem like much, it can sabotage you in completing the task.
Then you just want to make your trainer get stronger and that’s just by following the routine over and over again until it becomes second nature. If you can’t avoid eating sweets, make sure the sweets are not in your environment because your elephant might just be too strong for you to overcome that temptation. Or tell yourself that you want to eat carrots first and wait until 10 minutes afterward to eat a sweet. After you go through that waiting period, you might not want to have a sweet anymore. Or you just might need a break instead of sweet. So go for a ten-minute walk. You just have to be aware of your elephant and what it wants so you can accomplish your goals.
I get a lot of things done because I follow routines. Routines make a big portion of my day but I do leave room for my elephant to take over and just do whatever it, please. My day is not filled with routines but it does have strategic routines to make sure I take advantage of my day. You don’t have to be a robot, you can be a human.
The book switch goes way more into depth into these concepts and offers tips on how to improve the three, but here is the quick version. I read this book and it helps identify where my elephant was harming me and how I could strengthen my trainer, and how I can obtain a clear path. I’ll try anything that will help me get an edge in life and that’s why I love discovering books like Switch.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, you have an elephant, a trainer, and a path that determines if you’re going to follow a process or not. If you have all three perfectly in harmony with each other, then you’ll be more like to follow through on that process to help you reach your goals. So make sure you don’t let your elephant run loose because it will if you let it.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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