But You Start Anyway

Near the end of last year, somewhere around September or maybe October, i hit a wall.

The kind of wall where you realize you’ve been letting your days happen to you instead of the other way around.

So i made a change and i built a morning routine.

And i know. i know what you’re thinking. Morning routines have become one of those things that people perform more than they practice. Wake up at 4 a.m. Cold plunge. Lift for an hour. Read an entire book before the sun comes up. Post about it. Repeat. It’s become more brand than behavior and i get why people roll their eyes at the whole concept.

Mine wasn’t that.

Mine was almost embarrassingly simple.

It started with not going straight from my bed to my office chair. That’s it. That was step one. Just deciding that the first thing i did each day wouldn’t be work.

i gave myself 30 minutes. Some light stretching. Maybe 10 minutes of yoga. Making myself a proper coffee. Reading a page or two from the Daily Stoic. And if it wasn’t too cold, stepping out back and just sitting there. Watching the sun come up over the mountains to the East. Not thinking. Not planning. Just being there.

Then i’d sit down at my desk. But even then, i didn’t jump into the work. i took another 20 to 30 minutes to actually plan my day. Triage the inbox. Process it down to zero. Review client communications across different channels. Go through my backlog. And then land on three to five things i wanted to work on that day.

Not get done. Work on.

That distinction mattered more than i expected. Because a lot of what i do takes real time. Deep work that doesn’t wrap up in an afternoon. And by reframing it as “i’m going to move these things forward today” instead of “i need to finish these things today,” i took the pressure off in a way that made me more productive, not less.

i’d box each thing into a certain number of minutes or hours. Work through them. And when five o’clock, some days five-thirty hit, i was done. Actually done. Not “done but still thinking about it” done. Done done.

And it was incredible.

i was getting more completed than i had in months. i was more energized. More focused. More balanced. i felt like i was running the day instead of the day running me.

i even had a KPI for it.

Not revenue. Not output. Not client satisfaction scores. My measure was workout minutes and workout streaks. i had started tracking my streak on the Peloton app, and it became the thing i looked at to know whether i was taking care of myself. Some days that was an intense HIIT ride. Some days it was weightlifting. Other days it was moderate yoga. And some days it was just recovery, light stretching and meditation.

But every day, something.

i built a 75-day streak. 75 days in a row without missing. i never once thought about skipping. It wasn’t discipline at that point it was just part of who i was becoming.

And then the new year hit.

Life happened. It always does.

i took on new client engagements at work. Not just more work, but new relationships. New dynamics. The kind of pressure that comes with establishing trust, proving value, showing up in a way that clients aren’t always used to from their previous partners. The pressure to perform and always be on.

And then life happened at home too. i found myself needing to take on more responsibilities there.

And the thing that got sacrificed was my morning routine. It went from an everyday thing to a no-day thing.

And the result was exactly what you’d expect. i went back to letting the day affect me rather than being deliberate about how i wanted to affect it. i was in triage mode. Constant first responder mode. Running from thing to thing, trying to put out fires, trying to get as many things done as i could.

i wasn’t balanced. i wasn’t centered. i was frazzled.

i was making rookie mistakes. The kind of mistakes you make when you’re tired and scattered and trying to please everyone. i was burnt out, even though, and this is the part that really got me, i was shipping less work than before. Less output. More exhaustion. That math doesn’t work.

And then i looked at my KPI.

At the end of January, i had a new streak. Not the kind i wanted. 31 days in a row of zero workout minutes. Not a single minute of exercise in an entire month.

75 days to build something that felt like it was changing my life.

31 days to watch it completely collapse.

That number hit me in a way i wasn’t prepared for. Because it wasn’t just about the workouts. The workouts were the measure, but what they were measuring was everything. My focus. My energy. My patience. My ability to do the kind of work i actually care about. It was all off. And the KPI was just confirming what my body and my brain had been trying to tell me for weeks.

i’m not built to be an emergency room worker. That’s not how i operate. That’s not where my best work comes from. And i had somehow convinced myself that the urgency of everything around me justified abandoning the one thing that was making all of it manageable.

So over this last weekend, i took a step back.

i told myself i had to restart the morning routine. Not the workouts yet, just the routine. The stretching. The coffee. The Daily Stoic. The 20 minutes of planning. The deliberate start. Because that’s the foundation. That’s what drives everything else. The intentionality. The calm. The feeling that i’m choosing how i want to move through the day rather than reacting to whatever lands in front of me.

And to be honest, i’m still struggling with the exercise piece. However many days we are into February, i’m still on that streak of not working out. Getting momentum back is hard. So much harder than building it the first time. When you’re in it, it feels effortless. When you’re trying to restart, it feels like pushing a boulder uphill.

But the morning routine is back. And even just a few days of that deliberate start has reminded me of something i already knew but needed to feel again.

There’s something that happens when you start your day on your own terms. With intent. With a plan. Not rigidly. Life still happens. You still have to be flexible. You pivot. You adjust.

But you do it from a place of balance instead of chaos.

More calm. More focus. More control over the things you can actually control.

We’ll see where i am in 30 days. i hope the workout streak has started back up by then.

i’m not sure what the lesson is here. i really don’t. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it’s just worth saying out loud that you can build something that genuinely works, something that makes you better and stronger and more effective, and still watch it fall apart in less time than it took to build.

And that getting it back isn’t as simple as deciding to get it back.

But you start anyway.

✌️💛,

-jason