The Founder Morning Routine Exception
The routine lasted four days. The thread about the routine was thirteen paragraphs long.
The Founder Morning Routine Exception An Observational Essay. Filed: Q2 2022.
What Was Observed
In early 2022, a person known to the observer began a morning routine. The routine involved waking at 5:30 AM, a fifteen-minute walk, thirty minutes of focused work before checking any messages, a structured breakfast, and a ten-minute journaling session. The routine was designed to replicate, with local modifications, the routines described by four separate podcasts the person had consumed in January.
The person documented the routine in a Twitter thread. The thread received forty-three likes.
The Four Days
The routine ran for four days. On day three, the walk was skipped due to weather. On day four, the focused work block was reduced to eleven minutes because a message arrived that required a response. On day five, the alarm was set for 5:30 and the person woke at 7:15. This was described as a recalibration period.
The thread is still online. The forty-three likes remain.
On Documentation Preceding Practice
The routine is aspirational before it is operational, which is why it needs to be written down before it has been performed. Writing it down is part of the commitment mechanism. The commitment mechanism is, in this case, more durable than the commitment.
The documentation of a productive routine consumes the time that a productive routine would have required. This is not a contradiction. The documentation serves a different function than the routine. The function is social. The routine is solitary. One of these is easier to sustain.
Return-to-Office Complications
In March 2022, the person's employer announced a return to office on a hybrid schedule. The morning routine was not designed for commute mornings. The commute mornings begin at 7:00 AM, which makes the 5:30 wake time non-negotiable and also extremely unpopular with the person at 5:30 AM.
First consequence: the routine now operates as a work-from-home exclusive practice. It is therefore available three days per week. It runs on approximately one of those days.
Second consequence: the return-to-office schedule has produced a new constraint that the routine thread did not anticipate. A second thread on adapting the routine to hybrid work has been drafted but not published.
Third consequence: the draft thread is, in the observer's assessment, more detailed than the first one.
Structural Observation
The productivity content ecosystem has created a class of routines that are most compelling when described and least compelling when performed. This is not a failure of the people describing them. It is the correct output of the ecosystem. The routine is a product. The thread is the distribution channel.
Governing Exception
When a routine fails, the correct response under prevailing norms is to design a better routine. This produces another thread.
Contradiction
The person is more productive than average. This is observable from their work output. The morning routine did not cause this. The morning routine cannot be given credit.
Observation closed.