I’ve seen a lot of “day in the life” videos go viral over my two decades on the internet. These videos are usually made by millionaires with muscles like He-Man, and they’re packed with habits like waking up at 5 am, doing cardio in the dark, taking cold showers, meditating, and going device-free by 8 pm. As if the key to freedom is following the most rigid routine on planet earth. Ha!
Unfortunately, a lot of desperate people fall for this crap and convince themselves that waking up at a certain time or blasting themselves with cold water is the golden ticket to turning their dreams into reality.
I’m not claiming these habits have zero benefits – placebo is a real thing. But the problem is that someone who doesn’t know any better might watch one of those videos and think, “If I don’t do EXACTLY what this person does, I’m going to be a failure.” And trust me, there are people who go down that road. How do I know? Because it happened to me.
About 12 years ago, when I was just starting my self-improvement journey, I bought a discipline training course and followed it perfectly for 100 days straight. Did it make me a success? Nope. I got some minor placebo effects that come with doing “hard” things, but they wore off the moment I stopped. The only lasting effect was that I got weirdly attached to the idea of waking up at 5 am. The “guru” who sold me the course had me convinced that if I didn’t follow his perfect routine – the one that allegedly made him rich – I’d end up a broke, fat loser stuck in traffic on the way to my 9-5.
So naturally, every day that I didn’t wake up at 5 am and follow his routine to a T felt like a day I was betraying myself and the future I wanted. It was stupid, honestly, because it’s not like I even needed to wake up at 5 to get things done. By that point, I was already making money online and supporting myself working just 15-20 hours a week. I was a single guy with basically zero obligations besides splitting a $300-a-month apartment with two roommates. But I was so desperate to “make it” that I copied my idol, convinced that doing exactly what he did would somehow produce the exact same results.
Years later, I found out that same idol had a mental breakdown and was facing a criminal case for hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes. The guy I thought was perfect was a mentally struggling dude with serious money problems all along.
For those of you who still haven’t taken the “red pill,” I feel like it’s my duty to be straight with you. There’s no secret to success – and if there were, it definitely isn’t hiding behind a 5 am alarm, a perfect gym routine, and a cold shower. Anyone trying to sell you that it is, is using your naivety to make a sale. These shady salesmen rarely, if ever, got rich because of their routines. They got rich from selling their routines.
UNCLE BLAYDE’S “IMPERFECT” PERFECT ROUTINE
Now that you know there’s no such thing as a perfect routine, let me show you what my perfect routine actually looks like. There’s no rigid structure, no strict schedule. The only real objective is to get a little closer to what I’m trying to accomplish.
When I let go of the guru brainwashing and started structuring my day by instinct, that’s when I started seeing real progress – in both business and in the gym. Here’s what my typical day actually looks like:
- Wake up whenever my body says to, usually around 10 am
- Lay in bed half-asleep until 11 am
- Get up, make a coffee, fix my bed hair in case anyone knocks
- Sit down to work on my business after a few sips of water and Nescafe
- Finish up around 2 pm, then head to the local Tianguis (farmers market), the gym, the bank, tanning, or a haircut – whatever the day calls for
- I follow a one-meal-a-day diet, not because it’s “optimal,” but because it fits my lifestyle, so I eat a big meal around 6 pm
- Spend a couple of hours on the couch letting the food digest – watching a movie, listening to a podcast, reading, or napping (sometimes all four)
- Once I’ve recovered from what Mexicans call “mal del puerco,” I write in my journal and tidy up the house
- Bedtime around 2 am
That’s it. No 5 am alarm. No ice bath. No perfectly timed meditation session.
And despite waking up late, going to bed late, and essentially “freelancing” my way through the day, I still make more progress on my business than I ever did chasing the “perfect” routines my heroes were peddling for $19.99. Why? Because the life I actually enjoy is a life of freedom and flexibility – one where I can do whatever the hell I want at the drop of a hat.
How could I ever build that if I’m obligating myself to wake up at the ass-crack of dawn and spend hours doing things that aren’t even relevant to my goals?
My goals have always been simple: have the financial freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want, with whoever I want, for as long as I want – and look good while doing it. None of that requires a strict routine. It just requires identifying the behaviors that are destroying my business or my progress, and cutting those out. That’s it.
So if you’ve ever watched one of those perfect routine videos or dropped money on one of their courses, don’t let it mess with your head. You’re not a loser because you wake up “late,” take a warm shower, or skip meditation (which is a Buddhist practice, by the way – not a business strategy).
Here’s my actual advice, from someone who got absolutely nothing from the “perfect routine” world:
- Identify your goal. Be specific about what you’re actually working toward.
- Figure out which habits move you closer to that goal and do more of those.
- Identify which habits are working against you and do as little of those as possible.
- Then let it play out. Stop overthinking it.
You don’t need someone else’s morning routine. You need your own – and the good news is, you probably already know what it should look like.
If you need help identifying your “bad” habits, drop a comment below.
Your man,
Uncle Blayde
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