New Habits & Daily Routines

In terms of setting a new habit, in my experience, the 3-week threshold is the determining benchmark to focus on.

The easiest analogy to make would be getting into an exercise routine after not working out for a while - after you get your first longish run or workout in it fucking hurts.

You literally feel sore for a good two weeks, but if you make it to the third week without giving up, chances are you will not only be able to keep it up, but it won't hurt anymore and you will reap the healthful benefits.

This holds for non-physical activities as well, just instead of overcoming physical pain you need to get over either feeling like you just don't have the time to do something or general procrastination.

Now for my morning and evening routines (I will omit simple universals like 'brushing teeth').

Morning

• Wake up at 4:43 am, 100 pushups
• Short 2.5 km run with the wife
• 2 sets of 30 pull-ups (1x over grip, 1x under grip)
• Drink a tasty smoothie (e.g. celery, lemon, ginger, apple, spinach, carrot, banana)
• Hand grind coffee beans, aeropress into a takeout cup to be sipped on the 40 minute morning bus commute to the office
• Read a chapter of a paper book on the bus
• Post the blog entry I wrote the night prior
• Arrive at the office around 7 am, read Fred Wilson's daily blog post at avc.com, check bloomberg.com, read email newsletter (either Ben Thompson's "Stratechery", Nick Quah's "Hotpod", Azeem Azhar's "Exponential View" or "스타트업 위클리" or "Token Economy")

Evening

• Listen to a podcast on the 50 minute bus ride home (e.g. a16z, Exponent, Recode/Decode, Waking up with Sam Harris, The Daily, Software Engineering Daily, The Wolf Den)
• 100 push ups
• Watch an hour or so of TV shows or documentaries with the wife whilst eating
• Write tomorrow's blog post 
• Bed around 10ish and bed talk with the wife