Good Morning.

Here’s what’s going on in my world. 

Laura and I had a party at our house one night…🥳

Nothing crazy, about 30 or so people came.

It was a TON of fun and I had a great time seeing so many people in our space…

Including several Copy Accelerator members…

So I’m happy about the party overall. 🤩

The one thing that isn’t great though, is that I didn’t go to bed until midnight…

And I didn’t wake up until close to 7:30 am…

So I’m feeling a bit off my game the next morning.

For me, it just simply comes down to how much I love my routine…

And how much I hate when I get off of it.

I love waking up between 5 am and 6 am…

It gives me so much time to get deep work done and fully “wake up”…

Before my wife and daughter get up around 8 am.

On the days when I wake up early, I’m in a good mood virtually every single time…

And on the rare occasions where I don’t…

I feel more like a grumpy old man.

Of course, with this being said, I also know I just gotta deal with this variance when it happens…

And I can’t let it derail my entire day…

Or negatively affect my relationships with my family or my day as a whole…

But I did want to write this blog post and make this point…

Because any time I get off my routine…

I’m significantly less happy than when I’m on it.

I don’t know if you’re the same way?

But for me, when a routine works and makes you happy…

Then why would you want to change it, right?

And that’s why I’ve always found it odd when people are so flippant about your routines or habits…

Where they go, “Oh whatever, it’s not a big deal.”

In the grand, cosmic scheme of things, they’re right…

But at the same time…

What they’re really asking of you when they encourage you to break a habit or change your routine…

Is for you to move away from something that makes you happy…

To move towards something that can leave you feeling stressed, grumpy, unproductive, and less in a state of flow…

And that’s not a super fair thing to ask of you, right?

Now of course you might read this and say, “Damn, you’re a grumpy old man Stefan…”

And that’s a charge to which I will only 50% deny (LOL!).

But my whole thing is that you can still do fun stuff while keeping your routine.

For example, normally I like to go to bed around 10 pm.

So I could have said goodnight to people and went upstairs to bed at around that time. (I actually would have but I think my wife would have killed me!)

And that’s why when Laura and I go out to dinner…

We’ll typically eat at like 5 pm or 5:30 pm.

I love eating early…

Especially on a weekend if I’m gonna have a few cocktails…

Because we can do dinner, then even go have a drink or two at the bar after…

And have a pretty action-packed evening…

Then be home and in bed by 10 pm…

Which, in turn, allows me to be up by 6 am (or earlier) the next day.

So I’ve just never gotten the idea or correlation that in order to have had a fun night, it needs to be a late night…

Although again, I’m painfully aware of how much of a grump I’m probably coming off as in this blog post.

Still, the point of these blog posts is just to share what’s on my mind and what’s going on in my world…

So here we are.

My personal feeling is that good habits can set you free…

And I don’t actually think going to bed early and waking up early is really that rigid of a routine anyway…

You’re not saying you have to do the same thing every night…

There can be tons of variance.

– SPG

P.S. This post originally came from an email I sent to my private list. If you want to see more stuff like this from me, you can apply to join my list using this link.