The Daily Routine That Changed My Life

I went from lost, broke, and unfulfilled to running a 6 figure business, building an audience of over half a million people across platforms, and having a mission that lights me on fire.

I put a lot of it down to my daily routine that took months of trial and error to perfect.

In this newsletter, I’m going to break down the 3 parts of my routine, what’s involved in each part, and why it helped change my life forever.

Before we dive in: A reminder that MasteryOS is open for enrollment.

If you want to unlock your true potential, smash every goal you set, and achieve Self-Mastery, click here to get access.

The Purpose Of The Routine

For any routine to make sense, you first need to understand the purpose behind the routine.

After all, when you think about it, a routine isn’t anything special.

A routine is simply just a series of habits designed to obtain a certain outcome.

If you don’t know what the outcome is you want to achieve with a routine, that routine is useless, and in fact, instead of streamlining your day, it’ll slow you down and hold you back.

So the purpose of my daily routine has 2 facets;

1. Achieve my goals

I wanted this routine to help improve my ability to do what I knew I needed to do to achieve the goals that I had set.

2. Pursue what I value

If you’ve read any of my other newsletters, this will be obvious but 3 of my primary personal values are mastery, meaning, and curiosity.

I wanted to use my routine to maximise these 3 things in my day.

Regardless of what routine you’re building, whether it’s a morning routine or a daily routine, if you want your routine to be effective, you need to understand what the goal of the routine is.

Part 1: Build

This is where I do all my cognitive important work for the day.

Whether it’s creating content, building out a new project, or whatever else.

This is typically between 5AM and 12PM and starts with me doing my hardest, most important task first and then working through my tasks in order of priority.

The reason I start my day with my hardest and most important task is because willpower and focus are both finite and limited.

As you go through your day, doing work, having conversations, and making decisions, they get used up.

And with your hardest task, being your hardest task - it requires the most amount of willpower and focus to complete to a high standard. I found that if I put it off till later in the day, I would struggle to complete it to a standard that I was happy with and the longer I left it, the less likely I was to do it.

But when you do that task first, when your willpower and focus are at their peak, you’ll find it easier to complete and easier to do to a high standard.

This also lets you build momentum as soon as you wake up, letting you carry that momentum through your day and do what you know you need to do.

In this first part, I typically work in 90-minute blocks, taking 20 to 30 minute breaks between the blocks to make a coffee, go on a walk, or do whatever I want to do.

These blocks are highly focused and distraction free with no phone or people around me so that I can enter flow and do my best work in the most efficient and effective way possible.

By 10am, I’ve got all my most important tasks done, and depending on what I need to do that day, I will either work on menial tasks or on building a project that I’m working on.

The best thing about this part of the routine is the amount of goal outcomes it helps me achieve.

It helps push me toward my goals - as I’m obviously doing the work that I need to do to achieve my goals. It also helps me pursue mastery of my craft, by again, doing the work and practicing and it helps me pursue meaning since I’m working on goals and projects that are inherently meaningful to me, creating meaning in the work and meaning in my life.

Once it hits 12pm, I make some food, relax, and then make an Instagram and LinkedIn post - my build part of the day is done.

The main reason I made this part of my routine is because a massive mistake most people make, and this used to be me, is that they don’t dedicate a specific part of their day to doing the work that will move them toward their goals.

They know they have certain tasks to do, but instead of having a part of their day solely dedicated to completing them so that they can maximise their chances of completing them consistently, they decide on the day to try and find time for that work - which normally results in procrastination and low quality work.

So if you want to get the work you know you need to do done, consistently and to a high quality, dedicate a part of your day, preferably as early as possible in the day, to building and working on your goals.

Part 2: Sweat 

Come 2pm, I take Rocky on a walk - he’s a pup so I’m still training him to walk properly on the lead, so that’s fun.

But this gets me some quality time outside and gets my steps in.

After the walk, around 3pm I hit the gym.

I’m fortunate enough to have a garage gym and can train when I want, with no distractions and can blast my music as loud as I want.

This is such a foundational part of my day and should be a foundational part of every single person’s daily routine.

If you’re not training and pushing your body to its limits, making it sweat every single day, you’re limiting your potential in every area of your life.

Not only are you limiting your health, but you’re leaving confidence, respect, and energy on the table.

You cannot excel as much as you possibly could in any and every area if you’re not pursuing physical greatness.

When you train, you build your body, you build your mind.

You increase your discipline, your ability to do hard things, your ability to enter flow and focus and get shit done.

Training, sweating, and challenging your body needs to be a part of your routine if you’re at all concerned with becoming all you could be.

But, I would be mindful of how you implement this into your day.

When I first started trying to build a daily routine, I experimented with having this part first.

But I found, especially with the training modality that I follow - training to failure in every set - that after my workout, I really struggled to do my hardest task - it would take me a few hours to fully recover from the session and so those few hours were wasted, or if I forced myself to work, the work was done to a standard at less than my best.

So by, building first and sweating second, I use my training to signal the end of my workday.

I wake up, I build and work when my mental capacities at their max - and then once all my work is done, I train.

One of the aspects of my value of mastery is self-mastery.

If you’re not mastering yourself, you’re not living life fully.

And to master yourself, you need to be training - and training hard.

That is the primary goal outcome of this second block, to help pursue self-mastery and personal excellence.

I’m a firm believer that how you do 1 thing, is how you do everything. So no matter how much money you make or how good your relationships are, if you’re not working out, you’re less than your best.

I typically finish training around 4.30 or 5pm, depending on the session and when I start.

After I finish, I make food, check my DMs, comments, and emails, and then start part 3.

And again with training, if you don’t have a specific portion of your day dedicated to working out, and on the day try to find time to do it, you’re not going to do it or at least, you’re much less likely to do it.

Because the thing about training and working on your goals is that both of these things are rather hard.

They’re not easy.

So you’ll do everything you can and look for every excuse to put them off and skip them today, unless you have a part of your day, every day which is entirely and solely dedicated to doing that thing - whether it’s 1 hour or whether it’s 7 hours, if there’s something in your day that you value highly and you want to guarantee you get it done, you need to make a portion of your daily routine dedicated to it.

Part 3: Learn

The first 2 parts of my day are strict, disciplined, and highly thought through in terms of what I do and when I do it.

First, I’m building, working toward my goals, and doing the work that I need to do so that I’m using my cognitive abilities when they’re at their best.

Second, I’m sweating, challenging my body, and pushing my mind to pursue self-mastery and physical excellence, to signal the end of my work day and and so that I don’t negatively impact my cognitive work.

But part 3 is a lot more laid back and easy going.

From around 6pm to 8pm, I’ll learn.

And when I say learn, I’ll just follow my curiosities.

Sometimes this is orchestrated and strategic depending on my current goals and if there’s something specific I need to learn to achieve them.

But otherwise, this is just following anything that grabs me.

Typically this involves me watching YouTube videos, taking courses, listening to podcasts, or reading a book.

And again, this part of my day is absolutely essential and it’s another mistake I see a lot of people make - they don’t dedicate specific time to learning and so they never learn or improve.

Think about it, your ability to move toward your goals and become the person you want to become is limited by your knowledge.

If you know what to do to achieve your goals, you can achieve them with the right amount of intensity and time.

If you don’t know what to do to achieve your goals, you’re running blindly and will never get there.

So your ability to prioritise learning and pursuing knowledge every single day is crucial.

But most people fall into 2 camps;

1. They take action but never learn from other people or their own actions

Hence, if they’re never learning from anything or anyone, it doesn’t matter how much action they take, they won’t improve.

You can and should learn from your experiences, but that learning doesn’t happen mindlessly, you still have to dedicate time to looking at your experience.

2. They learn loads but never take action

They spend hours every day reading books, watching YouTube videos, taking courses, and all the rest - but they never enter the damn arena and put into practice what they’re learning.

And learning is great - obviously - but progress can only be gotten through the creation of value and value can only be created through action.

So if you never put into practice what you learn, you’ll never improve.

A lot of progress, and achieving your goals comes down to finding this balance, it comes down to your ability to prioritise both learning and taking action so that you can improve your knowledge and therefore your ability to take more informed action but also so that you can take the damn actions and stop avoiding the work.

And that’s why I love this routine so much.

I start my day with action, with building something that’s meaningful to me, I then challenge my body and sweat, pumping my blood with endorphins and then I follow my curiosities, learning and improving my knowledge - it’s a constant cycle of progress and improvement in each area of my life that allows me to achieve my goals and pursue mastery, meaning and curiosity.

- Ross

And when you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:

• Achieve Self-Mastery, unlock your true potential, and smash every goal you set with MasteryOS

• Join the waitlist for cohort 2 of Done In 4

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