High Performance Is About What You Don’t Do.

There is a trend currently that has many people focused on special morning routines that take 45 minutes every day to get them into some mythical high performance states and help them do their best work. Many people are surprised to discover I think most of this is bullshit. 

One particular client I worked with described to me in detail his 45 minute morning routine that helped him get in the zone and get his brain firing, leaving him feeling energised and ready for a full day of work, (his paraphrased words). This guy has one of the strongest work ethics I’ve ever come across. He regularly pulls 18 hour days and is truly relentless, with results to show for it. But if we zoom out from the heroic effort and take a cold hard look at his performance, we can see a glaring issue. 

That morning routine of cold exposure, daylight exposure, grounding etc costs 45 minutes of his precious time. And the gain from this feels like he’s getting a 20% boost in productivity and quality of thought etc. So if he works 12 hours the cost of 45 minutes feels well worth it. 

But is he truly getting a 20% boost? Truth is that the science and evidence base on how much each element of that routine boosts cognitive performance is scant and weak, but mostly not pointing to something so robust as 20%, and certainly not for more than the first 90 minutes of the day. The reason it feels like he’s getting such a large boost is not because the routine is taking him beyond his usual baseline. But that its restoring his capacity towards his usual baseline, which has been hammered by his habits the night before. 

An elaborate morning routine cant boost your cognitive performance by much, but it can restore the damage done by the poor quality sleep that came the night before. 

When our example above works late into the evening and night, often 11pm. He’s ruining his bodies natural wind down and deep sleep rhythm. Blue light, cognitive work, stress, a lack of relaxation, and many other factors, combine to keep cortisol high, melatonin and serotonin low, keep the brain racing, and so on. This seriously impacts cortisol rhythm, sleep onset, early night sleep quality, and more.

If a solid morning routine can give you a 5% boost in cognitive performance for a few hours, but a shitty nights sleep and no down time can ruin that same cognitive performance by 20<30%, where do the gains lie? 

An elaborate morning routine in the absence of sensible, regular time to wind down and et good quality sleep is like farting against a hurricane. Its expending huge efforts and resources to undo damage willingly done the night before. If you care about your productivity during the day, you should probably put more attention and discipline towards your evenings and recovery, and keep your morning routine simple and short. 

Get the rest and sleep correct, and the natural awakening responses of your circadian biology will have you firing on all cylinders during that first part of the day anyway. Freeing up time to get straight on with your tasks, rather than spending valuable time getting up to speed. 

Share post: