Of course, we’ve all been told that it is. Our daily habits determine our future. Right?

Yeah, it’s a nice quote to put on your refrigerator. But it’s not always so cut and dry in practice.

If utilized correctly, your routine is a superpower. But the opposite can also be true. Your routine can give you the illusion of progress while it’s leading you down a massive tangent on a wild goose chase.

Want to avoid taking crazy detours into oblivion? Want to ensure your routine is optimized for the creative outcomes you’re looking to achieve? Read on.

Doing the Right Things (Not Just Doing Things)

You’ve heard about working smarter, not harder. Well, that’s virtually impossible without knowing the right actions. And the right actions don’t emerge by accident.

You’ve got to do a bunch of things that have a reasonably good chance of delivering the results you’re looking for, track them, and then course-correct based on hard data. You’ve got to answer the question, “Why did X work better than anything else?” and discern whether your findings are useful.

If you’re plodding along, doing a bunch of ineffective actions, it stands to reason your routine is harming more than helping you. You could be as busy and productive as you want, but if you’re not focused on the right things, burnout is the almost certain outcome.

Getting too Comfortable (and Stuck in a Rut)

After a while, you’ll start to feel like you can do any routine on “easy mode,” even those that first appear especially punishing (but is punishing even the point?).

Yes, you do need to challenge yourself continually if you want to grow, and this will drive adaptation in your routine, too.

But one of the things I learned from publishing daily, something I ended up persisting in for 22 months, is that the need to ship can override the need to deliver what your audience expects. Translation – you start slinging irrelevant crap because you’re under the gun to produce.

Don’t get me wrong – some people excel at publishing daily and maintaining quality, Seth Godin being the prime example.

But what I learned from blogging daily was:

• Write daily? Yes.
• Publish daily? Yeesh.

Additionally, breaks in your routine and travel can help you sort the habits you want to keep from those you don’t, and can offer much-needed perspective, especially when you feel like you’ve been holed up in the ivory tower for too long.

Staying on Course (When it’s Not to Your Benefit)

Like a luxury cruise ship unknowingly headed for the nearest iceberg, staying on course without consulting the map has left more ambitious creatives shipwrecked than not.

Persistence has value, but only when it’s applied to the right things (also see an earlier point on doing the right things). You need to eat every day, but if your idea of healthy eating is a heaping helping of Big Macs and supersized fries, you might be headed to emergency care sooner rather than later.

Most things reveal themselves as effective or ineffective in three to six months, if you hit them hard. This doesn’t mean you’ll reach all your goals in that time, but it will be obvious whether there’s any traction and it’s worth continuing.

I will also add that just because you’re studying someone’s outward-facing success doesn’t mean you can duplicate it. For instance, you might assume I write blog posts like this because it makes me money, but I’m typically writing a) to answer questions, and b) as a personal discipline.

Likewise, Neil Patel wasn’t putting together long-form guides for Quick Sprout on various marketing topics to make money. He did it to disrupt knowledge brokering, and let’s face it, traffic and notoriety.

Following Another’s Methodology (and Getting Nowhere)

I am an advocate for conscious, intentional self-development. I also believe in being a lifelong student.

But you can’t merely let others tell you how to live. You take counsel from others, not orders. You’ve got to be the final decision-maker concerning all matters in your life, intentionally choosing what feels right to you. Otherwise, you’ll choose things that are out of alignment. This is frankly one of the dangers of using AI to guide your every move.

I’ve followed many methods, and none delivered the results I was looking for. I had to have the courage to choose my path, not someone else’s.

Don’t outsource your brain. You’ve got to keep thinking for yourself. The #1 reason artists fail is that they refuse to make their own inspiration soup and express their authentic truths. They choose the comforts and laziness of failing by another’s methods, rather than working hard to succeed by their own. That way, they get to keep harping on the validity of their excuses.