“I know where I’m going even when it’s dark.” – Rising Down, The Roots

What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.

–Gretchen Rubin

Establishing new routines is hard. I assume this is true for everyone but I know it is for me. A slight wrinkle in my schedule, like an early morning flight for a business trip, can throw me completely off my goals.

This is exactly what happened with my daily writing routine, which then infected my reading routine, my long established workout habits, and so on. For the last two weeks!

I’ve read several books on this subject over the last couple years—Nudge; The Power of Habit; Thinking, Fast and Slow—and still it’s a struggle.

But today is a new day and I’m here at 6:30 in the morning writing. Should I wake up healthy and coherent, I commit to doing the same tomorrow.

If you focus on changing or cultivating keystone habits, you can cause widespread shifts. However, identifying keystone habits is tricky. To find them, you have to know where to look. Detecting keystone habits means searching out certain characteristics. Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as “small wins.” They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious.

–The Power of Habit