Name: 186. Do You Need a Routine? | No Stupid Questions
Uploaded: 2026-03-19T19:20:29.000Z
Duration: 38 min 35 s
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Adverbs of degree

And you're listening to no Stupid Questions.

Today on the show, how important are routines?

They need to live a chaotic life with no rules, no plan.

Angela, today I think we have a really fun question, but I'm even more excited because it's from a really fun person.

This is a question that was sent in from my brother Peter.

I think he's the smartest of all my siblings, I'll give him that.

I can't wait to hear what the other siblings think.

Okay, what does Perfect Peter want to know?

He says, how important is routine in life?

To what extent does sticking closely to routine help someone be or feel more productive?

Or perhaps better phrased, when is routine helpful and when can it be harmful?

I am guessing that Perfect Peter has lots of routines.

I can see how at times being too focused on routine causes one to feel like their life is overly regimented and doesn't allow for enough free flow and spontaneity.

While at other times, routine can be an essential element of goal attainment and accomplishment.

So he says, Angela and Mike, how should we think about routine and incorporate or not incorporate routine into our lives?

I mean, have you heard the phrase firm opinions loosely held?

Well, I wonder if, like firm opinions loosely held, there are times when routine can guide our lives but shouldn't control it.

He's one of those people with what I would call firm routines loosely held.

So every Friday, for example, at 2pm he stops and gets together with a few friends and they debrief on their week and kind of make their transition into the weekend.

But it's both this productive element and this signaling of friendship that we're transitioning into a different space.

And he has so many of these types of just routines.

But it's not so firmly held that he won't do anything else.

They're not so firmly held that, like, if he were on a plane at 2 o' clock on a Friday, he'd be freaking out because he couldn't do that.

And I thought to myself, so much of life is really busy all the time, and you get ripped from one place to another.

It's really beautiful to have a few of these, I'll call them quasi non negotiables in terms of routine, that say, this is how I'm going to approach my life to make sure I get these things into it that are important to me.

You know, routine isn't studied as much in psychology as habit.

There's so much, I want to say hype about habit only because that sounds good and it's alliterative.

Habits are really when your brain is on autopilot.

In fact, Mark, my favorite habit neuroscientist Colm Camerer at Caltech uses the phrase neural autopilot.

And there is an entirely separate part of your brain.

And sometimes people say this kind of thing, like, oh, there's a part of your brain that, you know, fill in the blank.

In this case, there really is what is called the habit system.

And it's a different part of the brain that you use when you do something which is so automatic.

You've done it so many times and it's been so consistently the right thing to do that you really don't have to think.

So stopping at a red light, you know, red light, hit the brakes.

That's the kind of thing that people talk about when they talk about neural autopilot.

And I think that these routines that we're talking about here, like, oh, on Fridays I do this.

You're not completely using cruise control, but there is some kind of default nature to it.

You know, the reason why we have any of these things, like true habits where your brain is really on autopilot, to routines where you're sort of like, kind of awake, but there's a strong default to even a plan.

All of these are on a continuum of how much did I know in advance what I was going to do and not have to think about it too much to on the other hand, like, wow, I have to use all of the cognitive bandwidth.

I have to figure out what I'm going to do.

And I'll just say that the human brain is a miracle, but it's very small.

And human beings have had to do smart things with this little few pounds of cranial material.

And one of the reasons why human beings are so smart is because we have this ability to put some things on autopilot or near autopilot or I already planned this yesterday.

And you have already planned what your day is going to be like the day before.

That frees up a lot of cognitive bandwidth to, like, now negotiate what's happening.

People who wake up and they're just making every single decision, like, reactively.

They just are not living a very efficient life.

So I'm a big fan of habits, like pure habits.

What are some routines that you have in your life that have helped you maybe free up cognitive bandwidth for other things?

I call three girlfriends three different days of the week.

Sue is on Saturdays, Michelle's on Sundays, and Shalini is on Wednesdays.

We talk and we run at the same time, or I should say jog.

It's a routine, I would say, because it's not like I start to do this automatically without any intentionality.

Like one person needs to start a little earlier.

I think it is the one thing I have done as a friend that has been a real game changer.

I have to say, the routine of weekly cause has not only preserved these three friendships, but actually made them so much richer than they were before we started this, which is, I don't know, like 10 years ago or something.

And forgive me, I'm going to use the term I shouldn't, but is this a form of habit stacking?

What did you learn about habit stacking, Katie Milkman?

A lot of people call it habit piggybacking.

And my collaborator and friend Katie Milkman will talk about it.

Also, James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, which I just want to go on record as saying, it's a pretty gosh darn good book.

He's not a professor or psychologist, but he's incredibly intuitive, so maybe I should call him a psychologist.