Structure, habits & routine — the discipline behind a successful slow life
People assume discipline means willpower. For me, it’s architecture.
Reading 30 minutes a day about complex, non-fiction topics seems like such basic advice. But if you do it consistently, you’re already ahead of 90% of people. Maybe even 99%.
That habit alone helped me:
Pivot across careers — programming, web design, product management, marketing — with instant success every time.
Get to a level of emotional stability and inner peace I didn’t think was possible.
Pull myself out of chronic fatigue and multiple chronic health issues.
I’ve met a lot of smart people. But no one who knows as much as I do about both physical and mental health. Not even close.
But I don’t credit it to IQ. I credit it to the discipline I apply to myself.
Structure
Reading and writing compounds in a way most people underestimate.
I started 20 years ago and I averaged at least 60 minutes a day. That’s equivalent to majoring in multiple fields despite having a full-time job, a partner, and plenty of hobbies. All self-directed.
But to get to that level of consistency I needed structure. Something to hold the practice together day after day, through burnout, travel, and distraction.
That's why I got into systems early: GTD, kanban boards, all kinds of frameworks to manage my life. Without them, I'd struggle to keep everything together at first.
Now they’re second nature. I don’t follow them rigidly anymore, they’re just part of how I move through the day.
Habits
People are surprised when I tell them I have a routine—probably because I travel so much. But I’ve always had one. It’s how I function.
Three pillars keep me grounded:
Mental clarity — reading, learning, writing, and journaling. That’s where the ideas come from. That’s how I spot opportunities. That’s how I build high-value products and services.
Physical health — sleep, diet, movement. If your biology is broken, nothing else works. Fixing this gave me back my energy.
Focused work — 4–5 hours of deep, undistracted effort. You can push beyond that, sure, but not for long. Eventually, your health and clarity will pay the price.
Routine
People are surprised when I tell them I have a routine because I travel so much. But I’ve always had one. Because I need one.
I know when I’m most productive, and I build my day around it. The routine exists so I can do everything I care about — read, write, train, think — and still work when my mind is sharpest.
I split my time between France and Japan, usually 50/50. I don’t travel constantly, and when I do, I move slow enough to keep my rhythm.
People think digital nomading and routines don’t mix. They’re wrong. You just need to re-root fast enough to stay functional.
My recipe for discipline
People ask me how I got to this point — health, clarity, productivity — and the truth is, I didn't change everything overnight. I just built systems that made it hard to fall off track.
Here's what I recommend:
Use Atomic Habits techniques: habit stacking, temptation bundling, tweaking your environment.
Fix your biology: sleep more, eat better, exercise. That’s how you stabilize your energy, hormones, and neurotransmitters.
Win early in the day. Small successes give you the dopamine to keep going.
Iterate quickly on your routine to find one that works for you.
Track things, but only what matters. I log how I feel, how I sleep, and what I consume. The rest is noise.
Remove friction from your routine. Cook more efficiently, live next to a gym, stop doom scrolling.
Don't skip two days in a row. When I stop a habit and don't restart it very soon, I can say goodbye to it for months usually.
Find systems that work for your. Integrate them. And then you can start to go beyond them.
That’s how I started. Nothing fancy. Just the right small things, every day.
And then compounding took over.