Routine Is the Strategy

Happy Sunday Friends!

Here’s one quote I’m musing on this week, two ideas, three favorites, and one question to take with you into the week ahead.

One Quote I’m Musing

“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits—and their habits decide their futures.”

| F.M. Alexander

📝 This Week’s Observation

I’m not in-between roles. I’m embedded, engaged, and paying attention.
Still observing. Still mapping the terrain. Still deciding where to apply pressure and where to let the system breathe.

And what’s striking is how familiar it all is.

Across every team, unit, and company I’ve worked with in the last twenty years, the same friction points repeat.
They are probably the same ones you deal with too.
They’re the same ones Marcus Aurelius, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon ran into.
People. Process. Priorities.

It isn’t the strategy that breaks down.
It’s the routine.

🔍 Patterns That Repeat Themselves

It seems everywhere you look, anywhere you go, each place suffers from the same problem in different wrappers:

• Misaligned handoffs

• Fuzzy expectations

• Poor memory posing as agility

• Slack threads standing in for systems

• Urgency crowding out importance

And every time, the conversation moves toward big ideas. Vision. Transformation. Bold change.

But often, the real need is simple.

Do the routine things routinely.

That builds trust. That separates professionals from amateurs. That scales.

🪞 Mirror Moments
The Roman legions didn’t conquer the world with speeches. They drilled.
Napoleon’s armies weren’t terrifying because of pageantry.
They were terrifying because they trusted their systems

They could split their forces, maneuver independently, forage as they moved, and fight as cohesive units — because the routines were already embedded.
Each corps could act without waiting for orders. They practiced operational autonomy before anyone called it that.

Modern teams talk transformation, but don’t update their naming conventions.
We deploy AI before we define “done.”

🧠 It’s not your tools. It’s your tolerance for the basics.

Discipline isn’t personality. It’s process.

We don’t need a new app. We need people who show up on time, own their work, and checklists that don’t get skipped.

Rituals. Shared language. Expectations without ambiguity.
Systems so consistent they become invisible.

The boring stuff is the work.
The standard is the strategy.

If your routines are sound, you can move fast.
If they’re not, every success has a ceiling.

💡 Two Ideas From Me

Performance doesn’t grow by energy. It grows by systems.

Great teams don’t rise to the level their goals. They fall to the level of their systems.

🛠️ The Routines-First Protocol:

1. Name your three most repeated tasks

2. Build a micro-SOP for each (who, what, when, how)

3. Automate the first step (calendar, AI trigger, recurring task)

4. Assign one person responsible for quality

5. Review monthly. Improve quarterly.

Friction can be a feature, it shows you where the system still relies on personality, on willpower.

🧨 Bonus: If it isn’t repeatable, it isn’t scalable.

🔥 Three Favorite Things This Week

1. Rewind.ai Memory Engine
   New features are turning your computer into a second brain. Search across meetings, documents, and tools instantly. No more lost context.
   Routine → remembered.

2. Notion Projects + AI Integration
   I don’t use Notion as much as I used to, mainly because I couldn’t bring what I use into my work area. But Notion’s updates now suggest next actions, flag blockers, and streamline workflows. It’s like a team member who never forgets and never complains.
   Routine → optimized.

3. Fireflies.ai for Auto-Follow-Up
   The follow-up emails and task lists directly from meetings could be useful. No more “Did we ever do that?”
   Routine → handled.

✍️ One Question to Take Into Your Week

Where are you relying on feelings or memory instead of systems?

Write: “What would my life look like if excellence was boring and automatic?”

Until Sunday, my friends.

Think Dangerously.
–e