My typical morning routine is something like this:

I drink coffee, take the kids to the bus stop and daycare, drink more coffee, enter a period of undisrupted work for 3-4 hours, lunch / gym or some combination of these two, then start to manage disruptions as folks in Finland wake up, cook dinner, more disruptions, chores with kids, more disruptions, sleep and disruptions.

Repeat. Simple and reliable.

Notice how the morning is… pure bliss! And then I preach how it’s so important and easy to just do that.

Until it’s not.

A friend asked me recently if I actually walk the talk from my newsletters. It’s been haunting me a bit. Because the answer is…sometimes yes, sometimes no. Lately, indeed, no.

That’s life I guess? I had a dream of finishing a certain funding application (or at least the laughable first draft) by the end of LAST month. Still not finished.

But last week, I couldn’t help but face the truth. It’s not the travel (the radical context switch) that’s the issue here. Two things are happening simultaneously. It’s 1) me choosing distraction 2) from the kind of work I don’t feel is important enough.

Let’s unpack this a bit today, and I can show you how to make better choices!

Your Routines are Lying!

Here’s what is true but often gets overlooked, yes, even by the academic giga-brains: Most productivity systems are fragile because they’re built on routines rather than identity. We talked about this in the past too! But something has happened since then. So it’s time to talk more.

Academics believe they can follow logical instructions. We’re proud that way. But we’re all just human. It’s difficult for everyone.

You wake up ready to write. You block Tuesday afternoons for data analysis. You have your special coffee shop for focused work. Great. Until you travel. Or your lab moves buildings. Or pretty much anything changes.

Then what?

Your routines collapse as you lose the anchor points of your habits. Don’t get me wrong here, those anchor points are GREAT! They really help you to get stuff done when life is stable and all is well in the world.

But when you don’t have your favourite coffee mug, familiar desk, all those automatic behaviours you’ve worked so hard to build…collapse.

What survives are those that are anchored in self-identity rather than context.

The research backs this up of course. A 2008 study found that when people’s contexts changed (like moving homes), their habitual behaviours got disrupted. This is essentially the “habit discontinuity hypothesis.” Habits are cued by context. Remove the context, remove the habit. But values, your internal compass, it guides your work in the new context, too.

And academia?

We’re constantly shifting contexts. Travel. Weird office layouts that keep changing. Maybe no office to begin with! Grant deadlines forcing late nights. Other “emergencies” that steal your attention.

So if your productivity depends on executing the same routine in the same place at the same time, you’re screwed the moment life happens. And life always happens.

So, observing myself here… I quit writing a proposal, but the first thing I did here in Finland was I bought a gym membership. Values. Writing yet another most likely rejected (hey, it’s statistics) proposal is not something that’s “me.” It’s what I routinely “do.” But going to the gym is now me. I value any form of exercise, as I am already feeling the years. And actively fighting back.

Once a behaviour becomes part of your identity, it sticks even when circumstances change.

There’s a superbly cool study by Gary McPherson which investigated children learning to play instruments.

Kids who said their plan is to study “all my life” (the ones who identified as musicians) progressed 400% faster than kids with short-term commitment, even with identical practice time:

“I am a musician.”

Four hundred percent increase in performance. Same hours, different identity. Completely different outcomes.

That’s crazy!

Your identity determines what you do automatically, what you don’t need to decide about, what survives when everything else falls apart.

Uncomfortable truth: we actually do what we want

Yeah. Greetings from the Department of Obvious Science. Duh. But it’s deeper than that.

If I wanted that application done more than I wanted to socialise with colleagues, drink beer with old friends, and explore the Finnish cold dark miserable November out there, the application would be done.

Simple as that. We do what we want to do, unless there’s a must (most often a deadline).

And context-switching disturbs it all. I bet you’ve had a similar experience, even if you haven’t called yourself out on it. Doing the dishes and cleaning the flat instead of writing that paper? Yeah, all those times.

The problem is we mistake routines for commitment. We think having a routine means we’re serious about something. But routines are just scaffolding.

Our values and wants are the foundation. Identity is the foundation.

And so, when your routines break, you get to see what’s underneath. The raw truth. But what survives the disruption? That’s your real identity. Everything else is work in progress.

Wait! So is all work on habits etc… pointless? No, not at all! There’s nothing wrong in something being work in progress. Engineering your context, building routines, learning to focus when you can are all still 100% useful and very much recommended.

But they’re not always enough. Life has a way to punch you in the face.

This is just how this game of self is played. Building this self-awareness of what works is key to one day mastering all these situations.

Design for Disruption

Time for pen and paper!

Do a little mind exercise.

Put away everything except that notepad and just sit and think about your daily routines. You know, the ones you’re proud of and that form the bulk of your work… And just answer:

If you had to move to a new city tomorrow, what would survive?

If your answer is “nothing,” you’ve built a house of cards. And of course, I know I know, this is a hard task to estimate. So you can approach it via inverting the inquiry. What would you first do?

And if you want to go an inch further in your thought exercises, try these:

1: Track your excuses for one week. Every time you skip something important, write down why.

Be brutally honest.

“Wrong time” or “Wrong place” or “Too busy”? That’s a routine problem. Your system relies too heavily on ideal conditions.

“Didn’t feel like it” or “Other priorities”? That’s an identity problem. You don’t actually value this thing as much as you think you do.

Different problems need different solutions. Most people try to fix identity problems with better routines.

Doesn’t work.

2: Find what already survived. You already have identity-based behaviours. You just haven’t noticed them.

Think about the last time your routine got wrecked. Sick for a week. Travelled somewhere. Had a family emergency. What did you still do?

Not what you tried to do. Not what you felt guilty about skipping. What did you actually keep doing without thinking about it?

That’s your identity whispering to your ears. Everything else is just habits, routines and the precious scaffolding you’ve built (again, this is OK and good, nothing wrong even if it’s based on scaffolding).

For me? Even when my entire routine collapsed in Finland, I still bought a gym membership. Didn’t even question it. Because “going to the gym” isn’t on my to-do list anymore. It’s part of my life and work.

NB: I’m still overweight and very much “squishy” (using the language my kids use to describe me). That’s not the point I’m making. It’s just that exercise is non-negotiable, and thanks to multiple ACL surgeries and the limited time I have outside office hours, gym is the only logical option for me! Not. A. Gym. Rat.

But writing that funding application? Yeah, that’s still a “should do” not a “who I am.” Which is why it remains unfinished, even as I write this to you.

So. What’s the thing you do even when everything falls apart?

That’s your foundation. Be proud about that. Build from there, trying to change your identity concerning the other things that you want to be part of who you are.

And have fun exploring!