A few years ago I read one of those 'daily routine of successful founders' posts and decided to copy the habit of doing a 90-minute deep work block first thing every morning before checking email or messages. I stuck with it for almost eight months, then dropped it. The block often turned into me staring at a screen forcing focus while my brain kept nagging about the urgent stuff I was ignoring. I finally admitted it was adding stress, not output. Curious what habit you copied from someone else and later abandoned, and what finally made you drop it?
Habits
A business habit I copied from someone and eventually abandoned
Inbox zero. I tried it for a month and it turned into a second job. Now I just let emails pile up and nobody has died.
The 'check in with every client every single week' habit. Sounded great for relationships until I realized half of them found it annoying and the other half started expecting free mini-consultations. Dropped it and switched to quarterly check-ins. Way less awkward.
I copied the 'write down three priorities the night before' thing. Lasted maybe two weeks. I'd write three, then wake up and the world had already changed, so the list just felt like a guilt note. Now I keep one scrap of paper with whatever the actual fire is.
Standing desk. Not really a business habit I guess but I copied it from a guy I admire and my knees hated it. It's now a shelf for boxes.
The guilt note thing is real. I kept a fancy notebook for my morning block and after a while it was just full of crossed-out intentions.
I tried the 'no meetings before noon' rule I saw someone post about. My clients are in a different time zone so I sepnt mornings twiddling my thumbs and afternoons in back-to-back calls. Lasted about six weeks before I felt like an idiot.
The habit of saying no to everything that isn't a perfect fit. Copied from a podcast. Turns out when you're small small, saying no to decent work is a luxury you can't always afford. I said no to a few things and then panicked.
Honestly a lot of these are just other people's rhythms pasted onto your own week. My take is that copying the habit is fine but copying the schedule around it never works
Or maybe the real habit we zll abandoned was reading those founder routine posts and thinking they'd fix us.