Why Your Morning Routine Keeps Failing (And the Fix) #676

Most morning routines for men are designed for Instagram, not real life. They are 2 hours long, require perfect conditions, and collapse the moment something goes wrong.

I built my morning routine while running 58 marathons in 58 consecutive days across different cities, climates, and physical states. It had to work when I was exhausted, travelling, and breaking down. It had to take 30 minutes or less. And it had to actually make me perform better, not just look productive.

In this video, I walk you through the exact 30-minute morning routine I still use today, built around my Core 4 Life Performance Framework: Strong Body, Calm Mind, Clear Purpose, and Confident Life. I also share what I deliberately do not do, and how to build a routine that survives when life falls apart.

Take the free Life Performance Scorecard to find out where you stand: https://lifeperformance.scoreapp.com/

Explore coaching programs: https://www.lachlanstuart.com.au/coaching

Connect on Instagram: @lachlanstuart

Transcript

Why Most Routines Fail

Lachlan Stuart 0:00

I've read most morning routine articles on the internet. I'm sure you've read a bucket load of them as well. Most of them are garbage. Wake up at 4 a.m., cold plunge, meditate for an hour, journal for 30 minutes, drink the celery juice, do the yoga, read for 45 minutes all before 7 a.m. Did you get tired listening to that? I am knackered saying that. And the truth is, if you go back through enough of my podcasts, you will probably hear me saying to do that. And that is one of the greatest things about experience is you can implement things and you can make changes. And to be honest, when I think about a morning routine, the biggest shift came when I was actually running the 58 marathons in 58 days because I did not have time for that insane routine. Waking up most days was very challenging, and then to find an extra couple of hours to do this routine that I thought had to happen for me to perform at my best, I absolutely shattered that belief, and I want to do that for you today. I'm going to introduce you to a new concept that I'm working on as well. That I will do a full episode, it'll be its own episode over the next couple of weeks. But today I'm going to share with you a quick 30-minute routine that I built during the hardest challenge of my life, one that I'm still using currently, and why it works over, or I guess when every other routine I've tried fell apart eventually. So I am Laughlin Shu and I am a keynote speaker and life performance coach based out of Brisbane. I've coached over 1200 high-performing men, and I did the 50 States Marathon Challenge in winter, making me the third person in history to do it, the first to do it in winter. During that challenge, my morning routine was not optional, right? It was part of survival. I was in a different location almost every day. My body was breaking down and I had zero margin for error. So what I'm about to share with you is not theory, it is definitely pressure tested. And we have a documentary coming out. Depending on when you're watching this, it'll be around April, May 2026. I can't wait for you guys to watch it. Before I walk you through mine, let me explain why most morning routines do not stick. And if you have tried one before and quit, this will probably sound familiar. First, they are too long, right? A two-hour morning routine sounds impressive until you realize it means waking up at 4:30 a.m. I enjoy getting up early. And I got up at 10 past four for probably six years. But now that I'm sleeping in a little bit longer, I could tell you I never want to get up that early again. Or you do the opposite, where you cut into your workday. Most people abandon these within one to two weeks, let's be honest. And secondly, you're adopting someone else's routine. Now, this is great in the start, so important. And you may even adopt this quick one that I shared with you, but I'm going to share how you can make it your own and why it's important that you do. So just because some podcaster, maybe even me or some CEO, does something does not mean that it's going to work for you. Your life, your responsibilities, your body, they're all different. And thirdly, and this is the big one, they focus on rituals, not outcomes or results. My belief is that the goal of a morning routine is not to check the boxes, even though I did that. It's to show up as your best self for the things that actually matter for you during that day. So your work, your relationships, your health. And if your routine does not make you perform better across your whole life, is it just theater? And fourth and final, they require the perfect conditions, right? Real life is not perfect. You travel, kids wake up early, meetings get moved. All good, uh, sorry, a good morning routine has to work even when the conditions are less than ideal, which is majority of the time. I want you to think about it like this. Most people design their mornings the way that they you would design a race car. Optimize for the perfect track, perfect weather, perfect conditions. But your life is not a racetrack. Your life is an off-road rally, you're zigzagging through trees through mud. So you need a vehicle that handles that mud, gravel, flat tires, the detours. And this is how I built my routine, and I call it the margin method, right? Almost like bookends for a book, you've got the hardcover on each side, which make you know that the book is starting and finishing, and then even your chapters, right? And that's how we want to look at this for the routines throughout the day. And I'll go more into that later. Here is the shift though that changed everything for me. I stopped designing your more or stop designing your morning for the perfect conditions, design it for your hardest day. So if this works when you're exhausted, when you're traveling, when you're under pressure, it is gonna work every other day that you're living, right? So think of it like the pilot's pre-flight checklist. Pilots do not have a long checklist for sunny days and then skip it when there's turbulence. They have a short non-negotiable sequence that works every single time, regardless of conditions. And if I'm being honest, I'm not actually a pilot, so I don't know whether it's long or short, but I know they do the same thing time and time again. And that is what our morning should be: a pre-fright, pre-flight checklist for your day. So during the 50 amp marathons, my routine had to survive different cities, hotel rooms with no kitchens, 5 a.m. starts, a body that was barely holding together, right? A mine that was just knackered. But what I developed was not this pretty Instagram worthy routine, but it sure as shit worked. And it was built around what I teach in the life performance framework that we have with the core four. And I actually, I guess before I break it down in this routine, if you're not sure where you stand right now, across your health, your mindset, your purpose, your confidence, I created a free tool. You can take it lesson, four minutes, it will give you clarity around where you're winning and where you're drifting. So go take that now. So here's exactly what I do the whole thing, and it takes less than 30 minutes, and you can even make it shorter if you move faster. So generally, five minutes hydration and movement. So when I wake up, I'll go have a quick drink of water before I check my phone or anything, before I do anything, it's just drink a full glass of water because the body is dehydrated after you know six to eight hours sleep. The dehydration affects your cognition, right? Your brain, your mood, your energy. So water first, everything else second. While I'm drinking the water, I'll do some light movements. So I'm either like rolling my feet in the kitchen, I'm just looking at it behind me, moving my arms, my shoulders, sitting in a deep squat. Whatever feels tight, I'll try and move and stretch. And during this marathon challenge that I did, this was critical. My body was stiff and my body was definitely sore every morning. So these few minutes of movement before I actually had to go get started told my body it was time to work, not time to stay in recovery mode. And this is the strong pillar of my call for an action, not a brutal gym session, just enough to signal to the body hey, today matters, right? Strong body, strong mind. And this is where most routines go wrong. They try to do too much, right? I do one thing, I personally write. Specifically, I answer three questions in my journal, which I've got, oh, where is my journal over there somewhere? And they are this, right? What is the one thing that matters most today? What could I what could get in the way of that? And how do I want to show up? So we're setting our intention. On day 34 of the marathons, my answer to this question was very simple. Finish the marathon, everything else is noise. Question two was my ankles are screaming, I will need to manage the pain. And question three, I'm grateful, present one step at a time. I think I told myself every day, just put one foot in front of the other. And that is the calm mind pillar. It's not about processing every emotional writing pages of streaming consciousness. Although, if you have time to do that, I'm a big advocate for writing. It is about creating clarity before the chaos begins. I prefer writing over meditation. You might prefer the latter, it does not matter, but test these things for you and ask why. And I'll share more in a moment. Clear thinking is going to stop the worrying, right? And worrying is what derails most men before they even start. So the remaining minutes I'll spend reviewing my goals. I've got my goals on the wall here, not setting new ones. I focus on them until I complete them and just reconnecting with what I'm working towards and why it actually matters, right? It's such a cool thing to do. Most people, even similar to reading, right? People read books but they never reread them. People write goals but they never revisit them. And that's what we need to make sure you're doing. I eat the same breakfast almost every day, right? Oats and peanut butter or eggs on toast. Very simple. It's boring, but I do not care because decision fatigue is real. Every choice you make depletes your mental energy, but by eliminating what I should eat decision, I save energy for the things that I believe actually matter, right? Being present with Amy, doing deep work, coaching with my clients, getting out and training, you know, when you don't want to train. So the specifics of what you eat matter less than the principles, unless you're a foodie. I know that you foodies are probably like, nah, man, I need to eat, I need to make decisions around that. Cool. If that's you, once again, this is why this is personal, you shouldn't be adopting it. But protein to stabilize blood sugar, minimal processed foods, and enough calories to fuel the mornings and consistency so you know your body is going to respond. So before I leave my morning bubble and enter the big bad world, I take five minutes to set my intentions. And this is not abstract. So think of this like the book cover, right? The opening page. It's a practical, sorry, it's a practical approach and it's how I visualize how I want my day to go. Because I know in the middle chapters what I've written and what I've got to do. So it's not vague, it's specific. And I see myself, you know, handling the hard meetings, I see myself staying focused during focused hours of work, I see myself getting my training done, I see myself being present with my family in the evening. Athletes have used visualizations for decades because they know it works, right? Your brain does not fully distinguish between vividly imagined experiences and real ones. How freaking insane is that? And when you visualize handling something well, you're essentially self-sentially giving yourself a practice rep before the game even starts. And this is the clear purpose pillar at work because purpose does not have to mean some grand life mission every morning. Sometimes it just means knowing exactly what you're here to and how you want to show up today and seeing it before you do it. And once again, this is why I've created that life performance scorecard. Five minutes free in the description. Go take it, have a crack at it. So, just as important as what is in my routine is what I have excluded. So essentially, what I don't do, I do not check my phone, my email, social media news, all of it waits until after the routine, actually, until 9 a.m. when I can use it. I have this device called a brick. I'm doing a full episode on this once I've reviewed it a bit more. And this is not a uh paid anything, this is just game changing. And it keeps me honest. Other people's priorities do not get to hijack my morning, right? I do not exercise intensely every morning. Some mornings I do, but not every morning. My morning routine is not my workout most of the time. If I train, it happens generally later. I love training around 9 or 10 or 2 to break up the big chunks of work throughout the day. But this morning is about waking up my mind and my body and not exhausting them. So I do not meditate in the traditional sense. I've tried, I actually did a whole year literally without meeting meeting a day, but I was doing it wrong. I was using the app Calm and it became about like trying to prove a streak. So I would just sit down for even a minute and I wasn't really doing it. I was just hoping I would get enough time to tick off that box and then I could say to everyone, hey, I've done 365 days straight, but I didn't actually do it for the right reason. And so for me, it didn't set the stage, it didn't set me up for a powerful day. And that's where journaling for me was more beneficial. It creates space between stimulus, like what's happening, what I'm thinking about, the worries, the excitements, and how I want to respond, right? That's what it does. And writing slows thinking down. So if meditation works for you, brilliant. But do not force it because some podcast said you should, just like you shouldn't force writing if I'm saying to do it and it doesn't work for you. And do not try to be perfect, it doesn't exist. So some mornings I only have 15 minutes. On those days, I do the water, I do the three questions, and I move on. A shortened routine is infinitely better than skipping it entirely. So I want you to remember that. Here is something that I did not expect when I started doing this consistently. The morning routine became my signal to my brain that hey, Lockie, it is time to get out there and perform. After months of the same sequence, my body and my mind started responding automatically. The water triggered alertness, the journaling triggered focus. Think of the intention setting triggered confidence, right? The writing down this is what's going to happen today really was just like I know what I'm here to do and I know how I'm gonna do it. So you want to almost think of it for the athletes out there or for those who watch sport, think of it like the pregame ritual. The ritual itself might seem meaningless from the outside, but you're telling your body, we have done this before, we know what comes next, we are ready. So your morning routine done consistently becomes your daily pre-game ritual. It prepares you to perform before you even start. And this is what I mean when I talk about a confident life. The fourth pillar in the core for confidence is not something you find, it is something that you build through consistent action every single morning and every single moment. If you do not have a morning routine, do not try to implement everything I've just described at once. Just start with one thing, just the water and the three questions. Do that for a couple of weeks until it becomes automatic for you and then add the next element. Maybe it is the movement, maybe it is the intention setting. Add one thing at a time until you've built something that works for you. But every time you do this, ask yourself how is this going to add value to my life? If you don't understand how, maybe don't do it for the time being. A lot of the men that I coach who try to overhaul their entire lives at once almost always fail. Right? So the ones who build incrementally almost all succeed. Because here is the truth: you do not rise to the level of your goals, and you've probably heard this before, you fall to the level of your systems. So your morning routine is the first system that either sets you up or lets you down. Win the morning, win the day. You do not have control over everything that happens to you today. You know that. But you do have control, uh, sorry, complete control over how you start and take that seriously. So if this resonates, the next step once again is not doing more, it's getting clear on where you actually are. So take the life performance scorecard. It's free, it's in the description. It may be one of the most honest conversations you have with yourself this week. Hit subscribe if you want more of this. And if you know another guy who needs to hear this, send it to him. Let's keep building. I will see you in the next video.