Ryan Holiday, James Clear, Andrew Huberman, and the power of your environment

My morning routine has become rather elaborate of late.

I don’t know when it began, but my best guess is that it would have been somewhere around 2018, when I was fostering a German shepherd-husky mix named Lola that couldn’t possibly wait to get out the door past 6 a.m. She’d wake me up, and we’d go for at least a 20-minute walk around the block. Most of the time, it was longer. During the walk, I’d polish off a 40-ounce Hydroflask of water. When we got back to my apartment, I’d make some coffee and read on the balcony with Lola at my feet. The reading would get me in a writing mood, and so my second cup of coffee would be for writing, during which time I’d polish off another 40 ounces of water.

Before 9 a.m., I’d have walked, drank more than half a gallon of water, written close to 2,000 words, and spent the entire morning outside. Throughout the entire process, my phone remained on airplane mode, which I set it to around 9 the night before. In those two-ish hours of reading and writing, I estimated that I finished what was roughly four to five hours of work in a more distracted environment.

I loved that morning routine, and I’ve expanded it a bit since, adding five minutes of box breathing immediately after waking, making sure that the Bible is first, followed by non-fiction, followed by something I deem to be exceptional writing — Sports Illustrated, The Athletic, any of the Best American Sports Writing series. Then I write.

It’s a routine that began experimentally, adding what worked, subtracting what didn’t, until it was about as optimized and efficient and custom-made for me as possible. But what I’ve since discovered – and there is perhaps a more than significant element of confirmation bias here – is that most of this routine is actually scientifically backed. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and host of what I think is one of the most useful podcasts in the world at the moment, cannot possibly emphasize enough the value of morning light, which I get on my walks. Nor can he emphasize enough the value of drinking water before anything else – coffee especially.

Ryan Holiday, author of a number of New York Times best sellers, Jocko Willink, a former Navy SEAL and all-around American badass, as well as James Clear, author of the massive hit Atomic Habits, have similar routines. All espouse doing the hardest work first – front-loading, it’s called, in which you put the work that requires the most willpower or brainpower or creativity or all of the above at the beginning of the day. It’s why David Goggins runs first thing in the morning. He claims he hates running, and if he were to save it for later, he might not have the resolve to put on his shoes and go. Clear doesn’t turn his phone on until noon, after his most important work is finished. I usually turn mine on around nine, but the effect is the same: As soon as you turn your phone on, and you’re responding to messages and emails and scrolling Instagram, you’re now on someone else’s schedule.

Before? Your day is yours and yours only.

It isn’t always possible, of course. There are many mornings in which I am commentating at 5. I need my phone available for WhatsApp messages from the producers, and my laptop for the actual commentating. Through Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep, I’ve learned to give sleep the respect it deserves, and don’t wake up at 3 to go through my usual routine. I no longer take pride in running on five hours of sleep, a habit I once had that, in retrospect, is egotistical and backwards.

Whenever possible, I keep my routine, largely because I love it, but largely because I know what a sucker I am to the environment around me.

In Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, which I cannot recommend enough, he emphasizes the importance of your environment in regards to your habits and choices. Our willpower is finite, and eventually, if we’re surrounded by people and things that will move us in the direction we do not want to go, we’ll cave. Do this enough, and we’ll become discouraged to the point of giving up (see: New Year’s resolutions).

I’m as susceptible as anyone to my environment, and in my observations, maybe even more so. I mold to whatever I’m around. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes this is not so good. An innocuous example is when I moved to the Florida Panhandle and within weeks I had adopted something of a southern twang. When I spend a lot of time with Tri Bourne, I begin carrying my ‘A’s like a Hawaiian, drawing them out, so the word “sand” starts to sound more like “sahnd.”

Scale that out, however, and it’s why I don’t go to bars. I don’t particularly like drinking, and I especially hate the decisions I make when I do. But when I’m at a bar, I feel a bit stupid if I’m not drinking, because everyone else is, and they seem to be having a hell of a time with it. So I’ll have some drinks, which lead to more drinks, which, in the past, led to moronic decisions, which led to a brutal morning or three for a number of reasons.

So I just don’t go to bars.

For those same reasons, I don’t keep sugary treats around the apartment. I love chocolate. Absolutely love it. And when it’s in the house, and I know where it is, I’ll find myself in that area of the apartment far more often than I otherwise would, and suddenly, a pack of chocolate covered almonds with allegedly 10 servings has disappeared in an hour. So when we do have treats in the house, I’ll have Delaney literally hide them from me.

I know, I know: I should have enough willpower to withstand the siren song of Trader Joe’s chocolate covered almonds. When Jocko Willink appeared on the Jordan Harbinger Show, the host, Harbinger, asked Jocko what advice he would give someone who is looking to lose weight, but is struggling to do so.

“I’d say don’t eat the chips,” Jocko said.

But when there are chips around, I eat the chips.

So I change my environment.

And doing that changes everything.

None of this is new, of course. We know that alcoholics trying to quit shouldn’t go to bars. We are told to never grocery shop when we’re hungry. But we usually only apply this to extreme or obvious circumstances.

What if we applied it to the majority of our lives, harnessing our environments for our good, around the clock?

Many of you are likely familiar with the adage that we are a product of the five people with whom we spent the most time. I’ve found that to be as true as any cliché, which is why I’m so grateful for what I get to do: Interview, hang out with, practice against, and write about some of the best athletes on the planet. They make me better simply by being in my orbit. I leech off their drive, discipline, habits, and ways of being, and become better for it, not by any conscious decision-making of my own, but simply constructing the most optimal environment I can. Ryan Holiday expressed something similar when he jotted down the 20 best lessons he’s learned from doing his own podcast.

But it isn’t just the people we spend the most time with that impact our lives and decision-making – it’s everything. It’s the books we read, the news we consume, the videos we watch, the foods we keep in our kitchens. It’s why I’ve begun expanding my morning routine to as many aspects of the day as possible. Now, whenever I’m writing, my phone’s on airplane mode. When I’m lifting, it’s on airplane mode. When I’m getting groceries, I do my best to only get foods that will be relatively healthy when my willpower is gone and I need to do some grazing (I am a chronic and fidgety snacker). Our pantry and fridge is instead filled with almonds, pumpkin seeds, dried mangoes, apples, bananas, carrots, broccoli, hummus, peanut butter, and popcorn, which I make myself using Olive Oil instead of whatever else they put in the microwavable packets. When I do splurge on some chips, they’ll be something like Terra chips.

Maybe this sounds a bit abstemious and not very much fun, but my fun is probably just a bit different than yours. I love feeling good and energized. I love doing good work. I love winning, be it in writing, beach volleyball, business, or podcasting. I love waking up in the morning knowing the hours of 6-9 will be mine and mine only. I love having an environment that makes it all but inevitable for me to get at least marginally better, in some way, every single day.

Basically, I’ve found that if you change your environment, you’ll change your life.