Doing the same things at the same time every day felt like the opposite of actually living. I wanted my days to feel open. I liked waking up with no plan and seeing where things went.
What I didn't see at the time was that most of those days felt messy. A low hum of stress runs in the background. Jumping between things without finishing them. Always feeling behind, without being sure what I was even behind on.
The freedom I thought I had wasn't really freedom. It was just no structure, and that was costing me more than I knew.
Routine doesn't take away the fun. That's what I had wrong. It actually gives you more room for it. When your day has a rough shape, when you're not spending energy figuring out what you should be doing, you have more left over for everything else. More focus, and less of that background noise that comes from drifting through the day.
There's also the simple fact that making decisions all day is tiring. When to work, when to eat, when to move. Every little choice takes something out of you. A routine handles a lot of that without you even thinking about it.
I'm not talking about planning every hour, but a few anchors. How do you start the morning? When you sit down to do the work? How do you wind down at night? Everything in between is still yours.
The version of me that pushed back on all of this thought routine was in a cage. I think the more honest version is that it's just a base. Something to build from.
You still get to decide what you build.