Routine as a Safety Net

Decision Fatigue is Real

Barack Obama wore the same blue or gray suit every day for 8 years. Steve Jobs wore the black turtleneck. Mark Zuckerberg wears the gray t-shirt.

Why?

Because they understood Decision Fatigue.

As a founder, you are a decision-making machine. You make hundreds of decisions a day. "Should we hire this guy?" "Should we discount this deal?" "Is this copy offensive?" "What color should the button be?"

Your brain has a limited supply of willpower. By 4:00 PM, your "decision battery" is empty. This is why you eat junk food in the evening. This is why you snap at your spouse at dinner.

If you waste your decision energy on trivial things—"What should I wear?", "What should I eat for breakfast?", "When should I go to the gym?"—you have less energy for the decisions that actually make money.

Automating Your Life

To survive the chaos of building DJC, I had to automate my personal life. I turned my day into a routine so boring that I don't have to think about it.

My Routine (The Safety Net):

• 06:00 AM: Wake up. Drink water. (No snooze button. That’s a decision).
• 06:30 AM: Gym. (My clothes are laid out the night before. No searching).
• 08:00 AM: Breakfast. (Same thing every day: Eggs and coffee. No menu browsing).
• 09:00 AM: Deep Work Block. (The most important task of the day).
• 12:00 PM: Lunch.
• 01:00 PM: Meetings & Calls. (I cluster all meetings in the afternoon when my brain is tired).

This routine is my safety net. When everything is going wrong—when the servers are down and the investors are yelling—I don't have to think about what to do next. I just follow the script.

Environment Design

Discipline is hard. Environment design is easy.

I structure my physical environment to force me into the routine.

• Phone Jail: When I work, my phone is in another room. If I can't reach it, I can't check it.
• Clean Desk: My desk has nothing on it except my laptop and a notebook. Visual clutter creates mental clutter.
• The "Gym Bag" Trick: I put my gym bag in front of the door. I literally have to trip over it to leave the house. It forces me to go.

Routine is Freedom

People think routines are restrictive. They say, "I want to be free! I want to be spontaneous!"

But for a founder, routine is freedom.

By automating the basics, I free up my mind to be creative where it counts—in the business. I don't want to be creative about my breakfast. I want to be creative about our AI architecture.

When you have a safety net of routine, you can take bigger risks on the trapeze. You can jump higher because you know that if you fall, the routine will catch you.

Dave Chong DJC AI Sdn Bhd