For the past 3 years, I have maintained a fairly rigid morning routine that began at 4 AM, when I would get out of bed, read for an hour, walk to the gym, and exercise. 6 months ago, the Covid lockdowns began and my carefully established routine fell apart. I no longer needed to get up so early to do my morning exercise, because the gym was closed and the kids didn’t need to be pushed out the door to school. Though my schedule continued for a little while, I slowly began to enjoy the bliss of sleeping later and later now that it was no longer necessary to get up early. My reading time shrank because now I was dealing with a house full of kids when I got up and it was much harder to focus. I still managed to do some exercise, but it was sporadic. I needed to pick a time every day to do the workout, and I needed to actually pick an activity. I also began to eat worse and more. Recently, with the kids’ return to school, I have begun to resume my early mornings, reading, and some kind of daily exercise. In the weeks following the reestablishing of my routine, I have figured out that the reason I struggled so much during the lockdown was the disappearance of my daily routine. It takes energy and willpower to do anything we do on any given day. People have only so much energy to invest in their daily lives before they need to stop and recharge their batteries. We adapt to this strange reality by developing routines that we follow to preserve our energy for other tasks. Within a routine, there is no thinking or deciding. There is just doing. I never had to decide to wake up and read because I did it every day. I never had to decide to exercise or do anything else I had to do any given morning because everything had become a habit and it all became something I sailed through. None of it was exhausting, and I didn’t have to will myself to do it. I just did it. Once my routine collapsed, I had to push myself to pick a time to exercise, and I had to build up the energy to do it. Most of us have these routines. We set up the coffee machine before bed or brush our teeth as soon as we get out of the shower. We do the same thing every day so it becomes automatic. For many people, the lockdowns represented a total annihilation of their routines. This increased their stress, sapped their willpower, induced depression, and all sorts of other negative effects. I’ve talked to plenty of folks who came out of the whole ordeal having gained weight, lost time, and allowed their houses to fall into chaos. For some people, the extra time afforded by the lockdowns helped them establish new good habits they’ve managed to maintain as life goes back to normal. For those who have found themselves floundering in the wake of the shutdowns, the trick to getting back on track is to select a new routine and begin to follow it. It will take some time before the whole thing becomes second nature. Until then, it will require a lot of energy to follow it, and it is likely that there will be setbacks. It helps to start small. I resumed my routine by moving my wakeup time earlier by increments and adding activities in over time. It would have been very difficult for me to instantly begin getting up 3 hours earlier. However, with the reestablishing of a routine, I am finding it easier and easier to do what I didn’t have to think about at all a year ago. Good habits require energy and time. They’re hard to do, but once they are established they will save you both energy and time.