We plan meticulously for the 20%.
The wedding. The vacation. The launch. The celebration. We spend months choreographing these moments, optimizing every detail, ensuring they're perfect.
Meanwhile, the 80%—the unremarkable Tuesday mornings and Thursday evenings that actually make up your life—runs on autopilot.
This is the problem hiding in plain sight. We architect our peak experiences while sleepwalking through the bulk of our existence. Your life isn't happening in the big moments. It's happening in the spaces between them.
The 80% is where your life actually lives. So why aren't you designing it?
The Slow Drift
Everyone already has a routine for their 80%. You just don't call it that.
You call it "just how things are." You call it "being busy." But that scattered, reactive pattern of behaviors? That's your routine. And it's either building the person you want to become or slowly eroding them.
Here's how the drift happens: You avoid crafting your routine for long enough, and entropy takes over. You stop exercising—not all at once, but gradually. Your sleep becomes a function of collapse, not intention. You drift away from real connection. You stop doing hard things.
This isn't dramatic failure. It's slow, comfortable decay.
When the 80% Works
I know what my 80% needs to look like for my life to work. Not because I'm special, but because I've paid attention to the patterns.
I wake up at early because those early hours belong to me. From ~4:30am to 7am (when my kids wake up), nobody F-s with me. No questions, no urgency, no inputs. I can do whatever I want—exercise, think, read, plan.
It's in these quiet moments that I do my best thinking. Not the reactive, urgent planning that happens during the day, but the deep, strategic thinking that shapes everything else. It's like being on a plane with just me and my headphones. Just cooking.
This isn't about optimization. It's about control and presence.
At the end of an aligned Tuesday, I feel like who I want to be. The consistent guy. The healthy guy. The motivated guy with his brain working at 100% capacity. A lot of good happens when I'm fully aligned with my routine.
The Reset
I also know when my 80% is broken. My brain feels foggy. I'm unmotivated. I feel out of sync with myself, like I'm wearing clothes that don't fit.
It's okay to be broken for a couple days. But being broken for several weeks? That's when it becomes dangerous.
When this happens, I don't go nuclear. Take last month when I came back from two weeks in France. Amazing trip, but completely out of alignment with my usual routine.
Coming back home, I didn't try to snap back to everything immediately. Instead, I used the jet lag to my advantage and slowly added things back day by day:
First the morning walk
Then back to daily exercise
Reading 10 pages or listening to a podcast
Feeding my koi by the pond —five quiet minutes that reconnect me
Back to making breakfast for my kids and tucking them in at night
The interesting thing is how naturally my routine called me back when I was ready. When I'm aligned with who I am, the habits that felt forced feel effortless.
The Identity Question
Here's what most people miss: it's not really about habits. It's about identity.
Every repeated action is a vote for the type of person you want to become. Wake up intentionally? You're becoming someone who values clarity over comfort. Move your body daily? You're becoming someone who invests in their future self.
Skip breakfast with your kids consistently? You're becoming someone who prioritizes urgency over presence.
Your 80% isn't just what you do. It's who you're becoming.
The most powerful shift I've found is moving from "I want to do this" to "I am the kind of person who does this." Not "I should exercise more" but "I'm someone who moves their body daily."
When your 80% stems from identity instead of willpower, it stops feeling like discipline and starts feeling like alignment.
The Real Question
So here's the question that changes everything: if you lived your current average day 250 times this year, who would you become?
Not your best day. Not your worst day. Your Tuesday.
Look at how you spend your first hour awake. What you put in your body. How you move through your work. The quality of attention you give the people you love.
If that person—the one created by 250 repetitions of your current 80%—excites you, you're onto something. If that person scares you, it's time to design differently.
Start with one anchor habit. Something simple you can do immediately when you're out of rhythm. For me, it's walking every morning, no matter what. When everything else falls apart, I still walk. It automatically starts the reset process.
Pick yours:
A 10-minute morning walk
Reading one page before checking your phone
Making your bed every day
Five minutes of planning before starting work
Not five habits. Not a complete life overhaul. One anchor that pulls you back toward who you want to become.
Because here's what nobody tells you about the 80/20 rule: the 80% isn't the boring part you have to endure to get to the good stuff.
The 80% is the good stuff. It's where your life actually happens. It's where you become who you're going to be.
The 20%—those peak moments you plan so carefully—they're just the celebration of the person your 80% created.
Stop planning for the highlights and start designing for the every day.
Your life runs on the 80%. Make them count.
Newly subscribed after this was shared with me…what a great read!