Overengineering My Daily Routine
I work for a startup. I have a family. I'm training for a BJJ competition. Here's my over-optimized daily routine—P0s, Break Glass protocols, and all.
I work for a startup. I have a family. I’m active in my Church. I’m training for a BJJ competition that’s 8 months away. Welcome to my over-optimized daily routine.
The goal isn’t to “try hard for 8 months.” It’s to build systems that make showing up prepared inevitable.
Willpower fails. Routines compound.
I’m documenting this for two reasons: public accountability and a reference point I can look back on. This is a snapshot of January 2025. The system will evolve, but the principles won’t.
The Four-Block Structure
My day breaks into four distinct blocks. Each has a purpose, a set of habits, and non-negotiables that don’t get skipped.
The blocks aren’t arbitrary. They’re built around the constraints of my life: full-time work, young kids, and training that demands real recovery. Rather than fighting these constraints, I designed around them.
| Block | Time | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Morning | Wake → Work | Launch sequence |
| Work | Work hours | Professional time + embedded habits |
| Family | Home → Kids bedtime | Protected, unstructured |
| Night | Kids bedtime → Sleep | Wind-down and recovery prep |
Morning Block (Wake → Work)
This is the launch sequence. I do these in roughly the same order every day:
- Drink water
- Make bed
- Take weight
- Take creatine (10g split—more on this below)
- Brush teeth / wash face
- Pray — at least 5 minutes (P0)
- Workout or movement kata (a mobility app I built)
- AM supplements
Prayer anchors the day. Everything else supports it.
Work Block (Work hours)
Work is work, but I’ve embedded a few habits that support training:
- Move 10 (mobility)
- Duolingo (language study—unrelated but important to me)
- BJJ tape study (P0)
- Roll reflection (if I trained that morning)
- Budget review (i.e. check ynab)
- Process Asana inbox + email to zero
- Log food in Carbon (P0)
Tape study and food logging are the P0s here. You can’t improve what you don’t track. Fifteen minutes of instructional video means I show up to class with something specific to work on.
Processing queues is how I keep commitments from living in my head. David Allen got it right: “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” Aim for 5-10 minutes at the start of the work day. If it takes longer, it takes longer. Email to zero, Asana inbox sorted into projects, upcoming deadlines reviewed. If it’s not in the system, it’s on my mind.
Family Block (Home → Kids bedtime)
This is explicitly NOT optimized. It’s protected time. No training, no side projects, no “productivity.” I’m present with my kids and my wife.
Deliberately unstructured.
Night Block (Kids bedtime → Sleep)
The wind-down sequence matters because sleep is where recovery happens. I wrote a deeper dive on my sleep protocol, but here’s the nightly routine:
- Wash face / brush teeth
- Collagen drink
- PM supplements
- Red light
- Prayer of Examen
- Read 10+ pages
- Night stretching
- Breathwork
- Process OmniFocus inbox to zero
- Review log and pack for tomorrow
No P0s here—these are all P1. But the Examen deserves mention: it’s a daily review of what went well, what didn’t, where I was present or absent. When I skip it, I notice.
OmniFocus gets the same end-of-day pass that Asana gets in the morning. Collect loose threads, move tasks into projects, stage tomorrow. Home life generates commitments too. If they’re not captured, they leak into sleep.
The Non-Negotiables
Not all habits are equal. I’ve learned to distinguish between what’s truly load-bearing and what’s important but can flex.
P0 — The system breaks without these:
- Pray — at least 5 minutes (morning)
- Log food (work)
- Tape study (work)
These three anchor everything. Prayer sets intention. Food logging keeps me honest about nutrition. Tape study ensures I’m always improving, not just showing up.
P1 — Important, but they flex when life gets hard:
- Weight (morning)
- AM/PM supplements
- Process Asana inbox + email to zero (work)
- Process OmniFocus inbox to zero (night)
- Prayer of Examen (night)
- Read 10+ pages (night)
If I hit the P0s, the day was a success. The P1s compound over time, but missing one doesn’t break the system.
Minimum Viable Day
When everything falls apart—sick kids, travel, chaos—I fall back to the P0s:
Pray → Log food → Tape study
That’s it. Three things. If I can do these, the day isn’t lost.
Graceful degradation beats total collapse.
Break Glass
Sometimes you don’t degrade gracefully. You fall off completely. You wake up and realize you haven’t logged food in two weeks, your budget is a black box, and your inbox has triple digits.
These are “break glass” moments. I have protocols for each one. They all share the same principle: notice, reset, begin again. No guilt spiral. No “I’ll start fresh Monday.”
I wrote about Break Glass protocols, weekly reviews, and the system behind the system in Part 2: The Meta Layer.
Nutrition
I’m cutting from 255 to 235 lbs. Slow, sustainable, muscle-preserving—about 0.5% bodyweight per week. The research backs this: Garthe et al. (2011) found athletes cutting at 0.7%/week actually gained lean mass, while those cutting faster lost muscle.
The philosophy is “Primal + Bodybuilder hybrid”: simple, repeatable, high protein. Target is ~220g protein daily—roughly 1.9 g/kg at my current weight.
Daily Structure
| Meal | What |
|---|---|
| Breakfast | Omelette (eggs + whites) with cheese/bacon + toast |
| Lunch | Pick one “box” (meal prepped) |
| Snack 1 | Sardines |
| Snack 2 | Power Yogurt (Greek yogurt + protein + berries + walnuts + honey) |
| Dinner | Paleo-style themed dinner |
Same breakfast every day. Fewer decisions = more compliance. This isn’t just folk wisdom—decision fatigue is well-documented, and controlled feeding studies show 94% adherence when meals are pre-determined.
Lunch Boxes
I meal prep on Sunday. Three options rotate:
- Rice Box: Chicken breast + white rice + carrots
- Potato Box: Chicken breast + sweet potato + kimchi
- Beef Box: Ground beef + potato + kimchi
Grab a box, heat it, eat it. No thinking required.
Dinner Themes
Each week I pick two dinner themes from a menu:
- Beef & Sweet Potato
- Mexican Bowl
- Mediterranean Chicken
- Steak & Greens
- Asian Beef & Broccoli
- Carnitas Bowl
- Big Ass Salad
- Chicken & Rice
Two dinners, repeated through the week. Simple.
Refeed Day
Tuesday is refeed day—pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast.
I’ll be honest: the science on single-day refeeds is weaker than the broscience suggests. Leptin spikes for about six hours, then drops once you return to deficit. The metabolic “reset” is mostly myth.
But here’s what’s real: it keeps me sane. It gives me something to look forward to. And psychological sustainability matters more than marginal hormonal optimization. Call it 20% science, 80% adherence strategy.
Training
I train a lot. But the goal isn’t maximum volume—it’s training enough to improve while staying healthy enough to train consistently.
Weekly Schedule
| Day | Morning | Evening | Gym |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | NoGi drilling (30-60 min) | NoGi → Muay Thai | — |
| Tue | NoGi drilling (30-60 min) | Gi | Day A |
| Wed | NoGi drilling (30-60 min) | — | — |
| Thu | NoGi drilling (30-60 min) | Gi | Day B |
| Fri | NoGi drilling (30-60 min) | Open Mat | — |
| Sat | — | — | Day C |
| Sun | — | — | Rest |
Weekly Totals
- Morning NoGi drilling: 5x per week (~2.5 hours)
- Evening BJJ: 4-5x per week (~4-5 hours)
- Muay Thai: 1x per week (~45 min)
- Gym: 3x per week (~3 hours)
Total: roughly 10-12 hours of training per week.
Daily BJJ Practice
Beyond mat time, two habits keep me progressing:
Tape study (15-20 min): I watch a section of instructional video each morning and take notes. I identify 1-2 specific things to try in my next training session. This means I never show up to class without a focus.
Roll reflection (5 min): After training, I ask myself: What worked? What didn’t? Where did I get stuck? This takes discipline because it’s easy to skip, but patterns only emerge if you’re tracking them.
I also have a broader game development framework—positional priorities, submission systems I’m building—but that’s a separate post. This piece is about the routine container, not the BJJ content inside it.
The Philosophy
I train a lot, but I’m not trying to maximize hours. I’m trying to maximize consistent hours over months. An injury that sidelines me for two weeks costs more than whatever marginal gains I’d get from overtraining.
This means some days I back off. If I’m beat up from hard rolls, I skip the optional gym work. If sleep was terrible, I might do a lighter morning drill session. The system is designed to flex without breaking.
Gym Philosophy
The gym serves the mat, not the other way around. My strength program is three days per week, ~50-60 minutes per session. The priority exercises are compound movements that support grappling: squats, deadlifts, bench, chin-ups, rows.
If gym training makes rolling worse for 24-48 hours, I cut back until mat quality returns. This is the Danaher rule: supplementary training shouldn’t compromise the main thing.
What About Cardio?
The honest answer: dedicated Zone 2 training is a time casualty. With 10-12 hours already committed to BJJ and lifting, adding 3-4 hours of low-intensity cardio isn’t realistic right now.
What I do instead:
- Norwegian 4x4 protocol once per week (high-intensity intervals that improve VO2 max efficiently)
- Sauna: 2-3 sessions per week, 30 minutes each
Is this optimal for longevity? Probably not. But it’s what fits. I’d rather be honest about the tradeoff than pretend I’m covering all bases.
Supplements
A few things I take daily, with honest confidence levels:
Creatine (10g/day, split)
The standard recommendation is 3-5g, but that’s calibrated for average-sized people. At 255 lbs, weight-based dosing suggests ~0.1g/kg—which puts me at 11-12g daily.
I split it into two doses throughout the day. Single 10g doses cause GI issues for most people.
Everything Else
I covered the full supplement stack in my sleep post, tiered by evidence strength. The short version:
- Tier 1 (strong evidence): Glycine, Magnesium L-Threonate
- Tier 2 (reasonable evidence): Ashwagandha KSM-66, L-Theanine, Collagen
- Tier 3 (speculative): Taurine, Apigenin
I’m not religious about Tier 3. I cycle things in and out based on what I notice.
Sleep
Sleep is where recovery either happens or doesn’t. At 10-12 hours of weekly training, shortchanging sleep means shortchanging adaptation.
I wrote a full post on my sleep protocol—it goes deep on supplements, CPAP optimization, wind-down protocols, and the hyperarousal problem. The summary:
- Target: 8.5 hours (currently getting 6-7—this is the biggest gap)
- Setup: Shikibuton on BJJ mat, CPAP + chin strap + mouth tape, 65-67°F, white noise, eye mask
- Wind-down: 90-minute protocol ending with breathwork and lights out
Sleep is my weakest link. I know what to do. Consistency is the challenge.
The Stack
The tools that make this work:
Tracking:
- Withings scale — Daily weigh-ins sync automatically
- Carbon — Food logging and macro tracking
- Whoop — Sleep, HRV, recovery metrics
Training:
- BJJ Fanatics — Tape study instructionals
- MoveIt — Mobility routines (I built this)
- xSuit — Competition suit that travels well
Recovery:
- PSleep — NSDR timer for 3am wake-ups (I built this too)
Spiritual:
- Catholic Woodworker — Rosary and prayer bracelets
- 33 Knots — Prayer rope for the Examen
Work:
- YNAB — Budget tracking
- Obsidian — Notes, tape study logs, roll reflections
- Zed — Code editor
- Claude Code — AI pair programming
No prayer app. Just the bracelets and silence.
The Systems Philosophy
A few principles underpin all of this:
Structure enables freedom. The four blocks give me clarity about what each part of the day is for. Within each block, I know what matters. This isn’t rigidity—it’s freedom from constant decision-making.
Non-negotiables are the skeleton. Everything else flexes around them. If I’m traveling and can only do three things, I know which three. The non-negotiables hold the structure together when life tries to pull it apart.
Family time is sacred. Notice there are no habits in the Family block. That’s intentional. I spent years optimizing everything. I’ve learned that some things shouldn’t be optimized.
Recovery is not optional. Sleep protocol, supplements, wind-down routine—these aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re what make consistent training possible. I can’t just “try harder” if I’m running on six hours of sleep.
Same meals, same routine, less fatigue. Decision fatigue is real. Eating the same breakfast and grabbing a lunch box removes friction. I save my decisions for things that matter.
Everything serves the goal. The competition is the organizing principle. Every habit either supports that goal or doesn’t belong in the routine.
Closing
This is a snapshot from January 2025. The system will evolve as I learn what works and what doesn’t. Some of these habits will stick. Others will get replaced.
The goal isn’t perfection. It’s consistency. Show up most days, do the non-negotiables, trust the process.
If you’re reading this and training for something too—good luck. Build systems that make preparation inevitable. And protect your family time.
Get the Printable
I track all of this on a weekly printable checklist. One page per day, checkboxes for everything, space for training notes.
Download the Weekly Checklist (HTML) — Print it or open in your browser.
Quick Reference
P0 — Load-bearing:
- Pray (AM)
- Log food (Work)
- Tape study (Work)
P1 — Important, can flex:
- Weight, AM/PM supplements, Asana/email zero, OmniFocus zero, Examen, Read 10+ pages
Minimum Viable Day:
Pray → Log food → Tape study
Break Glass triggers: