When I was a kid, I played a ton of soccer. I loved it!
That is, until my freshman year of high school.
I had a rocky start to high school soccer, and later that year I got cut from my club team too.
I stuck with it anyway — mostly out of routine. I'd been playing soccer for so long I honestly wasn't sure what life without it would even look like. I was still a genuinely good player. But somewhere in there, the game had started to feel like a burden.
The following year, I changed clubs after the spring high school season. In the summer, our new team hosted a training camp with guests from KNVB — the Netherlands national football federation. 🤯
A full week of two-a-day practices with the Dutch sounds intense. It was! But it was also the most fun I have ever had at soccer practice, period.
Those coaches brought fun and play back into training so completely that the drills hardly felt like work at all. We ended every single day completely gassed. And happy.
⚡️ F5 Fast Files - Short Summary
Consistency carried me through a rough patch — it doesn't need motivation to keep running.
Routine removes decision fatigue; novelty asks more of you, but it's what breaks a rut.
Watch where your novelty comes from — social media profits off keeping you chasing shiny objects.
Routine is for what you want to maintain. Novelty is for what you want to change.
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🔁 Routine Carried Me Through
Looking back, that rough patch is exactly where routine did its job.
I didn't stay a good player that year because I felt motivated. Some weeks I didn't. I stayed good because showing up had become automatic — new club, new teammates, same routine underneath it all. The system carried me through a season my motivation couldn't have gotten me through alone.
In business, we call that systems. And systems are what keep a business alive when your motivation dips or life just gets in the way — because they don't ask you how you feel today. They just run.
Routines also remove decision fatigue. When the "what" and "when" are already decided, there's nothing left to talk yourself out of. That's not just useful for soccer or business — it's useful for staying locked in on anything.
✨ When Routine Turns Into a Rut
But routine has a shelf life. Eventually it can go stale and start to feel like a rut — or, if things are going really well, you run into what people call "billionaire boredom": everything's dialed in, everything's delegated, and somehow that's its own kind of stuck.
That's when it's time to introduce novelty.
📖 What a Novel Idea!
Creativity and novelty ask more of your mental bandwidth than routine does. But that extra effort might be exactly what breaks you out of the funk. Struggling to get up for a workout lately? Try a completely different program. Relationship feeling stale? Plan something creative instead of the usual date-night default.
Just watch where you get your novelty from. Today's world profits off it — every feed is built to make your eyes glaze over until something new catches them. Left unchecked, that kind of novelty turns into a dopamine drip that keeps you chasing shiny objects instead of actually changing anything.
⚖️ How Do We Strike the Balance?
Clearly, we need both.
One of our Fire Team Alpha guys put it best on our call last week: Routine is for maintenance. Novelty is for change.
If it's something you want to keep steady — your marriage, your body, your faith, your bank account — that takes routine. If it's something you want to change, routine alone won't get you there. That takes novelty.
So take an honest look at your life right now.
What do you want to maintain? Do you actually have a routine for it — or are you relying on motivation that's eventually going to run out?
What do you want to change? Maybe it's time to try something novel, even if it's a little uncomfortable.
Stay Striving!
Justin
F5 Brotherhood
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