By 
Arnold Schwarzenegger has been smashing his goals since the mid-1970s, going from the top of the podium at the most elite events in the world of competitive bodybuilding to marquee billing in Hollywood movies. And while that success has been the result of a wide range of cumulative factors, Schwarzenegger attributes at least some of his focus and drive to having kept to the same daily routine over the years.
"Each morning, I make the coffee and feed the dogs and Whiskey and Lulu," he wrote in a recent edition of his newsletter. "While I drink my coffee, I check my emails and read a couple of newspapers. And as soon as my coffee is finished, I ride my bike to the gym and exercise, and then I eat breakfast. That’s the first time of the day that I let myself start thinking."
"It’s been like this throughout my life," he continued. "I was first motivated by Reg Park, the former Mr. Universe who became Hercules in the movies. But having that spark of motivation wasn’t what created my success. It was my routine."
The seven-time Mr. Olympia winner added that building this kind of repetitive consistency into your daily life can take some real effort at first, and that ideally you need to reach a point where it becomes automatic and you do it without thinking. "You need discipline until your routine is so automatic that you never think about it," he said. "Because once you start thinking, your mind will fight with itself."
