Features · Routines
A morning you stop renegotiating
Willpower is a terrible alarm clock. Routines replace the daily debate — should I stretch? is there time to journal? — with a sequence that simply runs.
Let's make it a good one.
How a routine is built
Pick the anchor
Choose something that already happens every day: the kettle boiling, the alarm, the school run. The anchor is what the routine hangs from.
Stack small steps
Add steps measured in minutes, not virtues: one glass of water, two minutes of stretching, three lines in the journal. Three to five steps is the sweet spot.
Write the fallback
For every step, write the two-minute version. Bad days run the fallback and the streak holds — the sequence survives, the standard flexes.
Let it run
Groovy fires one nudge at the anchor time and ticks steps as you go. After a fortnight you'll notice the app is mostly a witness, not a manager.
A real Tuesday
What it looks like at 7:40
The alarm goes off at 7:20. By 7:40 the kettle has boiled, the water glass is empty, and three lines are in the journal — one thing I want, one thing I'm avoiding, one person to thank. Nothing about that required discipline at 7:40; the decision was made last Sunday when the routine was built.
This is the quiet idea behind routines: move the argument to a moment when you're thinking clearly, then stop having it. Mornings are for following instructions you gave yourself when you were wise.
On a good day you do the full stack. On a Tuesday-after-a-late-Monday, the fallback runs and it still counts. Both versions keep the identity intact: I'm someone whose mornings run.
Routines that bend
Life is not a simulation. The routine system assumes disruption and prices it in.
Travel mode
Away from home, routines compress to their fallback forms automatically — hotel-room stretch, coffee-shop journaling. The anchor moves to whatever still happens daily: breakfast, checkout, the first meeting.
Sick days & rough weeks
Mark a day as rough and Groovy strips routines to a single keystone step. One glass of water still counts. Streaks survive because honesty is built into the ledger, not because perfection is faked.
Shift work & late starts
Anchors are times-or-events. "After I wake" works at 6:20 or 11:40. Night shifts don't break the system; the sequence follows your day, not the clock's.
Shared mornings
Family anchoring: routines can be anchored to shared events — school run, breakfast table — so steps slot around real logistics instead of fighting them.
Start with one small morning
Two minutes of stretching counts. It genuinely does — that's the whole design.
