How I did it: I basically figured out what I think is worth waking up over.

• Work? No.
• Exercise? Hell no.
• Working on my business? Ding, ding, ding!

Each day, I basically do each of those things. I just happened to try the one that worked last.

Starting out working on my business at 5:00 or 5:30 every morning had these benefits:

• I leave for work feeling super-accomplished already.
• I spend some of my "mental juice" working on what's important to me. I don't come home from work drained from my day job.
• I cannot use physical exertion as a motivator to get me out of my comfy bed. I may need to learn how to do this later on in life with kids, but this works for now.
• When I'm brain dead and stressed upon arrival at home from work, the best thing that I can do to decompress is exercise. Working on a side business is hard when you don't feel like working anymore.
• I get to spend some quality time with coffee, which does get me out of bed.

Lessons & tips: Figure out what your general goals are each day. (They may be simpler than mine.) Then experiment with which one is most likely to get you out of bed.

When you fail, accept that it happens sometimes. Just try again the next day. There is absolutely no sense in starting your day beating yourself up over not getting out of bed.

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Oct 02, 2009, 07:06AM PDT | 2 comments | 4 cheers