wake up early

I made it through the rough patch of week 2. I started thinking, why am I doing this? I must be crazy. I only got five hours sleep last night!

But I persevered. I decided that it didn’t matter how many hours I slept at night, all that mattered was that I got up at 5 am, and could nap if I was tired. Plus, the extra time for writing, and the head start on my day are extremely motivating.

Stats: I’ve gotten up at 5 am for a total of 18 days. I missed three days. According to my method for calculating “60 days” (subtract a day if I miss one), my current running total is 15 days. Woohoo!

So far so good. I’ve gotten up at 5:00 am for seven days in a row. One morning I went back to bed after writing for half an hour, since I had been up till midnight the night before, playing Ultimate. But I figure the point was to get up at 5:00, not necessarily stay up and work through fatigue.

I’m astounded, actually. And grateful. Even if I stopped getting up early right now, nothing can take this week away from me. I felt productive, powerful, and engaged with life. The week seemed longer—I kept thinking it was tomorrow, when it was still today.

The best part is that it hasn’t been much of a struggle, except that one morning after Ultimate. When I hear the alarm at 5:00 am, before my brain can engage to give me excuses to stay in bed, I just get up in Pavlovian response mode and go down to make tea. Posting my goal here is also strong motivation.

I attribute the lack of struggle to the fact that I finally “hit bottom” and made a commitment to myself. I don’t want to imply that all of a sudden I just decided to get up early and did it. I’ve been leading up to this for a while, trying and failing. Like quitting smoking, or going on a diet.

I feel really confident that I can continue my early rising. Thanks to everyone who reads this—I know the energy from this site has benefited me a lot.

I’m convinced that achieving this goal will pay off doubly, because in getting up early I will be giving myself time to meet my other goals.

For a long time I’ve been drawn to rising early, but I have had such a struggle getting out of bed, because of fear of everything I have to do, and wanting to hide from the possibility of failure. Now I want to replace that fear with the knowledge that I am diligent, courageous, and capable, and I can be an early riser.

I’ve thought about working up to 5 am, but the fact is, the hardest part for me is getting out of bed. So I think it would take the same amount of effort whether it’s 7 am or 5 am. So I might as well go for the gusto.

I think 60 days is long enough to well and truly entrench this habit. As with my walking-to-work goal, I will have a method for dealing with slip-ups: if I don’t get up at 5 am one morning, I will subtract one day from my running total. That will give me a disincentive to miss, but also means that I can still recover and not feeling like I’ve utterly failed.

To help me, I will put my alarm clock on the bureau so I have to get up to turn it off. I will go to the kitchen to make tea, and then I will go upstairs to my study and write. At 7 am, I will do my morning work-out with my husband, and then shower and have breakfast and start the day!

I’ve already stopped drinking caffiene, and I will be exercising, and going to bed when I feel tired, a la Steve Pavlina. The night before, I’ll make sure my office is tidy, put out my clothes for the next day, and plan what I’m going to write.

I will begin on January 15.