I love getting a look into the way other people do things. It’s not so much to directly compare their process to mine and outline what I think is better/worse, I just like the insight. It goes without saying, though, that from time to time things seem intriguing and I look into them further or go so far as to give them a try.
I read some time ago that someone got up at 5am every day. That blew my mind. I thought I was an early riser because I liked signing up for 8am classes to force myself to not waste the day. It’s all relative I suppose, but I liked being up earlier than everyone else, things feel different.
Over the past few years I’ve been getting better and better at retaining a “real” early schedule: rise at 5am, ready to go. Naturally there have been periods where that just didn’t happen, but I’m on that schedule now and I already see the benefits in it helping me tackle my goal of writing more this year.
Getting up early is just part one, and I’ll swing back to referencing this article here. My personal opinion is that it all comes down to a schedule, a routine. I’ve found that without a schedule, things get postponed, plain and simple.
Some people feel that a schedule is overbearing and they don’t want to live their life that way, but I’m to the point where I want to schedule the fun stuff too. Schedules should not be completely designed to help you get done all the stuff you don’t want to do, but everything. I’ve realized that only recently and I’m doing my best to put it in place, but in the case of Jay (the article author), he’s scheduling site maintenance (fun) and family time (fun) into every single day. It makes complete sense to me.
Comments
For a couple of years I had been getting up between 4 and 5 am with great benefit. This past year, my every day life has been disrupted and now getting up at 5am is unusual; it’s usually 6 to 7am.
You may know that, in years gone by, people would go to sleep at sunset and wake up around 1am. They’d either toss and turn for a bit or even go for a walk or do some housework. Then they’d go back to sleep till sunrise. There was even a name for that. The first was called “first sleep” and you can guess what the second was.