A lot of people have now approached me and asked why I get
up as early as I do these days; as of January first there, Wouldn’t It Be Nice by The Beach
Boys wakes me up at 3.45am.
Many a moon ago
now, I was getting up at around the 5am mark; sometimes later pending on what I
was up to the previous evening. The
reason for this is that I’m more mentally awake and thus more creative; the
downside was that I was regularly late for work as I was getting carried away
with whatever I was working on in the morning.
To begin with I tried
to fix this by rising at 4.45am but what I found was that I used this extra 15
minutes to smoke and check social media which, in a strange sort of way, I was
still buying back time…but still, this wasn’t what I was after.
Next, I knocked it
down to 4.30am and started to notice that I was finally making it in on time to
work no bother as I was achieving everything I deemed important in the extra
time I had created.
It was when I went
for 4am that the real tangible results started to occur as I was now beginning
to factor in a bit of focussed structure to the morning, i.e. instead of
smoking, drinking coffee and checking social media…I was going for a shower
first; washing in hot water and rinsing in freezing cold.
Next, I would
cook a proper breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs and then watch a
TED talk on whatever took my fancy to broaden my horizons. I kept this up for two months as I didn’t
want to waste precious brain power on nonsensical decisions such as choosing
what to eat in the morning. As a side
note, this is actually thing; google Decision
Fatigue.
The previous
evening I would have already drafted my three “absolute” tasks to achieve the
following day; one would be a creative goal, one professional and the third
would be to do my best to do something for someone else.
At one point I tried
to factor in exercising but then realised that this wasn’t important to me in
the slightest so stopped. It was this
realisation that signalled that for any sort of routine to work then it must be
flexible and if something stops working, rather than force it, figure out an
alternate method and give it a try.
So with that all
said, the version I’ve started in 2017 is as follows:
- Wake up and journal thoughts at 3.45am – this is to clear my mind straight away.
- Using a tool my bro shared with me, I’ll then generate 10 ideas and their next steps on an A4 page and most likely they’ll revolve around a theme that’s revealed itself when journaling; I’ll do this at 4am – Again, this is just to get these thoughts down so they’re not rattling about in my head and distracting me.
- At 4.15am I’ll jump in the shower, wash with hot and rinse with cold – it’s the latter that absolutely smashes any tiredness to bits and leaves your mind as sharp as it’s going to get for the day.
- Then I’ll get dressed rather than fire my jammies back on as I’ve proved to myself that my mind operates better when the body is dressed to work; jammies usually signal down time.
- 4.30am will be breakfast time and a TED talk. I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to eat yet, probably cereal with a double crumpet chaser and one cup of coffee. With regards to the TED talk themes…again, I’m not sure what I’ll be going for; I’m inclined to start watching things that inspire me to get better at things I’m already good at rather than spread myself too thin. I’ll maybe generate 10 ideas to figure this out.
- Then I’ll get down to work on whatever creative goal I’ve deemed the most important because per points 1 & 2 and any outstanding ideas, goals, things to do identified / started from last year, these will all be prioritised according to importance – this should allow complete focus on the task at hand.
- I’ll then review everything at a given point of the day, re-prioritise if required and then journal again to capture my thoughts, things achieved throughout the day etc. – this again should keep my mind as decluttered as possible; plus it’s cool to keep yourself motivated by drawing a line under tasks.
So that’s what I get
up to each day at the crack of dawn…the main question I get posed to me is, is
it difficult to get up that early? The
answer is mostly no because I compensate by going to bed early; currently this
is around 8pm.
On the odd
occasion I’ve hit snooze, I’ve found that my body clock doesn’t like that as it
goes back into deep sleep mode…when it’s roused a whopping 8 minutes later, I just
feel utterly drained so anytime I do feel tired on the first alarm, I never
think, I just get up…anyone who can’t do that either hasn’t had enough sleep or
probably needs to see a doctor.
As I say, this is
all flexible…if something stops working – or doesn’t work at all – then I’ll have
a banter with the folk I know who also operate in this manner; there could be
something they’re doing that might work for me, and vice versa, something I’m
doing might work for them; it’s a totally subjective thing and there’s no hard
and fast rules; just hints and tips.
Tomas Bird
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