Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise – quote by some random dude I don’t know

Greetings my fellow putilings. Today’s story is about my epic adventure. Waking up at 5 am.

The Problem

I am someone who has always admired the concept of waking up early. Waking up at 5 am. I come from a really really cold place and trying to wake up an hour later, at 6am is something that I completely failed to do in 12 years. The reason is that when you get up, it will be cold, dark and the bed will be screaming “Come to me baby” 

I remember finally changing this dream to a more realistic one. Waking up at 6.30 am. For another 4 good years, I completely failed to meet this target. The bed was far too attractive to let me leave it.

In order for me to change this habit, I needed to change. I needed something big to make me change.

Magic

The song “Magic” by Coldplay is just amazing. Anyways, some magic happened in my life and I started to wake up at 6. I know, this is disappointing. 6 isn’t 5 but hey – it’s a mighty big change.

Does the story end here?
No! Read on : )

Even more Magic

I started waking up at 5.

Okay it didn’t happen that way. Let me explain.

My mind is always full of activity. When it’s time to sleep, I literally have to force myself to ignore all of the thoughts in my mind. It’s very easy to spend 3 hours thinking about stuff that will make other people wonder whether or not I’m still sane.

So it was a Monday and I had slept incredibly early on the previous day. I woke up at 2am and instead of resisting the temptation to ignore my thoughts, I started meditating on the perfect names for characters for a youtube series about 3 English stones that talk to each other. (I actually got them. Mr Mc Gregor and Mr Potter. We couldn’t agree on the name for the 3^rd character). After coming up with a lovely tagline and an innovative name for my series, I decided to take things one step further.

I was going to wake up and start the day. I started to do stuff, and got ready to start the day.

It was horrible.

Never wake up at 2am.

Attempt 2

It was a Wednesday. I decided to try waking up at 5am again. It worked. Like magic!

Attempt 3

It was the next day, Thursday. I tried waking up at 5am. It worked.

Attempt 5

It was a Monday. I tried it again. It worked. And then I got the worst cold ever! And that’s why I decided to write this blogpost.

Tips for waking up at 5am

1. Have your big WHY

I discovered that I failed to wake up early for 12 + 4 years because I had no real reason to. Right now, time for doing personal stuff is extremely limited and that has forced me to look for time to free up and use for doing personal stuff.

2. Wear Warm Clothes

There’s a reason why your mother looks like she’s from the Antarctic when she gets up to get the house cleaned up in the morning. It’s because it’s cold in the morning.

3. Energy, Energy, Energy

We are like machines. Our battery is recharged by a thing called food. If you want to do any meaningful work in the morning, eat first.

4. It’s YOUR time

You do not wake up at 5am to answer emails. You don’t wake up at 5am to talk in WhatsApp groups. You wake up at 5am to get one good hour to do stuff that’s important to YOU that you don’t have time for during the day.

5. Don’t do it for the sake of doing it

It will just lead to unnecessary burn out

6. Please do wake up and turn off your alarm

We had annoying neighbours that would set a 5am alarm that they wouldn’t turn off because they were probably asleep. That was more than annoying. It was irritating.

What I’ve learnt

Waking up early really changes you. You become more mindful of the time you have during the day. Ending sleep, no matter what the reason, forces you to think of why exactly you’re doing it. You get tempted to shift the stuff to another time slice during the day, but after doing a bit of thinking, you then realize that your day is already packed!

Sleeping in late does you no good. Unless if you are a remote worker who works for people in a completely different timezone.

There are absolutely no distractions at 5 am. Well, except your mind. It is very easy to find yourself thinking about absolute nonsense. Resist the temptation.

Pack your bag a day before. Polish your shoes a day before. It works.

Create the habits you want. I read a blogpost about somebody who hates planning long term because they say it doesn’t work. Instead they focus on creating habits that they believe will allow them to lead the lives they desire. The morning is a pretty good time to think about such life changing stuff.

Conclusion

Waking up at 5 am is a really good idea if you have a good reason to do so. If you do wake up this early, try to avoid thinking about the best way to record talking stones and stuff along those lines.

That’s all folks ! see you next week Wednesday!!!

Psst! Yes, I’m talking to YOU!

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