a confession about getting up early
A mere 22 days ago a wrote a blog post about getting up early to get things done. I wrote that I had gotten “up at 5am (I’m trying to make a habit of it), made my breakfast, had good (in depth) prayer time, read the Word, read the news (google news, fox news, and a little cnn), read other blogs I like to keep up with, and went on a 12 mile bike ride; all before 9am.”
Notice the words trying to make a habit of it, this [tag]habit[/tag] didn’t take. After writing this article I got a cold, which effectively put the kibosh on my getting up early because for more than a week I woke up with a pounding headache, feeling completely drained. Since then I have still not quite gotten back to feeling normal, but I’ve repeatedly tried to re-institute my early wake up time (5am) only to have my morning self call my evening self a nut-case, reset the alarm, and get a little more shut eye.
I now realize that I have to re-gear my thinking and re-condition myself based on two articles that I read.
The first article is on How to become an early riser where the author, Steve Pavlina, takes two common sleep theories and combines them into one practical solution for training your body to consistently get up early.
The second article is on How to get up right away when your alarm clock goes off. This article is also by Steve Pavlina and he talks about how making a conscious decision to get up early doesn’t work, because our morning persona tends to contradict the decision of our evening persona (mine sure does). Therefore, he suggests that we need to condition our subconscious mind to get up promptly when the alarm goes off, and he has an interesting method of doing this. I’ll let you read the article to get the full effect.
Today I am starting these two methods. I am motivated by the memory of how good it feels to get up early and get a lot done. When I do that I’m not only more [tag]productive [/tag]in the morning, but all throughout the day. I’ll keep you updated about my progress.
Note: Please realize that I’m not saying I’ve been sleeping late every day, or any day for that matter. I simply am not getting up at 5am like I want. For me 7am isn’t early enough because I like those extra 2 hours to get things done.
February 9th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
haha! And as enthusiastic as I was to comment on that post and tell you how I, too, had been getting up early, I enthusiastically hit the snooze button so many times that I inevitably just turn the alarm off these last few weeks. I have a study that I should be devoting at least 30 minutes to every morning (Day 1 is Wednesday) and I haven’t read the first day yet this week!
Off to read the articles, I am!