1 year of the 5 am club!
I completed one year of religiously waking up in the morning at 5 am, every single day, this 18th of October. If you are wondering why, please feel free to read along. For all of my life, until the last year (except during the school days of course :)), I have been a night owl. No matter what, I couldn’t wake up in the morning. When my little one started going to school, it is then, when I had to wake up early, and even then, I used to snooze until the last minute. And, all of this time, I was also procrastinating every day, about everything I wanted to do, but couldn’t, blaming the lack of time. When I came across this book “The 5 am club”, which claimed, if I followed it for 66 days, waking up early, would become a part of me… and I got inspired to give it a try. There is a routine that the book prescribes, to follow, to make the optimum use of ‘the golden hours’ in the morning, when no one disturbs you and you are in complete harmony. I tweaked those steps a little, to cater to my needs and here I am, about a year later, as a living proof, that it definitely is doable. When the alarm goes off at 5, without giving it a single thought (or any time for the mind to trick me into getting back to sleep), I leave the bed, make my special black coffee, that gives my day a kickstart, and sit down to study for about an hour. I time box the things I want to cover, and never exceed that hour… If there are things to be continued, I carry them forward the next day. The key is to spend at least some time, doing what you have got to do, rather than missing on it completely. Then, I take my car keys and drive to gym (I learnt driving in the last 4 months, again, owing to the 5 am club!), work out for an hour (timeboxed again, so the next part of my routine doesn’t get disturbed). When I get back, I help my little one to get ready for school, and then start my workday. I make sure, when I’m at my desk, there is no distraction, so I can completely focus on the list of tasks I want to cover on that day.
I have a few hideous videos where I talk about this… well, hideous because vlogging is new for me, and my editing skills are ridiculous! I’m still sharing the link here, without any inhibitions, because even if one person gets inspired to follow this, it would be worth it :)