What Gets You Out of Bed?
Episode #2 of the course How to get up and conquer the morning by Matt Sandrini
What are you going to do with your morning time?
Having a clear answer to this question will determine whether you will actually become (and stay) a morning person or not.
You see, the morning is like a magic wand; its actual power depends on the wizard using it.
Waking up in the morning won’t fix your time management issues, but it will give you an unfair advantage over other people. It will give you more time in the morning, when your energy is at its peak and everyone else is too sleepy to disturb you.
But without a strong “why,” you won’t make the change. You’ll find yourself with lots of free time and go back to snoozing in the morning and procrastinating in the evening.
Your morning time is precious and unique, so use it to invest in yourself. Self-investment includes all those activities that keep having an impact when you stop putting in the work and will keep giving back with greater returns in the future. Learning a language, meditating, and working on a side project are all examples of self-investments. Work that pays this week’s bills but doesn’t make you grow, watching TV, and browsing social media are not. Their benefits are marginal and time-bound: they stop when you stop.
So use the morning time to:
• Make constant progress toward a bigger goal
• Set yourself up for a great day
More often than not, these two overlap.
To clarify what you are going to do, start from this question: If you had one extra hour a day, how would you use it?
The temptation is to use the morning as the garden shed of time: cram in everything that doesn’t fit anywhere else. This will create a confusing and overwhelming morning that doesn’t bring you anywhere. You will soon give up.
Instead, find something that excites you and would have a long-term impact on your life. Look at what you would like to do and not what you’d like to have done. The difference is subtle but important; I would like to speak Mandarin, but I have no practical use for it now. My “why” isn’t strong enough, so I would give up pretty quickly. In other words, I don’t want to learn Mandarin; I want to have learned Mandarin already. On the other hand, I do want to meditate, and I enjoy it every day. I do want to write, and it works toward a greater goal.
Chances are, you have already tried to work on your one thing at the end of your day but never managed to get to it. Now you’ll have dedicated time to make constant progress.
If you have more than one big thing on your list, prioritize. Which one would have the biggest impact right now? If you still have more than one, don’t pack everything into your morning. Instead, theme different days to focus on one activity at a time.
Tomorrow, we will explore why your morning ritual should start in the evening.
— Matt
Additional resource
Do You Want to Do It? Or to Have Done It?
Recommended book
“The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” by Charles Duhigg
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