Wake up early. Really early.
My wife just had our second child and we developed a rythym where if our newborn cried before 4am she would do the bottle, after 4am I would. We typically would go down around 11pm or midnight. If you don't have kids this may sound crazy, if you do have kids then you know.
For a while I would let my child wake me up at 4:30am crying. Having so little sleep for so long it was hard not to grow disdainful. I didn't want to have this feeling about my child.
I made the decision to set my alarm at 4am. I was going to be a morning person. I wasn't before, but I decided it was time that I was.
It was very difficult at first, but then less difficult. I learned tricks to make it easier, like drinking a huge glass of lemon water immediately and brushing my teeth within 2 minutes of waking...
But the affect it had on the rest of my life was very powerful.
I used to have a nightcap of one or two glasses of scotch every night. I found this makes it harder to wake up in the morning. In order to wake up in the morning at 4, I eventually phased out the scotch.
You don't need scotch at night to calm you down for bed when you are tired all the time.
I also saw my productivity shoot through the roof. Getting up at 4am, feeding my daughter at 4:30am, then having three hours to myself before the world woke up is incredible.
It allowed me to spend precious time with my daughter each morning, get a little excercise in, plan and strategize my day and tackle one or two major problems. All before breakfast!
Miracle Morning
A lot of my transformation came from adopting the ideas talked about in the book Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.
Link to Amazon: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM): Hal Elrod: 9780979019715: Amazon.com: Books
I definitely recommend checking it out, or at least googling his SAVERS method.
Impact:
Getting up early meant going to bed a little earlier.
This meant not drinking alcohol at night.
This meant waking up feeling more refreshed in the morning, and also having more energy throughout the day.
This meant having more energy to exercise, which made me feel more healthy which caused me to eat better throughout the day.
Better eating habits and more physical activity increased my energy levels even further.
This made me more productive in my work, but also a happier person.
A happier person is a better father, husband, worker, friend, colleague, everything!
This was also triggered from waking up earlier. In fact, it was all triggered from making the decision to wake up early.
I reccomend it.
