Waking Up is Hard to Do

It's okay to be selfish, at 5:00 in the morning. Jon Acuff says.

Lately I've been trying to wake up earlier to get things done. I'm trying. It's been up and down so far.

The first couple days I tried to wake up early, worked great! But then I started realizing, maybe I haven't really been focusing on the tasks that are the most important. When I've been working on business stuff late at night, part of what I work on, are things that I can say are the most important but are really things that are really distractions.

I've been working in my business all day, why would I have the energy and especially the focus to work on the business late at night? I sometimes, and usually, don't.

That was a really interesting feeling I had from waking up earlier. Which by the way, I still don't get up exactly when my alarm starts going off. But it is easier when I go to bed at a decent time the night before.

Another feeling I wasn't expecting was, when I do get something done that is really important to the business, I already feel like my day has been successful already. And the kids haven't even gotten out of bed yet! Wahoo! This post would have taken another week or more to get out of my head if I wasn't working on it early in the morning.

There's just something liberating about getting something done before the day "starts". Instead of hoping I'll be able to get stuff done after the kids go to bed. That early morning time is mine!

But there are times, which I've already found this out, where you just need to sleep in.

Such as when I got sick last week with a cold. I was still going to be getting up early because I want this to be a lifelong habit, not just a phase. I did get up early one day. But after reading scriptures, I just fell asleep on the couch. I decided that sleep was really what was most important for me right then.

How do I decide what is most important thing to be doing?

What I do the day before is record on my calendar what I want to do that next morning. I have a reminder go off around 8 or 9 pm. That's when I have the mental ability to think, "If I could get one thing done tomorrow, that would help my business, what would it be?"

(That idea is from, I believe, the book Getting Things Done.)

Otherwise, it's really hard to think about what's important for me to be doing, when I just woke up and really just want to get back in bed. Those warm, comfortable, soft covers are calling my name!

What things do you do to help yourself get more things done? Do you need to commit to waking up early? Commit publicly below! We'll help you stay on track.