The Waking Dead: Another Early Riser Update


This isn’t going as well as I’d hoped. In fact, I’ve fallen off the plan from last week.

I am — most definitely — struggling with this.

I have been getting up at 8 a.m. every day (which is “good enough” while we still have in-home child care), but as of the second week in June it won’t be. That’s when it’s me at home with my son all day until July rolls around. And while I will be heading out east for BlogWorld the first week in June, so perhaps I can get skew my body clock back to 5 a.m. waking times, but I’m going to do my best until then to at least get into the 7 a.m. range. That is something that is doable.

Why am I having such trouble?

Is it a lack of exercise? A very full plate? I’m sure both are playing a part. Making a change like this – which is to say a very challenging change for me, and you might have another that fits the bill for you – is tough as it is, let alone when you don’t have a fairly clean slate when you take it on. I think the timing of this undertaking was not right for me, and I’ve been paying the price in terms of frustration as a result.

So this week I’m going to strive for 7 a.m., but not push it. To be fair, the sleep habits challenge will be more of a a “tertiary strive” until I leave for New York. My main focus is to set myself up for time away, which means getting the book done, finishing up some loose ends on a few projects so I can wrap them up and preparing posts for both here and Lifehack so that I can focus on making the most of my time while away.1

I have to finish before I can start. I have to be able to rest easy before I can rest comfortably. I have to work before I can play.

Even productivityists get caught up to the point where they have to play catch-up.

I’m not going to offer up an early riser update next week. Or the week after that. Instead, over the next little while I’ll be making the most of my time so that I can make time work for me for a much, much longer while.

1 This means there will be some guest posts here during the month of June for the first time ever. So be nice to these gracious writers, won’t you?

Photo credit: DukeUnivLibraries (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)