December 19, 2006
Discipline
About 6 weeks ago, I read this blog about getting up early in the morning. I want to be more disciplined about my wakeup time. Reading this raised my awareness that I had slipped back into a pattern of fighting the pillow every morning (and the pillow was winning too often). I was getting up at the last possible moment and rushing out the door almost every day. I decided to do something about it. I would get up at a specific time every morning 7 days a week for one month and then evaluate whether or not it was working for me. I did it and this is my evaluation…
I quickly realized how untrustworthy my will is at 5:15 in the morning. As soon as the alarm goes off, I start whining (on the inside) about needing five more minutes. In the moment, I truly believe that five minutes will make all the difference in the world. Just a little more rest and I will be ready to get up. Of course five minutes really makes no difference at all and if I give in, I’ll be whining for five more. The key for me is that I put my feet on the floor immediately when the alarm sounds. I can sit for about a minute before my backup alarm goes off. Yes, I have a backup alarm. I am sneaky and untrustworthy at 5 AM and I love to sleep. Here’s the wakeup alarm algorithm. I have a fancy radio/CD/alarm clock that my family gave me for Father’s Day a few years ago (Thanks ladies, I still like it). It has two independent alarm settings. I set the first one to go off at 5:00 AM softly playing NPR news. It gets gradually louder until I reach up and turn it down. I am still mostly asleep. At 5:15, my phone alarm sounds. This is the “real” alarm. When this one goes off, it is time to put the feet on the floor. No excuses. I mechanically sit up and put my feet on the floor. After about another minute, I get the backup alarm. My Father’s day alarm clock changes from news to an annoying buzz (just to make sure I didn’t talk myself into sleeping in again).
Even then I am still not really awake. I could easily lay back down and snooze away. So, I go brush my teeth, shave and either shower, or get ready for my morning run with the guys (depending on the day). Only then can I trust myself to stay up. So that’s the routine. Boring, eh? Some of the toughest things for me in life are the boring, repetitive tasks that have to be done.
Each morning, the goal was to get up. that’s it. Not to have a quiet time or to read my bible or anything else. Just get up. I’m a simple man with simple needs. I know how easy it is to take on too much and fall flat on my face. At 48 years old, I know that there have been times in my life that I have been good about waking up early, but they didn’t last. I wanted to evaluate getting up alone, so I limited my focus to the getting up part.
So what did I do? Some mornings I read the web, books, read my bible, meditated, reflected on stuff, prayed. I wrote in my journal and I wrote a blog or two. There were a few mornings that I was still very tired and sleepy even after my wakeup routine… so I took a nap. If that sounds like cheating, I didn’t see it that way at all. I made the decision using my rational, awake mind. The cool thing was that I could be up for an hour, take a 30 minute nap, feel refreshed and still not have to rush out the door.
The first Friday night after completing the month, I stayed up late and decided that I wanted to sleep in on Saturday. Again, this is my rational mind doing the decision making. So, off with the alarms. I slept in until about 8:30 and it felt great! I needed the rest and I didn’t feel like I violated any promises to myself by sleeping in. Later that day, I realized how much I missed that time. The day just flew by even faster than ever.
Sleeping in helped me come to make the decision to continue to get up early. I am making a few changes though. Fifteen minutes of radio is too long. It is just long enough for me to fall back asleep. So I am cutting the “gentle wakeup time” from fifteen minutes to five. The other change is that just getting up is not enough for me now. I am ready to kick the discipline heat up a notch. Now that I am sure that I can get up out of bed even when I don’t feel like it, I believe that I can add one little thing to that routine. I have decided to begin writing every morning for 20 minutes. I can write here, on my blog. I can write in my journal, I can write a letter… anything I want to do, the promise to myself (and anyone who’s reading) is to write for 20 minutes every day. I will try this for a month and evaluate it.
Jimazing Thoughts 
Sarah Groth (Brown) said,
January 13, 2007 at 3:19 pm
How’s the morning thing going?? I’m not a morning person but have been wanting to get up earlier (6:00 maybe) for awhile now so I have some time in the day before baby wakes. When I read this blog about it, I felt motivated again, but I am still failing miserably and was wondering how it was going for you. =)
jimazing said,
January 15, 2007 at 7:48 pm
The short answer is good, ok, terrible, great… 🙂 I would not call it a habit by any stretch. There is nothing automatic about it. Also, some days I am not getting enough sleep. I seem to need more sleep than most of my friends say they need. I don’t understand why, but that’s how I feel. The problem for me is understanding how to objectively determine if I am getting enough sleep. My default method is to get up when I feel like it. That doesn’t work well because I stay in the bed too long. When I set the alarm for 5:00 every day, I can make myself get up. (I know that because I did it faithfully for 5 weeks).
Last week I found myself feeling sleepy all day. So on Saturday, I decided to sleep in until I woke up. That was nice, but I missed my writing time. By the time I got up, the house was busy. The only way I can guarantee my quiet time is to get up early.
Here’s what I want to do. Since I cannot trust myself to make the decision in the morning, I will decide my wake up time the night before. During the work week, it will be 5:00 unless there are mitigating circumstances. On the weekend, I’ll decide the night before. Whatever I decide, I must get up when the alarm goes off. That’s my pledge to me and you.
I don’t want to discourage you, but this has been a struggle for me all my adult life. Sometimes the root problem was a poor motivation. My motivation was to be “spiritual”, but not in a real sense, which would be a good motivator. I wanted to be able to have a positive answer for my friends when they asked me if I had been reading my bible or praying every day. That way they would think I was spiritual. That is a lousy motivation and a crazy way to live. It was driven by legalistic mentality that said I needed to earn favor with God. If you had asked me if I believed that, I would have said, “Of course not, God loves me unconditionally.” However, my actions said that I didn’t feel like I measured up.
My motivation now is to get something that I need. Quiet time. Reflection time. Writing time. I have recognized that when I don’t get these things, I turn into a monster. Another motivator is a recognition that I am lazy in the mornings. I stay too long in the bed because it is comfortable. And I can make a pretty convincing argument to myself that I need “just five more minutes”. It sounds comical now, but it is very real when that alarm goes off. Lastly, I have a desire to improve my writing skills and write a book. I know that the main thing holding me back is the discipline of writing every day. That’s why I committed to writing 20 minutes every morning (although it may be in my private journal and not on the blog).
What is your motivation for getting up early?