Another work day where I wake up early. But I've made a change to my early morning habits:

The plan is now:

1. Get out of bed as soon as the alarm goes clock off
2. Press snooze
3. Get dressed
4. Go downstairs
5. Turn off the alarm
6. Make coffe
7. Press play on the podcast I am listening to
8. Start browsing Instagram
9. Stop browsing when podcast episode finishes

The second last item on that list might sound weird to almost everyone else but I can forget looking at or even thinking about Instagram for days or weeks.

That might sound great for someone who struggles with addiction to social media, and I guess it is less annoying and dangerous,but also means I miss out on a lot of what is happening.

So for now I'll try this to see if I can include a healthy dose of updates from friends and family.

Observations:

• it helps a lot that I have decided well in advance what the first 30 minutes of the day will look like
• it works reasonably well, my brain turns on (possibly related to an interesting podcast)
• generally my brain seems to respond well to spoken words while I'm doing something else
• Instagram ads generally have a lot better targeting for me (it took 12 long years for Google to realize I was not looking for scammy-looking dating sites)
• writing blog posts takes more than 5 minutes, I guess this took 30 minutes
• it is now 0522

I've been trying this for less than a week, so add a pinch of salt, but I feel I'm into an habit that can work well for a few weeks.

Sometimes I find myself mindlessly pressing ctrl – t, <name of news site>.

And sometimes it doesn't matter: waiting for someone to reply, for a compile or upload to finish. But often it is a waste of time.

I recently realized that while it is hard to break the first part of the habit, and removing all the triggers is impractical, I can easily stack another habit on top:

I have now trained myself so that whenever my fingers type that pattern they also automatically type ctrl – w to close the tab before even loading it.

I did that by intentionally repeating the first part of the pattern, then closing the tabs and rewarding myself by smiling.

Waterluvian 13 days ago

As a parent I've come up with a mechanism to help when things like this worry me.

I have basically no power to protect against things like this. But I have tremendous power to protect against far more likely causes of harm like diabetes and heart disease and obesity.

So any time I'm having a moment of worry about their well being I find an extra hour to carve out of my day and take them to the park. It's therapeutic and makes me feel less helpless and feels like I'm gradually equipping them with the life trait of being an active person.

Filed under #lifehacks #worry and #parenting

I woke up as my alarm went off. I turned it off and I turned off the Hue lights that I have scheduled to gradually turn on around the same time. So far so good. Almost, -at this point I had already messed up the routine.

What I should do was to get out of the bed first, then turn off the alarm, the lights and then continue with the morning. Instead I had to argue with my brain for half a minute. It's so stupid it is almost funny, it goes along the lines of:

Sleepy brain: It was a nice dream. Me: I'm getting out of bed now. Body: <Does nothing.> Brain: You can sleep a few minutes more. Me: The next step is to step out of the bed. Body: <Does nothing.> Me: OK, this means left foot out of bed. Body: <Moves left foot out of bed>

and so on.

So here I am. I actually got out of bed in time. As usual.

My brain tried again once I entered my kitchen by pointing out there is a nice couch in the living room. Instead I turned on my coffee machine, looked at the calendar while waiting for my coffee, remembered two important updates for for the end of the month, got my coffee – and the rest is history: I'm wide awake, my day is off to a good start and I even had time for a blog post.

Filed under: #risingearly #life and #lifehacks

It used to be that I'd wake up at the last possible moment (to get as much sleep as possible) and stay up at night as far as possible (to get something done or be social). At some point I finally realized that I am no night owl, so I tried looking into if I could rather rise earlier. Turns out I can, I now more or less comfortably wake up somewhere between 0345 and 0430 and get things done.

Those hours between 4 and 6 are kind of magic: Nobody execpt me and the flyer delivery driver that keeps putting stuff in my mail box on my wall seems to be awake. I can write, plan my day and even sometimes program a little.

FWIW, here are some tricks/observations that might help you if you want to try this:

• It seems I feel less tired if I wake up around 0400 sometime than if I stay in bed until the rest of the family wakes up.
• Generally it seems I need to get up about a couple of hours earlier than I'd usually have to so that I can get some time to get stuff done.
• My brain need to have a reason to be awake, just waking up to stare at the wall doesn't work.
• For a couple of years I've used the app Sleep as Android which would wake refuse to turn off until I scanned a QR code in my bathroom. (I later used an NFC sticker that I placed underneath a shelf so that it didn't bother anyone by looking ugly.)
• Now I just rely on my normal alarm clock but I use one really nifty trick:
• From time to time, either when I know I've had little sleep lately and know it will be hard to get out of bed the next day, or if I find my early rising habit slipping I do the getting-out-of-bed-drill[0]. The longest version of the getting-out-of-bed-drill goes as follows: I go to my bedroom, set my alarm clock app to ring in two minutes, go to bed and pretend to be sleeping. When the alarm goes off I do the exact steps I'm planning to do every morning:
  • Sit up in my bed, yawn
  • Step out on the floor
  • Stop (not snooze) the alarm
  • Head for the bathroom
  • Get cold water in my face
  • I then go back to bed and repeat
• Now that I've been rising early for a while I'll just pretend that my alarm clock rings (I'm that lazy : ) and go through the rest of the drill.
• But if necessary I'll do a longer one that even includes going downstairs to put on coffee.

Comments and ideas can be sent to @eitland@mstdn.io

[0]: While I call it my drill, I didn't come up with this drill on my own, rather I read about getting up early on Steve Pavlinas blog: – How to Become an Early Riser – How to Become an Early Riser – Part II – How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off

Filed under: #risingearly #life and #lifehacks