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There is something special about waking up early each day.<\/p>\n
It is a secret sauce for getting a heck of a lot more done in life.<\/p>\n
Almost 3 weeks ago I decided to change my daily schedule by waking up at 4am each day.<\/p>\n
4am you say?!<\/p>\n
You bet!<\/p>\n
Let me tell you how to do it shortly.<\/p>\n
But first, let me quickly tell you why I have chosen to do this.<\/p>\n
There are literally zero distractions. Your willpower is at its highest. You can focus 100 percent on whatever your biggest goal in life is.<\/p>\n
Think about this:<\/p>\n
If you were to wake up at 4am each day and get in 3 hours of deep, focused, work before most people wake up at around 7am, that totals 21 hours of work a week, 82 hours of work a month, and over 1,000 hours of work for the year.<\/p>\n
1,000 hours of focused, deep work a year is equal to 125x 8hour working days\u2026 but these are not your typical 8hr working days with interruptions, meetings, and breaks. These are 8 hours of FOCUSED, DEEP WORK on your most important goals.<\/p>\n
Taking it a step further, 125x 8 hr working days is equal to working full-time, in a deep and focused state on your most important goals for 25 weeks of the year! That is just shy of 6 months.<\/p>\n
It is crazy how these numbers stack up.<\/p>\n
And all it takes it simply waking up earlier and getting focused on what matters most and being consistent with it.<\/p>\n
Most definitely!<\/p>\n
In the last three weeks I have:<\/p>\n
Just writing the above makes me feel in awe of this process. It is simply amazing the output that can be created when this time stacks up each day.<\/p>\n
But it is not as simple as it sounds\u2026 mostly because I have three young children between the ages of 1 and 5. So, as any parent would understand, trying to stick to a schedule is incredibly hard!<\/p>\n
The mornings are the easy part because everyone is sleeping. The hardest part is getting to sleep on time.<\/em><\/p>\n I need at LEAST 8 hours of sleep each night to perform at my best. So, to wake up at 4am means getting to bed no later than 8pm. But even then, it is impossible to get a full 8 hours of sleep in because my kids are always waking up each night. I have not had a full-night\u2019s sleep for 5 years now, except for the odd occasion when I am away for business travel. Any parents with young children reading this know exactly what I am talking about!<\/p>\n I have only actually woken up at 4am twice during this time (well, one time I got up at 3:57am which was ever better).<\/p>\n To get an 8 hour sleep I really need \u201cbed time\u201d of 8.5 hours, and preferably 9 hours.<\/p>\n Getting to bed at 8pm is tricky. My kids are often still mucking around until 8pm, or sometimes even 8:30pm!<\/p>\n And then there is that time I used to spend with my wife \u2013 after the kids are sleep and before our own sleep. This was our quality time together.\u00a0Going to bed at 8pm took this way.<\/p>\n As a result, I have been tweaking my strategy over the past few weeks and my typical day now looks like:<\/p>\n So, my goal of 4am has only been achieved twice. But that\u2019s ok, because every other day over the past 3 weeks I have been up by 6am at the very latest<\/em>.<\/p>\n This has given me at least<\/em> one hour every day, and probably about 1 hour and 45minutes on average over the past 3 weeks to really focus deeply on these goals.<\/p>\n Even just 1 hour of deep, focused, work a day, will tally up to 45 rock solid 8 hr days with no breaks, which tallies 2 and a half months of full-time work a year. And again, this is time purely on deep, focused, work. Incredible!<\/em><\/p>\n I found it quite simple.<\/p>\n You simply set a strict rule for yourself in terms of your bedtime and wake up time.<\/p>\n Make sure you push all your bed-time rituals forward to meet your deadline. ie, stop drinking caffeine earlier in the day, stop all your screen time earlier than usual, eat earlier if need be, and so forth.<\/p>\n The main thing is to really internalise the benefits of doing this. The primary benefit being that you will get undistracted, highly focused work done on your most important goals in life. Whether that is working on a big project at work, perhaps it is doing your side hustle, or perhaps it is writing your book, or perhaps it is getting your daily exercise in.<\/p>\n Whatever it is, you need to internalise the benefit of doing this and achieving it.<\/p>\n The other thing is to plan the night before what you will do in the morning.<\/p>\n You do not want to wake up, hit your desk, and then use your willpower and waste time trying to figure out what you are going to do.<\/p>\n Instead, have it planned\u2026 know exactly what you are going to do.<\/p>\n Perhaps its that you will write 1,000 words of your book, or that you are going to go for a bicycle ride through the park, or that you are going to research a certain topic.<\/p>\n Having it planned means that within five minutes of waking up, you are focused and doing productive work.<\/p>\n My first 3 weeks have been amazing.<\/p>\n The challenge for me now is to keep this up. I have no intention of stopping this.<\/p>\n I challenge you to experience the magic of the mornings.<\/p>\n This is the time you can really change your life, by working at it every single day.<\/p>\n When you win your mornings, you win the day.<\/p>\n Are you with me?<\/p>\n Brendan<\/p>\n<\/div>\nHere is the reality.<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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How do you do it?<\/strong><\/h2>\n