Why Wake Up Early?
I am writing this at 4 am. I don’t always wake up at 4 am, but I wish I did.
There is something about the very early hours of the morning. The extreme quiet, the feeling that the day hasn’t started yet, but it has.
The basic reason to wake up early is that the hours of the early morning are more valuable than the hours in the late evening.
You are more likely to waste your time between 10 pm and 1 am than between 4 am and 7 am. Late at night, you’ll be tired, your self-discipline and willpower may be lower after a full day, and you’re not likely to do actions that are beneficial in the long term.
In the early hours of the morning, this is the perfect time to reflect, plan, exercise, and get your priorities straight.
Waking up very early in itself is an act of discipline, and just being able to accomplish it can already make you feel good and have ripples effects.
There is this concept in decision-making called “The Domino Effect”. It states that some decisions, good or bad, are like dominos, which will then cause you to make further decisions, either good or bad.
By starting the day with a good decision, such as waking up early, we are far more likely to make further good decisions during the rest of the day because we have started the day off correctly.
The other key advantage is that the early hours of the morning tend to be the quiet hours. You may live with other people, and they will likely be sleeping. You’ll need to enjoy being quiet and not making noise, and you can also enjoy the fact that nobody else is going to be making any noise.
The entire world will be quiet, and that is very rare in this increasingly noisy world. Having long stretches of quiet time is a prerequisite for good and clear thinking.
Don’t underestimate the simple actor waking up early. It shows you that you can control your life, and it sets the basis for self-discipline. And with self-discipline, you can accomplish a lot. It’s the basis for any measure of success in life.
Because success is not a one-time occurrence. There is not one day when you are successful — however, you measure that. Success is built by making thousands of small steps in the right direction, and focusing far more on the process than the end goal.
Wake up early, do those ten pushups, reply to that email, take a cold shower, avoid that sugary treat. All those actions, repeated, again and again, day in day out, turn you into that someone that you could be.
And much like a sculptor chipping away at the block of marble that is already in his studio, you already have all the material that is required.
You just need to shape it.
