Tricking the dumb morning man

Matt Blair
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

“I understand there’s a guy inside me,” Anthony Bourdain once said, “who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy.”

If I’ve had to learn one lesson again and again, it’s that I need to trick myself into doing what I want to get done. The “late night” version of me is full of ambition, and the “early morning” version of me would rather go back to bed.

To be fair, my “late night” version is at his most ambitious when he’s more than a little bit drunk. Meanwhile, it’s my “early morning” version who’s got to pay the bill. You can surely understand why resentment would override motivation in that particularly disastrous relationship.

But if Late Night Matt and Early Morning Matt have one thing in common, it’s that they’re basically dumb beasts. Give the latter the option of going back to bed, and he’ll take it, not knowing that any better option is available.

This morning, I finally managed to trick him. I had to plan ahead, but I did it. I’m now in the second of twelve weeks of training for a marathon. There’s no way I’m going to cross that finish line unless I drag his lazy ass across it.

Before I went to bed last night, I wrote down the steps I needed to take to get on the road and pound out a few kilometres. I dumbed it down, and I make no apologies. It was “drink a glass of water” here, “put on your shorts” there.

And you know what? Early Morning Matt rolled out of bed knowing that he had a simple set of instructions to follow. And before he knew what was happening, he was on his second of five kilometres. He was all “What?”

I saved the list, of course, and I’ve learned from its successes and failures. Before I head to bed tonight, I’ll figure out how to point tomorrow morning’s dumb beast in a better direction. I’m intrigued to see what he can do when given the proper support.

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