Month #5: Rising and shining
A Year of Monthly Challenges
Last month’s challenge was to wake up earlier and enjoy my mornings. Of the five challenges I’ve completed, it was one of the most enjoyable and eye-opening (heheh). I’ve always admired productive morning people, but never gave myself the structure I needed to start becoming one myself.
Starting the month, I was accustomed to a couple of solid wind-down hours between getting home for the day and falling asleep — hours spent gradually downshifting from browsing Reddit on my laptop, to watching something boring on Netflix, to reading a book in bed. Other than a way to transition from awake to asleep, these activities didn’t really do me any good. I was actively avoiding doing anything stimulating for fear of missing that elusive window of sleepiness. This long transition wasn’t a rewarding type of relaxation; It was more like a way to put off going to bed.
My first step toward waking up earlier was to shortcut the wind-down on the other end. I had to learn to basically go right from getting home to getting in bed with a book. This was pretty hard at first. I was tempted to get on my computer or start scrolling casually through the social medias.
It took me about a week to start enjoying this newly abbreviated routine, but once I was going to bed a bit earlier I immediately started loving my mornings. I now had a couple of hours to myself before even starting to get ready for work. I did stretches. I made eggs. I listened to relaxing music while doing stretches and making eggs. One of my favorite things to do was to open my blinds and avoid turning on any lights. Even though it was dark when my alarm went off, waking up gradually with the sunrise felt like a natural way of easing into the day.
Near the end of the month, I actually started waking up even earlier than dictated by the challenge.
On some days, I worked out before work. This is something I’ve done in the past, but it always felt rushed and jarring. Now I could take my time. It was relaxing and beautiful. One morning, another guy and I had the climbing gym to ourselves with a view of the sunrise over the bay.
Shifting those two-ish hours of awakeness from the night time to the morning made my days feel much longer and more full. I noticed that, even though I was going to bed earlier, I was falling asleep noticeably faster than I had been before. I attribute this to some combination of a) going to bed when I actually felt sleepy (rather than pushing through and getting a second wind) and b) the fact that I was literally doing more in a day, so I was more tired around bedtime.
This is one habit that I definitely want to hang on to if I can.
Month #6: Read three articles every day
I read a lot of headlines — in fact, I read just about whatever headlines are put in front of my face. This allows me to maintain a surface-level awareness of a bunch of different things of other people’s choosing. This is fine. I can’t spend time reading everything that comes my way. However, I do want to make a point of seeking out and reading more articles about topics I’m especially interested in understanding better.
This month, I’m going to read three articles per day. Three per day doesn’t sound like many, but I’m looking for consistency over volume. With one comes the other.
After each article, I’ll jot down a few takeaways, in order to hold myself accountable. By the end of the month I should have notes on at least 93 articles. Let’s see how it goes!
Next blog entry to be posted on April 1st.
