Go to the profile of Todd Brison
Todd Brison
Author of THE CREATIVE’S CURSE. Featured on CNBC, Inc. Magazine, Apple News, and in my kitchen doing dishes. www.toddbrison.com/youtube

Here’s the Big Problem with Thinking You Have to Wake Up Early

We Internet writers don’t talk about this a lot, but here goes:

Nobody can give you a cookie-cutter route to happiness

We can offer you structure.

We can offer you insight.

We can offer you hope.

We cannot offer you a formula.

We cannot offer you a pattern.

We cannot offer you a fulfillment.

That’s why when I read a post called “Just f**cking wake up,” or “Winners Rise Early!” I cringe a little bit.

I get up most* days at 5:30. I don’t do it every day. People who say they can are either freaks or aliens or their wives aren’t as pretty as mine.

But thinking the only time productivity exists is before the sunrise is not only wrong, it’s dangerous.

It’s dangerous because this happens:

  • John reads an article online about how beneficial mornings are, so he decides to make a change.
  • John puts his kids to bed at 8:00, gets the laundry done by 9:00, packs lunches by 10:00, chats with his wife for an hour, and then brightly sets his alarm for 4:30 A.M.
  • Shockingly, when his alarm goes off 5 hours later, John slaps it away.
  • John then wakes up at 6:30 (with all the other mediocre peasants!)
  • John spends the rest of the day upset with himself for not having more willpower. If only he was as strong as the online gurus.

Getting up early is only useful if it offers you one thing:

Margin.

Margin may be the single most freeing word in the universe.

Imagine if you had margin in your relationships. Who would you spend time with?

Margin in your finances. Who could you help?

Margin in your time. How would you enjoy your one precious life?

Margin in your work. How could you change the world?

Matter matters, and it doesn’t matter whether when it comes- 5 A.M. or 11 P.M. or any time in between.

When you have space around the things you “have” to do, life becomes infinitely less stressful. Your choices multiply. Your child-like glee returns.

The ultimate trap is a cage — to be a person who is trapped at a stupid job to pay their stupid student loans for a stupid degree their stupid parents talked them into getting in the first place

Fear the cage. Find the margin.