Adultescent Living

Photo by Michel Filion

So for anyone that read my post last week, Earlier Rising…Adventures in Waking Up On Time, I challenged myself with a realistic goal of waking up at 6:33 am.  After about a week and a half of trying to do this, I can say I made pretty good progress. 

Here is a breakdown of the times I woke up:

• Monday: 6:42 am
• Tuesday: 6:43 am
• Wednesday: 6:37 am
• Thursday: 7:12 am
• Friday: 6:40 am

So as you can see, I at least made some sort of progress.  Thursday was a bit rough as I had a late night basketball game and was just dog tired in the morning.  For the most part though I was able to will myself out of bed about 20 – 30 minutes earlier than normal.  Maybe by just having the accountability of this blog it really did help out a little bit.

What I Was Able To Accomplish:

• On three of the days, I woke up, threw a sweatshirt on and cleaned up the kitchen.
• On two of the days, I was able to take our dog for a quick walk before leaving for work.
• Made coffee and packed it to go every morning.
• Boiled some eggs to bring for breakfast.
• Read and left some comments on other people’s blogs.
• Threw on my contact lenses a few days (I normally wear glasses just to save the 20 seconds).
• Packed lunch for my girlfriend from last nights leftovers.

As you can see, I was able to do a good number of chores just by waking up 20 minutes early.  It also woke me up a bit more and I felt like I had a bit more energy to start off my day. 

Lessons Learned:

• Not All 5 Minutes Are Created Equal – I took 5 minutes to figure out how to program my coffee maker last Sunday night.  Set everything up so that it starts brewing about 20 minutes before I leave for work.  It was one less thing I had to do in the morning and was just cool to see it turn on by itself (it’s the little things sometimes).  It just seemed as if taking 5 minutes to set something up the night before saved a lot more than 5 minutes in the morning.  I know they are equal in amount, but saving 5 minutes in the morning made a world of difference.
• If I set my alarm a little bit earlier, I can probably wake up closer to 6:30 or even earlier -  I think I have a mental block that just forces me to snooze at least once.  If I set my alarm for 6:20, I can probably get up even earlier. 
• I don’t need to go to bed earlier – I actually went to bed later than normal on a few of the nights and was still able to wake up at a reasonable time. 
• It’s all about getting yourself moving -  Instead of using the bathroom upstairs when I woke up, I went to the downstairs one to force myself to get moving a bit.  I think if I stayed upstairs, the chances of me crawling back into bed might increase.  By getting myself down the stairs, it made it much less appealing to climb back up them for 10 minutes of rest. 

Overall, I was proud of adding 20 – 30 minutes to my morning.  I was up and ready to go with plenty of time.  Most important, I was able to TAKE my time doing mundane morning routines.  I never felt rushed and was actually looking for things to do.  I think if I can add some additional time, I can probably get a lot more done.  So I would say this experiment will definitley carry over for as long as I can maintain it.

Hope you all have great mornings!!