This morning, I had a glimpse of the habits that it will take to succeed. My morning was very productive and invigorating. This was a step to success.
This may seem odd and trivial at times, but it was very much planned out.
My alarm went off at 5:46am this morning. After a minute or two of clock radio, I hit snooze, which resets the alarm for 9 minutes. I got out of bed at 6am. Stumbled into the bathroom. My joints were stiff, my feet didn’t want to carry weight yet, and my eyes were half shut.
I got into my kitchen at 6:04. I started my laptop, started a pot of coffee, and opened my fridge to pull out some juice, a peach, and a nectarine. I drank a glass of grapefruit juice (the last of the container – I need more), and cut up the peach and nectarine and put the slices on a plate.
I told you there were going to be some trivial bits in here.
It was 6:10 at this point, and I spent 5 minutes stretching. I was determined to be able to touch my toes by the time I was done stretching. Mission accomplished.
While I was stretching, I thought about writing, and tried to figure out what I was going to write about.
At 6:15, I sat down in front of my computer with my sliced fruit and mug of coffee, and fired up my text editor of choice.
In 20 minutes I banged out a blog post about what my 101 Woodblock Series is about, and got it formatted for the web and posted by 6:50.
At this point I put on some shorts and a sweatshirt and left my apartment to move my truck. I was out and about last night, and got home fairly late. I parked in a meter spot the night before and had to find a street parking spot this morning. It took about 15 minutes. This situation only happens about once a week.
I got back in front of my computer around 7:05, and whipped out another post for another of my blogs (written with a pen name) in about 20 minutes. I already had half of the content written for this post, and it took about 20 minutes to get it up and ready to post.
7:25 rolled around, I fired up my email, cleared out my inbox, read a little news, then started to get ready for work. I packed up my lunch and mid-morning breakfast (when I eat breakfast this early I need an early morning breakfast and a mid-morning breakfast), and made it to work about 15 minutes earlier than usual.
So why bore you with these details?
This kind of habit that will lead to being successful.
I have a time management problem. I work 8 hours a day, and when I get home, it is difficult to focus on writing. When I get home, take off my suit and tie, and get some dinner in front of me, I want to relax.
My ability to focus drops significantly after 5pm.
I can’t focus on writing while I am at work, and I usually spend my lunch break exercising.
Mornings are really the best time for me to get my writing done.
I also realize that writing is the limiting factor to the growth of my projects. Every one of my projects revolves around content driven marketing, information products, or something that is written.
Without writing, my projects stagnate.
My goal, then is to create a morning habit of writing. If I can dedicate 1 hour every morning to writing, I will accomplish quite a bit.
Yes, it was deliberate
I actually wrote this schedule out on paper last night. Habits can be difficult to change, so I thought through every bit of my morning, and wrote down what and when I would do.
Seriously. I scheduled waking up and going to the bathroom. I even scheduled hitting the snooze button.
I had the piece of paper with this schedule on it sitting on my nightstand so I could grab it and reference it in the morning.
It worked this morning, and worked pretty well. Two blog posts in a morning’s work makes me pleased.
I’m planning to keep the schedule on my nightstand again tonight, to repeat the process again tomorrow. The real test will be next week, when the momentum of motivation from trying something new decreases.
Anyway, expect updates.