My phone started ringing at 4:45 a.m. this morning. It was M, calling to ask if I would check to see if he had shut the garage door when leaving for work. He had.
The early morning wake up call provided me the perfect opportunity to try out a recommendation I heard on yesterday’s How to Money podcast with guest, “5am Joel”: the 5 a.m. wake up.
5am Joel is a personal finance blogger and investor who wakes up every morning at 5 a.m. His tag line is Rise Early. Retire Early. Intrigued by the way he described his productive morning time, and already awake, I decided to give it a try.
Granted, it was 5:15 a.m. by the time I peeled myself out of bed for the second time this morning, but I’ll take it.
I made my tea, snuggled up in my favorite chair with a blanket, and read in the quiet. Then I opened up my computer and proceeded to mess around with my blog’s design. Productive? Not entirely, but at least I succeeded in being awake at 5 a.m. and doing something with the early morning hours that I otherwise would not have experienced. When Margaret walked sleepily into the room at 5:48 a.m. I felt at least somewhat successful too, at having used up some hours of the day that are fairly consistently kid-free.
This morning reminded me of the idea of “first fruits,” or the idea that we should put our best first. In church speak, this refers to tithing–giving the first cut back to God. In a way, we can do this with our work too, choosing to do our best work first, ideally when we’re most focused and least likely to be interrupted.
It also brought to mind the economic concept of diminishing returns, aka, the longer you work at something the less productive you’ll be. At some point in time more inputs no longer equal more product produced.
Another way to think of it is that you’ll do more and learn more in the first hour of studying for a test, than in the 10th consecutive hour. As we tire and our focus wanes, it takes more effort to produce the same result of an earlier, more focused time block.
So if I happen to wake up at 5 a.m. the rest of the week, I want to focus on doing my best work first, writing, instead of getting bogged down by easy to do but not as meaningful behind-the-scenes blog work (aka, seemingly urgent, but not important tasks).
Waking up early also helped me get to work early for the first time in, well, a long time. So I suppose there’s some merit to that too.
Waking up early does feel somewhat contrary to my other hopeful habit streak though: not buying McDonald’s iced teas. (Remember when I gave up Diet Coke, and then replaced it with half-sweet iced teas from McDonald’s? As it turns out, trading one addiction for another isn’t always the best choice. So I’m trying to drink unsweetened tea from home to save money and feel better).
In other news, yesterday was a somewhat frustrating day. I attempted to switch blog domains and spent time on the phone and over chat with various customer service representatives (some more helpful than others, though I’m happy to say I remained cool as a cucumber). It’s still a work in progress. The experience taught me that sometimes good (and complicated) things take time, and that if I ever want to hack it as a full-time freelancer, I’m going to have to learn to live without a tech department constantly at the ready.
I spent most of the day at work (about 8am-5pm), then rushed to pick up both kids and take Graydon to basketball (during which Margaret and I shared a sweet half hour holding hands and walking slowly around the track). We got home at 7pm and quickly did the dinner, bath, books, bed rush (with laundry and kitchen clean-up sprinkled in). By 9pm I was thinking again how I wish there was more time in the day… but perhaps 5am Laura is the answer.