Not every day is going to be a win. We’ve all experienced this at one point or another. An off workout, a slow run, lack of motivation. It happens. The important thing to do on days like this is quit punching yourself in the face. There’s no need to waste energy beating yourself up. I talked about the mental game in the Day 1 post. That voice in your head telling you to quit shines brightest on days like these.

I woke up this morning with pretty low energy. I didn’t feel motivated to do a run. Rather than giving in to that voice, I took the first step and just got out of bed. For years I hated the mornings. I avoided social interaction until at least 2 cups of coffee, and didn’t really start feeling awake until around 10:00AM. A lot of this was due to poor sleep habits. I would stay up late working on photos when I was shooting weddings, and didn’t usually crawl into bed until after midnight. This habit made the mornings awful.

After I quit doing weddings full time, I didn’t have the editing work to keep me up an night, so I replaced the productivity with hours of YouTube. I found that my ability to stay productive late in the evening deteriorated after about 6:00PM. I was no longer pressured by a deadline to deliver photos, so anything else I wanted to accomplish at night fell by the wayside. I would start working on something productive and after a few minutes I fell back onto YouTube gorging hours of SNL skits and product unboxings of camera gear I could never afford.

I made a change late last year. I decided to give this morning thing a try. I’ve read a lot of articles that highlight the benefits of waking up before the sun and starting the day with a workout. Given my track record of terrible morning habits, I knew this would be a challenge. I started off slow, setting my alarm for 6:00AM for the first week to slowly start to adapt to an earlier schedule. After the first week I slowly adjusted the alarm in 5-10 minute increments every few days until I reached 5:00AM. In my mind 5:00AM was the golden number. It was the pinnacle of productivity. Everything I read said this was the key to optimizing productivity.

I went a few weeks waking up at 5:00AM and doing an early work out. By the time I finished the workout and got ready for the day, I felt like there wasn’t enough time to work on some of the things I wanted to accomplish before starting work. So I started going for earlier mornings. I am not at a wakeup call of 4:40AM. It seems to be the sweet spot for me.

The early mornings mean early evenings as well. I no longer stay up until 11:00PM and start feeling tired by 8:00PM. On the flipside, I feel a boost of energy in the mornings that serves as springboard into my work day. Instead of wasting hours on YouTube, I spend my time brainstorming ideas or writing.

It was a dynamic shift in my routine; a routine I had maintained for years. While this change in habit has been phenomenal for me, there are still days that feel like a loss. And that’s ok. These days plotted on a progress chart are interest points. Remember, these are just snapshots. Today isn’t going to define the journey unless you let it.

Push through today. It may be hard, but it’s worth it.