I Gave Up On Mornings And It Transformed My Life For Good
I used to be a morning person.
12 months ago, as the clock struck midnight, I was sound asleep, often for at least an hour already. My alarm went off before 7 am daily, and by 8 am every day, I would be awake and ready to get on with my day, already having accomplished key tasks, whether that was reading, breakfast, writing, meditating or exercising. Mornings were my time, and I was doing my absolute best to make sure each one was productive to set me up for the day.
After all, otherwise, you’re lazy, right?
During that span of my life, the “morning person” phase, I started and abandoned more projects than I would care to admit. No matter how hard I tried, the only thing that seemed to stick in my morning routine was the groggy haze that accompanied the first half-hour of each day.
There was the interview-style podcast on life after college. 3 episodes recorded, 0 episode published.
The personal website that I paid for, owned the custom domain, wrote one post on, and promptly left stagnant for a full year before not renewing the domain.
The clothing brand that stalled after a logo, a few designs, a simple business plan, and $0 sales. Although never officially being scrapped, it hasn’t seen any action in 2020.
I started many ‘habits’ that didn’t last a full month. Every six weeks, a new project had caught my eye that was going to change my life.
No, actually. Not like the last one. This one will stick.
And they never did. Each project soon gave way to the next in a revolving door of failed ideas and routines that never became habits. No matter what method I used to track my progress or prepare for them the night before, my morning routines just didn’t seem to be working.
So I started experimenting with personal projects at other times of the day, and I discovered something:
It’s not that I can’t build a productive routine, it’s that I can’t build a productive routine in the morning.
I’ve started pushing my projects to the evening, after the rest of my day is over, and it has been leaps and bounds more productive than even my best mornings.
- I’m not battling to stay awake. Even though I often work hours after the clock strikes midnight, I never seem to have the same challenge staying awake as I do in the mornings. This allows me to focus and work so much more efficiently, accomplishing the one thing that makes everything else easier or unnecessary and harkening back to the 80/20 rule discussed a few days ago.
- I have a deadline. I’ve committed to writing a blog post every day. I’ve made this commitment before, but it never impacted my ability to write in the mornings. Now, my writing is the last task I accomplish on most days. That means I can’t procrastinate. If I don’t get it done when I sit down to do it, I’ve failed my goal. I can’t just push it back later in the day. This is later in the day.
- There are zero distractions. There isn’t news that I missed overnight. No one else is up (because my two roommates are early morning risers). And there’s nothing that I’m doing to prepare for the day in competition with my work. My phone could still be a distraction, but I’ve already gotten caught up on all of my social media and texts from the day. There’s nothing more to scroll.
- No more snooze. Because I’m not planning to do anything after I’ve done my writing, I can’t start it late. It may be 10 pm, it may be 1 am. Either way, I’m sitting down to write, and after that, I’m going to bed. I can’t hit snooze and instantly regret it. I can’t turn off this alarm to set another one for 20 minutes from now (yes, I used to do that a lot to steal a longer snooze). I can’t get upset with myself for shutting off my alarm and falling back asleep. I don’t run into any of the morning alarm drama when working at night.
And it’s made an impact. This week, I got my first 50 followers on Medium, and I earned my first payout from the Medium Partners Program.
I’ve started to routinely knock out goals that used to stand in my way and jeer at me, like a mix of Mount Everest and a middle school bully.
I’ve started to actually produce.
And it feels so good.
And with that, I’m done with my tasks for the day. I’m going to bed.
Goodnight.
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