Early morning routine

We all have our preferences. Even though I doubt if we are born as early birds or night owls, we definitely could be classified as one or another. As a side note, I believe that our habits make preferences rather than the other way around, but this is not what I want to cover in this post. Today, I want to focus on my own experience of being a morning person and how I either help myself fulfil my aspirations or sabotage my tryings.

I try to wake up every morning around 6 am, then do some coding and jump on my surfboard for at least 45 min before my daughter and I have to start our workday/childcare. It seems simple and easy to maintain in theory but is not that obvious in practice. The first blocker comes when the alarm goes off while it is still dark outside. Knowing that no one expects me to do any early coding makes leaving a cozy bed even harder. Usually, I overcome the hesitations, eat something and start my computer, but I can lose something like 5 to 10 minutes. Not much, but it pushes my development time slightly from the beginning. After the learning and coding session, there comes the time to head to the ocean. It is around 7 am, it might be raining, and there might not be much swell around. It is easy to make excuses or even delude myself that I will get into the water a little bit later during lunchtime or even in the evening. It never works. Once I decide not to go in the morning, my session for the day is most likely gone forever. So with all that hesitations and with always something to finish in my learning/coding, I push my surf session to half-past seven, and I don't have much time to start the day with a proper wave count. So when the time comes, I need to pack my stuff and return to continue my family's duties. It is a hard deadline that I can't push. Not that I didn't try, but it didn't reflect well on my marriage. So my time is over by 9 am, and there is nothing I can do about it. I can try to complain and think it is unfair, but it won't help. It is what it is, and every additional minute during the day that I can spend either in the water or coding Haskell I count as a bonus.

There are a few issues that I try to overcome every day. Firstly, waking up early. Even though I've been doing it for a while, I still struggle with it. Overcoming it gives me a lot of satisfaction, but explaining to myself at 6 am to push the limits is not an easy task. Consistency makes the habit, so I try to wake up despite the urge to sleep and not break the morning routine. One broken window in the building can devastate it in no time, and the same happens to the practices. Once in a while, I make some exceptions. It is acceptable if it is a conscious decision the evening before or even earlier, not the same day, laziness driven. Every time I sleep in, while the evening before, I plan to wake up early, I consider as a failure and try not to make any excuses.

The second problem lies in persistence. On any journey, there are doubts. We think if what we do is worth the effort and should even try. As a software engineer, it is easy to stop trying. We can live a relatively comfortable life with minor effort. We are just clocking in and of every day, making some spaghetti code that somebody else will maintain later and spending the rest of our time on either pleasure or chores. I often struggle to explain to my morning self that there is a reason even to try to grow in the areas that are not strictly related to what gives me value here and now. I've learned to have limited trust in my hot judgment with years of practice. I know that what is in my head at the very moment doesn't have to be valid when I look at it in a week time, so I try to stick to whatever makes more general sense, adjusting my thinking with a larger context. In this case, when I wake up and feel no motivation whatsoever, I explain to myself that it is just momentary downtime that will go away, and the passion will be back very soon. Based on the experience, I can predict what will happen to my mind. Not trusting ourselves sounds weird, but we need to realise that we are not just cold minds but also bodies full of hormones and drivers that we might not even understand.

I consciously have chosen to be a morning person. It helps me to build the skillset beyond software and sport. And the feeling to accomplish something while the whole world is still asleep is priceless.