Early morning routine

We all have our preferences. Even though I doubt that we are born as early birds or night owls, we can definitely be classified as one or the other. 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 efforts.

I try to wake up every morning around 6 am, then do some coding and jump on my surfboard for at least 45 minutes before my daughter and I have to start our workday/childcare. It seems simple and easy to maintain in theory, but it is not that obvious in practice. The first blocker occurs when the alarm sounds 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 my hesitations, eat something, and start my computer, but I can lose 5 to 10 minutes. Not much, but it pushes my development time slightly from the beginning. After the learning and coding session, it’s 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 into thinking that I will get into the water a little 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 those 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.

I encounter several challenges that I strive 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. Occasionally, I make exceptions. It is acceptable if it is a conscious decision, made the evening before or even earlier, but not on the same day, and not driven by laziness. Every time I sleep in, even though I had planned to wake up early the previous evening, I consider it 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 if we 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 out every day, creating 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 judgment over the years. 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, 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 remind myself that it is just a momentary downtime that will pass, and my passion will return 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 have consciously chosen to be a morning person. It helps me build a skillset beyond software and sports. And the feeling of accomplishing something while the whole world is still asleep is priceless.