Get More Done in The Morning: Join the Great Early Wake-up Challenge
At the start of the year, I created for myself The Great Early Wake-up Challenge. I’d been trying unsuccessfully to wake up early in the morning for some time and decided I needed to try a different strategy.
Using Paul Graham’s idea that the threat of public and humiliating failure leads to success, I decided to keep a record of my wake-up times on twitter. It’s amazing what a motivator it’s been knowing that people will notice if I get up late — and often send me messages asking why.
I set myself the goal of getting up by 05:15 every day so that I’d have enough time before the day began to work on my most important projects first. It’s not perfect, but I am learning tricks that I plan to post in an article later.
Since starting this project, I’ve gotten several emails from people who wanted to join the challenge and some who have already publicly stated their goals like kasterma, wakeymcwake, amphibios, mrdude1228 , nebopolis & aliented. Given this enthusiasm I’ve decided to make this a public challenge.
Want to wake up earlier and get more done? Then join the Great Early Wake-up Challenge. Here’s what you need to do:
- Make a resolution to change your habit of waking up early and set a goal.
- Create a twitter account (if you don’t have one already) and publicly declare what your wake-up goal is.
- First thing in the morning tweet what time you got out of bed.
- Optional: send me an email or an @reply and let me know you’ve joined. For bonus points, use the hashtag #earlyup so that others can follow your progress and the conversation about waking up early in general.
Get started and good luck!
(Two suggestions from experience: if you’re easily distracted by the shiny things on the Internet, tweet your wake-up time via your phone. If you have the strength to resist the pull of the Internet then use textexpander to make the morning update easier. For example, I type ‘imup’ into twitter and textexpander automatically writes the date, time and #earlyup hashtag for me.)
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Header photograph by prakhar
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I would personally call this the Great Go-To-Bed-Really-Early Challenge, which sounds a *lot* harder…
You’re right — the going to bed is much harder than the getting up.
Alright, I’m taking it on.
..or perhaps ‘The Great Get Less Done In The Evening Challenge’. Why fight your biology? I find the whole concept baffling.
Hey there! Was wondering how the wake up early challenge turned out? I recently turned into a morning riser and it’s incredible! :) For starters, the peace and serenity in the morning are invaluable. In case anyone is interested, I wrote more about my experience turning into an early riser here, as well as the benefits I experienced: http://celestinechua.com/blog/2009/08/why-i-wake-up-early-and-9-reasons-you-should-do-so-too/