Burning Ones

A Short History: Waking Early and Routine.

I was reading this article over on Zen Habits the other day and made the decision to attempt to become an early riser again. I have always struggled mightily with the ability to wake up. Probably due to my propensity to go to sleep late (because I, for some reason, associate late nights with freedom and adulthood, more on this in some other post), I have always woken up in the morning feeling like a ton of bricks had been repeatedly dropped on my head all night. I don’t know what a hangover really feels like (having never had an occasion to get one), but if it’s anything like what I wake up feeling like, it must be terrible.

Months ago, I decided that I wanted to change this. I have always wanted to be an early riser, but I never have been able to truly follow through. I actually believe that God had told me that he wanted me to start waking up early (4:00 AM to be exact). I said, “Great!” assuming that since it was a command from God, he would magically make me wake up every morning and I’d feel great after a night’s sleep for the first time in my life. Well, that didn’t happen. After about a month, I gave up. I simply refused to consistently make decisions to get me in bed on time, and while I still believe God wanted me to wake up at that time, he will not interfere with our free-will in that manner.

So, all of that to say that I’m back at it. Leo’s article inspired me and I decided to go for it. The key tip for me was waking up earlier by slowly making incremental steps backward, rather than attempting to make one huge leap backward. The last time I tried to do this, I literally went from waking up at around 10 and going to sleep around 1 or 2 every night to trying to wake up at 4 and going to sleep at 9 or 10… In One Night! Obviously, this didn’t work (well, it worked for about a week, until going to sleep at midnight and waking up at 4 took it’s toll). Some other tips from that article also up for honorable mention are putting the alarm clock far from your bed, leaving the room as soon as you turn the alarm clock off, allow yourself to sleep earlier, and last but no where near the least, Do Not Let Yourself Rationalize!

Coupling The Desire To Wake Up Early With A New Lack Of Fear For Routine.

Now I’m faced with a decision. How do I get myself to wake up early and still get things that I want to do done. After all, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need no small amount of sleep (curse all of you 5 or 6 hours a night people! ;) ); I’ve got to get a solid 7 or 8 hours every night or I start loosing it. Even at that rate, I still seem to benefit from more sleep in the day. My current answer? Routine. The only way I can see at the moment to guarantee that day after day I’m doing what I want to do is to establish habits in my life that allow me to naturally and effortlessly attain my goals.

For those of you who know me, this is a pretty big deal. I have always been a vocal opponent of habit and routine because I associate it strongly with thoughtless living. I hate thoughtless living. I don’t like what it does to people. Thoughtlessness is what allows people to be in this magnificent journey called life and yet be totally unaware in the moment. Always thinking about the next period of life, never satisfied in the now, never able to appreciate life or situation. I don’t want to live like that.

However, I have decided now that there are two types of habit. For the sake of simplicity we will refer to them as bad and good habits. A bad habit is what I would associate with the above. Generally, they are formed unintentionally by simply doing the same things over and over again. Also, they have a tendency to be things that we would rather not do but have extreme trouble breaking away from specifically because they are formed naturally by what we do without thinking. A good habit, to contrast, is a habit that one forms intentionally to help accomplish a goal in there life. We all have many bad habits; God formed us to be creatures of habit so it’s only natural. However, I find that many people (myself very much included) do not take this and realize that this same facet that can produce so much entrenched evil in their life can be harnessed purposefully for good.

This realization has made me loose my fear of habit. There are still clear dangers (I’ll discuss the ones I know about later), but I believe that they are outweighed by the benefits. And, more pointedly, the very practice of forming a habit in your life gives you practice for how to break habits you don’t like.

How Am I Actually Implementing This Principle Right Now?

Briefly, the main problem I have encountered to date with attempting to create routine in my life is what I term “Variable Days”. Simple concept: My days do not look the same. There is a certain amount of built-in, non-voluntary routine (school Tuesdays and Thursdays. Work Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Prayer meeting Monday Night. etc.) however this is very hard to build a routine around simply because of the length of time the cycle takes to repeat itself. Getting your brain to fall into a routine over the space of a week is much harder to do than creating routine over the space of a day that repeats. So, what I have done is attempt to identify constants over the space of every day that revolve around behavioral triggers. These are events that happen every day that I see as useful hook points for a routine execution. There are three that I’ve identified so far: Waking Up, Getting Home, Going to Sleep. I’ve started with Waking up and Going to Sleep.

I was originally planning on actually telling you all about my routine, but since I suddenly realized that that would qualify easily for TMI and a 10 on the boring scale, I’ve decided to simply describe the structure of the routines. I actually wrote out my routine in NeoOffice Writer and printed a bunch of copies. The actually format is pictured here (along with the actual routine). I then posted those all over the house, especially along my routine route. It was important in the development of the routine that each event naturally flow into the next, i.e. I shouldn’t go to the kitchen, start something there, go back to the room, get something that I could have brought with me in the beginning, and then turn around and go back to the kitchen. I should leave each area ready for the next.

Then, when each trigger event happens (Waking up, 8:00 p.m. hitting), I simply glance at the first item on the list and the next and attempt to go through the motions. As much as possible, I attempt to wean myself from the routine sheet as the brain eventually has to learn how to do this on instinct rather than just because the paper says so.

Conclusion.

I’d have to say that the biggest deterrent I have encountered so far is when I mess up and don’t follow my routine. It’s really easy to get really down on yourself when you don’t follow through, especially because so much of your desired activities are wrapped up in your routine. I don’t know how to get over this at this point, but rest assured I’m being encouraged by my friends and family. Any encouraging comments would be helpful, as well as any thoughts you have about routine in your own life. Is it good, is it bad? Do you have any routines that you wish you could break out of?

Anyway, can’t wait to hear about it!

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