Advice to myself: Get up early. Dumb early. Before five o’clock a.m. early.

Avoid the snooze button. Drink a glass of water. Meditate while the coffee water boils. Then journal. Then screen. Then gym, or run and yoga.

Start every day this way because when I do I ride a high of positive feeling that lasts through the evening. Start every day this way because I am a healthy person with time for everything and when people ask me how I am able to do all of the things, the answer rests in three numbers:

4:40. As in a.m.

Most of the preparation for an early wake-up call is done the night before.

Iron clothes, put out gym outfit, make lunches, grind coffee beans and pour into filters, straighten things up. Make breakfast. Go to bed early. Turn off screens an hour before shut-eye time. Read instead of screen.

Gut out the feeling that being up this early isn’t good for me. I won’t die.

Understand that being up this early isn’t a moral issue. It’s a feeling good issue. It feels bad for the first little bit. Then it’s okay. Then it’s great. The trick is not falling back into bed when my body says WTF this is lunacy fall back into bed.

Revel in three hours when I can do whatever I want because everyone in the world except the excellent people who run my gym and exercise in my gym are sleeping.

I wrote over half of my upcoming novel by pounding out five hundred words every morning before my 5:30 gym time. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t a residency in the forest with faeries bringing me tea while I wrote for hours a day. But it got done.

I lost twenty pounds by exercising for an hour a day before the sun rose for six weeks straight. Combine six days a week of workouts with a no-sugar, no-processed-carbs eating situation, and my body wanted to be fit. It wants to be fit again, I can tell.

Get up early. Make all of my dreams come true.

Journal ideas:

Write about the things you would do with an extra two or three hours in the day. What could you accomplish in fourteen extra hours a week?

Write about your ideal working situation (a forest residency? faeries? tea?). Money is no object. Let your imagination rule.

If becoming a morning person sounds like something you would like to do, what steps could you take to make it happen? What could you set up the night before or over the weekends to make your mornings easier and free your time for creative work or self-care?