Mastering a New Habit - Starting My Day at 05:00AM

I had a false start into the new year, got a stomach virus that put me out for 2 days. Then my spouse had it, and eventually the whole household.

So on the 9th of January I made a promise to myself to make the most of every single day. To start my day at 05:00AM.

The goal of this is to wake up before the rest of the household so that I create that sweet deep focus time to work on my personal projects.

On the 10th of January it was the day 1.

Since the start I have not been fully been able to have 2 hours of deep focus before the rest wakes up.

Some days I took over the youngest between 05:00 & 06:00AM only to find the oldest one to wake up 30 minutes later.

But I also love it if that scenario happens. In that way I get to spent at least 2 full hours with my kids before I start working for my day job.

Here you can find a recap of every day so far.

11th of January: I woke up at 04:48AM, when I made an attempt to leave the sleeping room. The oldest woke up and I stayed in the room until 08:00AM.

12th of January - I woke up late at 05:50AM and took over the youngest.

13th of January - I was downstairs with my youngest at 05:33AM and took care of her.

14th of January - I woke up at 06:00AM and took care of the kids (it was a Sunday).

Today - the 15th of January - I got up at 04:52AM and was downstairs at 05:15AM and had 30 minutes for myself to do some research for my projects before taking over the youngest child.

Today was day 6 of 66. The first few days were hard, but now I think that I am getting the hang of it. It feels like my body is slowly getting used to this new daily routine.

In the evenings around 20:00PM I am literally exhausted and there is only 1 thing that I want to do. To sleep.

In the mornings when the darkness and coldness fill the house, I noticed that I have less friction getting out of my bed. I have less mental struggles fighting my thoughts if I should remain laying in my bed.

I just need to stick to this.

My productivity has stalled in terms of my personal projects but that is alright. I will get back at it after I am settled in this new routine.

In the meantime I have been sticking to my 1 git commit a day - which was not easy though.

Right now my priorities are as follows:

• Family - spending as much quality time with my kids and spouse. To create ever lasting memories while raising them.
• Work - my day job has my main priority. As a father it is my job to provide. And I currently provide with the income from my work.
• Sleep - In order to remain functional throughout the day and not grumpy. I need to sleep at least 6 hours every night.
• Personal Projects - In order to secure the future of my kids and grandchildren. I am building personal projects in my spare time (read early mornings) with the aim of generating online revenue.
• Fitness - I need to remain physically strong in order to take care and protect for my family. Also I want to keep lifting my little girls until they are at least 27 years old.

So from this list I can not budge from the first two as those are the most important aspects of my life where I spent my time on.

I want to spent more time on my personal projects so I am sacrificing my sleep and fitness temporarily in order to gain extra time. I already cut off social media like Instagram and reading the news - as to remain focussed and to keep the ideas flowing in my head when it comes to new projects and the execution of it.

I still have 60 days left in order to create this new habit. Follow me on x.com to follow me in this journey as I will be posting daily updates.

Creating this new daily routine is important to me. As I am slowly changing from a consumer to a creator. I need to have enough time to build projects and try new things out. To fail and improve. Again and again that is the only way for me to succeed.

I must start sowing the seeds now so that I can start reaping and get the benefits from it.

There is no better time to start than now.

It sounds simple. It is. It is just difficult to do.