Lessons.

The biggest lesson I've learned over the last six weeks is not to make a massive list of shit to do in the morning after waking up at a time your body isn't used to. You see, I had it in my head to go to bed at 23:30 every night without fail and wake up at 07:00. This sounds easy, even if you haven't woken up that early in years (I was a bartender. If you know you know). And in the beginning, I could get up and do everything else on my list of shit to get done over the following two hours.

Get out of bed, and get some sun. You could go for a walk while you're at it (Dr Andrew Huberman). 20 minutes is good, 30 is fantastic, but 60 minutes is best. That equals about 3 miles. Then, when you get home, exercise, of course. If we have learned anything, we should all be getting some kind of exercise, so drop and give me 20. That's 20 push-ups, 20 sit-ups, 20 squats and 20 dips. Now you can rest, but only 60 seconds. Then go again. Rinse and repeat three or four times. This should take about 25 to 30 minutes. Next, you going to do either breath work (Wim Hof) first, then a shower or the other way around; I don't care. Do both in whichever order suits you; the time frame is the same.

This should take you about two hours, so now it's 09:00, and your day can start, write that book and learn that shit you want to learn. You should be done around 16:00; the rest of the day is yours to do with as you will.

Yeah, this didn't work. I just encountered too much resistance (Steven Pressfield). And that resistance compounded into so much more. If one thing on that list up there failed for some reason, everything else after it also failed, and I was unable to get back on that train. It's hard to get on a train that has derailed.

It took some time, but I found a few things I hoped would help; I still need to implement them, but I'll tell you what they are, and I can come back to this issue later if it works or not.

First, If resistance is the issue, I need to find the path of least resistance.

Second, I need to stop drinking as much or altogether.

So, let's start by following the path of least resistance. That would be waking up in the morning. If I have work to do, and I don't mean my own self-employed work but work for other people, then getting out of bed is easy; it always has been because It's not about me, and I'm probably getting paid for it. How can I turn that into something I can use?

I need to reframe my mind into getting up early for the sake of it, not because I have to. But because I want to. How am I going to do this? I hear you ask. I think it comes down to a few things. Going to bed at the same time every night, in this case, 23:30 (11:30pm) and waking up at the same time every morning, 07:00 (7am), which is the problem. So, I need to reinforce the discipline of waking up, and I need to be consistent. That means at 07:00, I get up no matter what, even if I just sit looking out the window for 20 minutes; that's fine, just get up at 07:00. Soon, it'll become a habit. Well, that's the goal, anyway.

Next, drinking. So I've tried to quit a few times with goals like, "Can I give up booze for two months." It worked; that was 5 or 6 years ago. Right now, I am struggling with the not drinking part. It's also making the waking up part worse at the same time. So, getting this under control is the key. I think. So stopping altogether doesn't work right now, so I need to find the path of least resistance and build on that. That discipline could be to drink less. To be able to go out and only drink 'X' amount of beers/Whisky and when I hit that target, stop, go home. Then, lower the amount. I'd be weening myself off drinking. This might take some time, but it'll be the only thing that'll work for me right now.

Most of my friends are in the drinks industry; they're not bad people; I just met them whilst working in the drinks industry.

I think that once my own work picks up and I have deadlines and clients, the drinking will probably fall off quite a bit.