A close friend and I were having a conversation the other day. A part of it was about waking up early in the morning that went something like this.
How do you manage to wake up before 630?’
‘I switch off my laptop by 9.’
‘What? Switching off the laptop by that time is BIG!’
‘Yup. I unplug the internet once I’m back from work. That helps.’
I remember looking at the conversation and grinning. It sounded like a conversation that two toddlers might have about finding the discipline of switching off laptops.
I was in half a mind to ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen. But, I thought I’d share simply because this particular challenge was one of my biggest challenges in the past year. It took me about year to get to the discipline of switching off my laptop at a certain time and heading to bed by a certain time. No kidding. And, of course, 100 excuses to myself were downed along the way as well.
In this simple example lies the difficulty of being self directed. It’s very easy to go to bed when you have your Mom goading you to go to bed and threatening you with consequences. It’s very easy to wake up early if your work starts at 6am in the morning.
(Of course, your Mom and your work would be the ‘bad cops’ and you would probably curse them endlessly for putting you through the pain.)
So, what’s the difference, you may ask – I wake up 530am to get up for work and you wake up 530am because you believe it’s the right thing to do.
The end result may not be too different. But, if you’ve managed to get into the habit of managing yourself to be able to do all those things you believe in by exercising your own discipline and will power, I think it makes all the difference in the world.
The basics are not so basic after all.
A Learning a Day 