18. Take Care of Your Time or You’ll Lose It

To make sure we get off on the right foot today, let me just say that this is not a post to shame you into getting up early. Mornings just happen to work as a good illustration.

Personally, I like to start my day early. Waking up before most of the world does is a habit that’s served me very well, but I hesitate to recommend you do the same unless we go over a few things.

You have to get up and start doing things if you’d like to reap the rewards of being awake. Being awake before everyone else does you no good unless you’re intentionally doing something that you can’t when you’re asleep. It seems obvious, but we need to understand why.

I started by talking about mornings because it’s often when people claim to be tired. Here’s where I’m going: it’s hard to be tired when you’re active, so make sure you’re active. Don’t bother waking up early unless there’s something you’ve got to get to. Find something important to put at the start of your day that will distract you from the idea that you’re tired and it’s early, then continue that pattern until it’s time to sleep again.

The moral of this story is to not give yourself time to be tired. It’s a common trend in 2024 to openly bear the burden of busy schedules, leading us to being tired all the time, but I think we need to do more, not less. Hear me out.