Dalyn’s Week 3: Morning Hack-A-Thon (Part 2)

I’m realizing that “Morning Hack-A-Thon” might have many, many parts. Becoming a morning person is not easy. This week started out well. I woke up at 5:00 two mornings in a row, and it was great. I had some time to myself. I had the opportunity to spend a little time before the madness of the day with each of the kids to cuddle and talk about what they were going to do that day. There was no yelling. No stress. All love.

But then I had a night where I got maybe 3 hours of sleep. Multiple kids waking up for multiple reasons. A certain five-year-old who slips into my bed almost every night. And grinds his teeth, And kicks the covers off of me. And wedges himself against me. And tosses. Turns. Talks. Sighs.

Two nights in a row now, I’ve gotten about two hours of sleep for the same reason–plus the addition of a feverish 3-year-old. I don’t know how I can become a morning person when my children won’t let me sleep. It seems impossible, frankly.

The straightforward approach clearly didn’t work, so, like Julie, I too signed up for Little Green Dot’s 28 Day Course on “How to Become a Morning Person” and I joined the Facebook Group for participants. I figure if one hack doesn’t work, it’s time to try another approach. And the first email, which I received last night, asked me to visualize my perfect morning. So, welcome to my perfect morning:

1. Wake at 5:00. 2. Brush my teeth. 3. Shower. 4. Get dressed. 5. Drink a glass of water with lemon. 5. Gather my planner, a pad of paper, and a pen. 6. Sit in the picture window. 7. Think about the day to come, focusing on what needs to be done and what I’d like to do. 8. Draft a to-do list that includes at least one thing I’d like to do in addition to the necessities. 9. Go over day in planner to see what is possible to fit in. 10. Add to-do list items to my planner, so there is space carved out to accomplish them. 11. Enjoy the silence. 12. Start water boiling for coffee. 13. Make breakfast. 14. Write until a child wakes up or 6:30. 15. Spend a little time sitting with the kids talking about what they want to do that day. 16. Get on with the day…

Next, I’m supposed to choose one small action I can complete each morning. Something attainable, so I’m going to NOT choose wake up at 5:00 for now. The action I’m going to focus on completing each morning for the next four weeks is drafting my to-do list, so here’s my action statement:

I am becoming a Morning Person so I can draft my to-do list before the madness of our lives takes over for the day.

On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I carpool into work at 5:30, so on those days I’ll push the planning and coffee end everything else back so it happens at work. Since I don’t teach until 8:00, it’s doable without having to get up at 4:30, which just sounds unnatural.
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01.25.15 Update: As this post has been sitting in “Draft” purgatory while I try to find a photo to glam it up a bit, I’ve had some time to reflect on what has been working and what hasn’t. It’s true that I only got up at 5:00 a few times, and this week, with sick kids who are clearly not sleep trained in any way, I got up at 5:00 exactly ZERO times. But, by focusing on my failures, I completely forgot that I did have some successes. After all, my goal was threefold: (1) Wake at 5:00; (2) Be in bed by 10:00; and, (3) Not open buy computer for at least an hour.

Well, I was in bed by 10:00 about 80% of the time.

But even better: I haven’t opened my computer during the first hour of the day once in the past two weeks. And it has been glorious. Yay me!
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Dalyn’s 52 Habits Update:

The Money Challenge is still going. I now have $26 in the jar and I’ve officially embraced the random approach to saving.

The Morning Hack-A-Thon, as noted above, was successful for about 1/3 of the week. Regrouping and trying something new.