Day 1
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| Colors of the dawn |
Morning. 6:10.
After a few sets of pushups on my yoga mat, I sit on the balcony, trying to put together my thoughts and write.
Thank you Robin Sharma and your "wake up at 5am" advice...
I woke up as close to your 5am as I could - 5:40, hope it counts...
I
made extra effort so everyone in the house stays asleep, unsure how to
explain such an early rise. They say you have to make a choice - tell a
story that can be understood or tell the truth. So what's my story?
Morning exercise? Well, I'm not a morning exercise person... Couldn't
sleep? Not even close to the truth... So, what is the truth? An
experiment on increasing my creativity and productivity, I guess. Sort
of. They say you need 66 days to make it into a habit. Not a chance I'm
able to stick with it. Maybe the results will show today, who knows.
To
sum it up, I can point out few "successes" for today. I did wake up
early, and did exercise, and even wrote this masterpiece. Who knows what
Day 2 will bring.
Day 2
6:10am. Same place.
Yesterday evening I was very tired. Interesting if it's related to an early rise.
Today I felt much less awkward to start the morning routine.
Now as I sit opposite my laptop, my mind is as blank as a piece of paper - I rarely get there even during my meditations. Or am I just sleepy?
Day 3
6.20am Woke up later today...
When
I was a little kid, I used to stay at my grandparents place every day
after school, on holidays and vacations. My grandfather used to do his
morning exercise on the balcony, in his underpants, accompanied by a
vinyl-disk soundtrack. The sound came from a small speaker wrapped in a
plastic bag, in case it rained, with a cord stretching to his room,
where the vinyl player stood proudly in the middle of the working desk.As far as I remember, he was exercising every day mindlessly following the vinyl instructions facing windows from of the whole neighborhood. Even though I'm not standing topless in front of countless windows like my grandfather did, I need to struggle to overcome the awkwardness of this act.
I keep wondering if he felt this and had to fight it like I do, or managed to embrace a "I don't give a damn" attitude like so many older people. And does this come with a certain age, or it's a victory of the endless battle with self. I wish I could ask him now.
Day 4
Woke up only at 6:30 today.Not exactly 5am club, heh? Though I overslept almost an hour, it's still earlier than I would normally wake up. So, it's both a failure and a victory of some sort.
Another little victory for today - for the first time I managed to complete 200 pushups (in several sets).
Day 5
What are the rules for the weekend anyway? It didn't seem reasonable to wake up before 6, if you asked me.Anyway, just for the record, I did a full exercise program, but nothing else. I'm writing this on Day 7.
The faces of the family members clearly showed their surprise at the scene of me doing pushups at 7am on a weekend. The last time something similar had happened was when I started my evening meditation practices; which I still do, though not daily.
Day 6
Still weekend. Woke up after 9am today, no workout.I clearly remember the concept of recovery, when you let your muscles heal and rebuild themselves.
Day 7
Year, TRX was my birthday present 5 years ago, and I admit it was somewhat underused since. When the weather is good, it's hanging on a balcony, as a reminder of me being a couch potato, and my 6-pack yet to be seen.
Luckily I saved the instruction DVD to video files, as except for the XBOX, I don't think there's a single device at home capable of reading a DVD.
Maybe it's time to confess that there's more then one goal to my early morning routine. For one, there's an attempt to increase my productivity and creativity, so passionately pitched by Robin Sharma at every media channel available. Hey, why not, let's give it a try. But besides this, there's another experiment in the making. Few days ago I saw this "what happens if you do 200 pushups for 30 days" video, which I found simple yet impressive. As a 200 pushups routine can easily fit the Robin's formula, these two experiments seem to be destined for one another.
Day 8
Surprisingly yesterday's gym practice was not affected by my morning warmup. As the matter of fact, I really enjoyed it, well, as much as you can enjoy gym anyway.This morning I did a 200 pushups set in 5 nice equal sets. Well done mate!
Day 9 & 10
Don't feel much like writing anything yesterday and today.
Completed the pushups and some TRX. For the remainder of the time watched few MentorBox sessions.
Day 11
Even though I'm sticking with the pushups practice, it's taking me over 30 minutes to complete. Since I'm starting the workout at 6am, there isn't much time for the remainder of the morning routine - both writing and learning.So I find myself on a kind of a cross-road - wake up before 6am, which doesn't seem like a feasible option, cut down on the exercise - not a good option either, at least not before I complete the first month, or cut down on writing or learning - which is what I find myself doing for the last few days.
Days 12 & 13
On day 12 I woke up late and had to run some chores, so I skipped the routine.
On day 13 at 9:30 when I woke up, I forced myself to do the pushups.
Day 14
A small victory for today - I managed to do 50 pushups in a single set. Only once, but I'm still proud of myself, wondering if this number will ever grow further.Day 15
I was too tired and had a gym in the morning, so I skipped the routineDay 16
It's
strange and hard to wake up when it's still dark, yet snooze the alarm,
and the next time it rings it's almost light, snooze again, and it's
just fine. I'd done it almost daily, yet today I dragged myself of the
bed on the first ring.Day 17
Same routine, only woke up later.I'm starting to think and try to recall what was the point of this blog series. A daily progress report? A journal-like morning writing practice? Engaging piece of a daily thought?
Because this doesn't seem to answer any of the above.
Need to sleep over this.
Day 18
I woke up before 6am, but couldn't collect myself to do the exercise or anything else for that matter before I actually had to start the day.Before going to work I did a 20 km morning bicycle ride and watched waves of the Tel Aviv Port crushing at the shore, passed by a kayak group training at the Yarkon river and saw dozens of training joggers, cyclists and yoga groups, as well as electric scooters and bikes hurrying to work.
Day 19
Today is weekend, no work. Woke up at 8am and not finding any suitable excuse, I did a quick and a very hard pushups practice, hardly squeezing 200 reps out of myself. Gosh, isn't it supposed to get easier with time?I guess I'm not the only one reading my posts, as my whole social feed is flooded with pushups equipment. Who knew there is such a thing. Ridiculous. And I bought one. The feed is still flooded though.
Days 20 & 21
Nope, though I went to the gym on day 21Day 22
Today's exercise was a torture. I would happily assign the blame to the yesterday's gym, but I think it's just a general weakness.My reserve to continue with both experiments has also weakened, and it shows. The purpose is less clear, like really - why the heck do I wake up an hour before the norm?
Summary
I'm writing this summary half a year after the last record above.There were several reasons to stop the experiment. For one, I became very tired and both physically and mentally exhausted, which I think also shows in my records above. Second, I became more grumpy at work, which caused few unpleasant incidents. I can't assign a clear connection between my tiredness and grumpiness, but it hasn't happened before nor after this experiment.
Thus my experiement has failed. I didn't stick with neither the pushups nor the early wakeups for long enough to see the positive results of either. At least now I have my (still unused) pushups device.
