

How to Wake Up and Instantly Achieve Something Everyday - tonyvt2005
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/how-to-wake-up-and-instantly-achieve-something-everyday.html#comments

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enomar
While I agree this is article is pretty fluffy, don't just discount the idea.
Don't knock it until you try it...

Most people waste a lot time in the morning building up enough courage (or
guilt) to start their real work. They check email, read blogs, chat around the
water cooler...whatever. All that stuff can wait until you actually need a
break. Personally, when I jump right in and start writing code, it has a huge
impact on my productivity for the day.

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jack7890
Cliffsnotes: The secret to doing something instantly when you wake up is doing
it...instantly...when you wake up. Hardly groundbreaking.

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Bluem00
I have a morning ritual that involves an hour of preparation before doing
anything else on a given day. I'd never even considered the proposal in this
article, and I suspect others haven't either. As I can think of several
situations in which I might try it out, I'm glad he wrote the article.

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TheSOB88
Morning ritual? You mean like shower, brush teeth, all that? Seems like an
hour would be a bit long for that sort of thing.

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logic
My goal is to wake up, rather than smashing my poor little alarm clock into
pieces when it goes off. I achieve that goal most of the time, a fact my
employer is quite grateful for.

Agreed about the lack of substance here. This is a fluff piece.

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bep
My goal is to wake up, rather than set my alarm clock in snooze mode. I fail
that goal most of the time, a fact that my roommate (ie my mother) is not
grateful for.

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dws
Written by a morning person. However, research shows that night owls get more
things done.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5208608/Night-o...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5208608/Night-
owls-can-work-longer-than-early-birds-scientists-find.html)

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jordyhoyt
Almost 100% fluff, though I feel like it could be a decent idea in practice. I
can see the value in the self-esteem boost and the feeling of accomplishment
early, since the rest of the day may have no such feelings.

Instead of achieving the most important goal of every day before putting on
some clothes, perhaps a small, bite-sized task before anything else would be
more practical. I can't see myself achieving my important goals for every day
before eating anything, as most of those goals take hours, and I like
breakfast.

Personally, I'd like to try this with a goal I've been consistently failing
on: reading a bit and writing out my thoughts on what I have read. Small,
fulfilling, and something I will wake up, excited to do.

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tjic
My big task for the last 3 weeks has been to rewrite and merge the credit card
charging engine in three separate codebases at work.

This is a pretty huge task - multiple migrations, special one-time pushes of
data from database 1 to 2, scores of test suites, rewriting and merging
models, etc.

My secret:

* wake up

* cook three eggs for breakfast

* walk the dogs 1 mile around the reservoir

* drive 1.9 miles to work

* work for 10 hours

I think that steps 1-4 don't really hamper my ability to do step 5.

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comatose_kid
My 5 year old daughter wakes up instantly at about 6:15AM. And her first
achievement every morning is to get her dad out of bed with a smile. :)

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charlesju
This sounds like a good way to ruin your sleep thinking about the goal you
want to do in the morning. Anyone else feel that way?

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edw519
I feel exactly the opposite. I _want_ to think about it while I'm sleeping.
The more I review the closer to bedtime, the easier it is to work on the next
day.

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edw519
Buried in the middle of the copy is the dirty little secret:

"This needs to be done the night before."

I've been doing this part for years and it has really made a difference. It
only takes 15 to 30 minutes, but I review hard copy every night just before
lights out. I always know the first thing I'll be working on the next day.

I don't go to OP's extreme by doing the first thing before anything else. But
maybe I should. I could easily get this first hour of work in before anything
else. I may give this a try next week to see how much difference it makes
overall. Stay tuned...

