tl;dr Be honest about what’s working. Change what isn’t. Stop holding on to the idea of who you used to be (or who you’re supposed to be).
I set a 5 a.m. alarm for years. I haven’t actually woken up at 5 a.m. since Madeline was born.
I know because I write it down. I keep a daily journal in Roam, and going through it, the same note is sitting there on page after page:
Tried for 5:00, snoozed. Up at 6:30.
Tried for 5:00, snoozed. Go to bed earlier.
Went to bed at 10 pm. Still snoozed.
I’ve tried to work the problem. I tried solving it with more alarms: a sunlight alarm, my Nintendo Alarmo, and my phone.
I worked the problem on the evening side, trying to figure out what I could change at night to make the morning happen.
Side note: this is the right diagnosis, by the way. It really is just about getting to bed on time. But then I start reading the Red Rising series or watching From or rewatching Normal People. Or I just want “one more prompt,” and that turns into 23 turns and me shouting at ChatGPT or Perplexity to just do the stupid thing so I can go to bed.
I just couldn’t make it happen. And to be fair to myself, there are a dozen extenuating factors that seemingly pop up like real whack-a-mole: Theodore is sick, Oliver has a nosebleed, Annabel can’t sleep, the kids get lice. Then we’re triaging something, and going to bed on time is a nice idea we’ll get to when everyone’s in college.
Yet still I held onto this 5 am goal and told myself it was a discipline problem, because I’m attached to being a person who gets up at 5. That’s the guy I’ve been, and it’s this weird part of my identity I’m oddly attached to, like black coffee drinkers or non-alcoholics who “don’t need to drink to have a good time.”
I wanted to make 5 a.m. work because I’m a guy who wakes up at 5 a.m.
Except right now, I’m not. Right now, I’m tired. And I want to sleep.
So, like my favorite Disney movie about how buried family trauma leads to isolating the people who love you the most, I’ve let it go. I’m getting up at 6 a.m. I moved the goal posts and made it easier to actually get up without constantly snoozing.
What’s hard to reconcile is “make it easier” is a hairsbreadth away from “quit if it’s hard.”
What separates them is: what are you optimizing for?
I’m optimizing for getting as much done as I can with the hours I have. Getting up at 5 a.m., before anyone was awake and before my chipmunk brain would rebel against itself from all the external stimuli, was one input, one tool to do that.
When a tool stops working, be honest about it. Pick a different one. Swapping tools is not quitting on a goal.
And getting up later isn’t forever, either. When Madeline is older and sleeping in her own room, and when all the kids are older, I’ll probably move it back. This reflects the current state of the union, not a permanent downgrade.
⭐ Recommendations
🔌 What else I’m working on
- 🏫 The Philly School Guide. I built a free, plain-English guide to how school selection works in Philadelphia: Find Your Fit, the lottery, the criteria schools, the calendar, and what’s changing this year. If you’re a Philly parent, or you know one currently drowning in this, it’s here.
📺 Watching
- ⛵ The Odyssey, in IMAX 70mm. Went with Andrew in early August and loved it. Saw it in 70mm which was cool. Not a perfect movie (the lighting pissed me off at times) but really spectacular.
📖 Reading
- 📕 The Red Rising series by Pierce Brown. Sci-fi set in a brutal, color-coded caste society spread across the solar system. My mom bought these for me and I’ve blown through all six since May and finished Light Bringer this month. I’ve become pretty insufferable talking about it.
⚒️ Doing
- 🎙️ ChatGPT voice mode. I started using it to practice Cantonese and it’s like Duolingo on crack. (Disclosure: OpenAI is a client.)
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