Discomfort Academy #89
Waking Up Early, How to Stop Consuming and Start Creating, and more
Good News Everyone!
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Hey there! These past 2 months have been very eventful:
I’ve never been able to wake up early and have always considered myself a night owl. However I’ve been waking up at 5:30am consistently for more than a month now (I try to go to sleep at 10:15-10:30pm, to give myself around 7 hours of sleep). This has been a game changer and I’m finally able to find time to consistently work on myself and my projects (I’m writing this newsletter now in the morning as well). Waking up early allows me some personal time, so I started meditating (just 10 min) and exercise (10-20 min) which I was not able to do consistently before due to how chaotic the rest of the day often is. I will share more details about how and why in a coming issue of the newsletter.
Due to some health issues (stomach related) I had to stop drinking coffee and tea completely. For now I’ve made a resolution to not drink any coffee and tea for the whole year of 2025. I originally wanted to do it for 3 months but with the encouragement of my wife I increased it to a year. For me, coffee has always been something I couldn’t control – I’m not one of those people who can drink 1 or 2 cups per day; when I start drinking it, it slowly escalates to 7-10 cups (instant coffee with milk, not made by espresso machine) and that leads to gastritis and other issues for me. Even with all these issues, knowing how bad it is for me, I still couldn’t stop drinking it. This change has made it easier to wake up early as I am now feeling sleepy at around 10pm and often fall asleep briefly when reading to my daughter at her bedtime (she then knocks on my arm to wake me up).
Videos
Here’s a video by Ben from DevDuck channel, where he shares some tips on how to make waking up early a habit. These tips have helped me structure my morning so that I’m not dreading it.
I really needed to hear this message from Connor! Hope it helps you to break the cycle of consumption and start creating your own stuff.
Dr. Anna Lembke is an authoritative figure on the subject of dopamine. It’s “the secret sauce” that controls your motivation to actually do the things you want to do. So the more you understand how it works, the more you can fine-tune your strategies for being productive.
Quotes
“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies: for the hardest victory is over self.”
— Aristotle
“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”
— Seneca
“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”
— Proverbs 14:23
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Stay discomfy,
Alex Kallaway
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