A few years ago when I stopped working as a morning radio DJ / host I told myself I will NEVER wake up early again in my life. OK, now and then, when you travel or for whatever urgent reason I would do it but not as a part of my morning routine. But look at me now! It’s been more than 3 weeks since I started waking up really early.

Too early 😉

Like 4:30 early.

Waking up early to get more of “my time”

Since we have two beautiful little daughters now I was not able to do everything in a day. Ana suggested to me a couple of times that I should start waking up earlier and it was clear to me that this is a great idea and that this could be the solution to my “problem” but I resisted.

I still remember how tired I was feeling every afternoon after waking up at around 4:30 or 4:45 and then doing my radio morning show. I felt dead tired especially at the end of the week.

But this time the feelings are different. Since I started to wake up really early again I noticed a very important difference. When I was still working as a morning DJ I was waking up early to start my radio show. I didn’t have mornings to myself but I was waking up early to wake up other people. But now I wake up to have mornings just for me. Well, most of the time 😉

My morning routine at the moment

I feel so much more alive, motivated and since I manage to walk for a couple of kilometres so early I feel energised. My morning walk is now my morning exercise. My plan is to start running in the morning instead of walking but I was coughing a lot in the previous months and I’m still not well so I’m resisting a bit with running but there are the days that I can’t wait any longer. I want to start running.

At the moment my morning routine goes like this:

• after waking up I almost always have to visit a toilette (a very important detail to share 😉 )
• I make my coffee and pour myself a glass of water
• While enjoying coffee I’m waking up slowly, drink water and usually can’t resist to start brainstorming or planning
• I resist using my phone or any electronic device at this point
• I might read a couple of pages from a current book that I’m reading or I’ll just leave my brain wonder without an agenda (great feeling)
• Sometimes I feel the need to jot down something really fast (I don’t use pen and paper so at this time I would type an idea or two in my Todoist app on my iPhone)
• I go for a 30-45 minute walk (will eventually become a run)
• Most of the time I will not use my phone but if an idea strikes I will pull my iPhone from the pocket and make sure that I don’t forget it – quickly phone goes back to safety 😉
• When I come home I take a long shower and say good morning to my girls that usually wake up by then

I should make a note here that I am totally not the morning person and I never was. It always hurts when an alarm goes off and I always need at least half an hour to start feeling alive. But as now I have two hours or more in the morning just for myself I feel awesome through the day.

I manage to walk for about 5 to 6k steps so early which gives me a nice start, my head clears, my mind doesn’t feel so foggy anymore and I can feel my body, especially my legs are getting a bit of exercise which is nice.

What if I’m not going to sleep soon enough?

Of course to be able to wake up around 4:30 and be able to function through the day you have to hit the pillow a bit early. I try to go to sleep at around 9 or 9:30 most of the days so I’m heading for around 7 hours of sleep or so. But that’s hard as Nola is waking up a lot of times through the night (she is 8 months now) which disturbs my sleep but hey, there’s no other way at the moment.

As I go to different wine tasting events from time to time, because of vinoo.co that I’m working on, I might skip the morning routine or maybe set my alarm an hour or 2 later. I skipped the morning walk maybe 2 to 3 times due to this or I felt just too tired so I slept until 7. But every Monday there is a new week and a new beginning 😉

Stay tuned, I’ll report more. I can already feel that this is bringing a total transformation to me and I recommend it to you to try it out and see if you feel the same.