I’ve written about how I utilise my mornings to do things like Doubling my salary in 5 months, and I wanted to carry on that level of progress. After a month of trying to force it, I was frustrated, exhausted and bored.

What I was doing

I was getting up every morning at 6am with the aim to do 1.5 hours of work before starting my daily job. I would sit down and try to do anything that I classed as making progress.

Why This Failed

There are load of reasons that this failed but here are the main three:

1. I changed my routine

With starting a new job, my routine changed slightly but the biggest change came when I broke my phone. This meant that I no longer had access to Blinkist to listen to a book whilst I had breakfast. To fill the time I turned to Youtube.

Youtube has a lot of amazing content, but it also has an insane amount of crap. Unfortunately that crap often has a great title and a eye catching thumbnail. I ended up getting distracted, watching useless video after useless video and wasting a lot of my mornings.

Because I changed my routine, I often forgot to do my daily bullet journal and weekly reviews. This meant I had no real plan for how to use my 1.5 hours and wasn’t catching my wasted time in my weekly reviews.

2. I had no direction

When I was trying to get y first developer job, I had a very clear goal with defined milestones.

When I was trying to double my salary, I had a very clear goal with defined milestones.

Currently I had no goal and no milestones. With no goal to achieve, I wasn’t delaying any work by watching another Youtube video.

3. I was forcing it

The days that I managed to actually get some work done, I was trying really hard to do really well. I had willpowered my way off Youtube and needed to make up for the days I’d wasted.

I was doing things just so I could feel like I was accomplishing something, not because I wanted to or because it was beneficial.

The Result

After a month of this, I was tired and frustrated. Tired from using my willpower to get some work done and frustrated that the work was crap and that I’d made almost no progress.

What I Did to Turn Things Around

I Chilled out

I decided that forcing progress wasn’t working and I deserved some time off. I still woke up at 6am but I did what I wanted. Watch a few episodes of Brooklyn Nine Nine? Why not! Have a session on Rocket League, Skyrim, or any other game that took my fancy? Sounds Fun! Snooze the alarm until 8am? Sometimes.

Set New Goals

After about 2 weeks of more relaxed mornings, I felt ready to start some work again. This time I knew I had to have a goal, so I sat down and came up with a new main goal.

For me this is to complete the Fast AI Deep Learning course. AI and deep learning is something that has always interested me, it’s a great skill for a developer to have, and there is a possible project at my job where I could use it.

As well as my main goal, I decided that I want to become more consistent with my articles, so I’ve decided to write one article a week. This is deliberately low so it’s easier for me to achieve, keeping motivation levels high. If I write more, even better!

Having a goal means that I know what I’m going to be doing when I get up in the morning, and more importantly, I want to be doing that. This should help me close the Youtube tab and start making progress again.

Restart Journal-ling

This goes along well with setting a new goal. My journal used to be amazing to making sure I knew what I was working on that week and that day. It helped me track progress and see how I was using my time.

It often catches weeks where you spend too much time on one thing as well as keeping you more organised in general.

I got a new phone

This may seem silly but it means that I can listen to Blinkist again, stripping Youtube from my mornings, removing a massive distraction opportunity.

The Aim

These changes will hopefully reignite my passion for progress and reduce the willpower I was using to force myself into work.

I’ll have better organisation of my life and hope to grow personally and professionally.

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