Project 30 Days: Waking Early: Update 3

Today I’m updating my progress on the Project 30 Days challenge: Waking Early

As a stay at home parent who also trying to build a business, I’ve spent the last three years struggling to make any real inroads. The best I’ve been able to do is to lay a solid foundation.

The workload that goes along with the the role of stay at home dad has been massively inhibiting in terms of my progress.

The problem is that with four children aged between 4 and 10 (1 and 7 years when I first started) it’s non stop work. I didn’t believe how much work there was to running a home until I took over full time.

OK it’s not quite so bad now that my youngest daughter goes to playgroup in the mornings – but finding quality time to do quality work is nigh on impossible unless you do something drastic.

Sadly, my options are pretty limited.

For the most part I’ve been trying to fit in bits and pieces throughout the day and do the bulk of my work in the evening, but time and time again this as proven disastrous.

On the days when the children are not at school (and back when both of my youngest children were at home with me) there is NO chance of getting anything meaningful done and over time this induces stress and leads to bad patterns of behaviour.

One of my biggest regrets is that there are far too many occasions when it’s broken my heart to push the children away as I try to get things done. I’ve been given this marvellous opportunity to spend time with my children when they’re young and in some ways I feel I’ve squandered it.

I can rationalise it now that the business is becoming a success but at heart I know it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Leaving everything to the evening just doesn’t work for me. I end up being physically, mentally and emotionally tired.

The children rarely go straight to sleep, which would be fine if they would just read quietly like everyone else’s children  but they don’t. The two eldest, the boys, like to stage all-in-wrestling competitions and my youngest daughter who has just turned 4, likes to come to the top of the stairs 20 times every evening to tell us what her big sister is or isn’t doing or saying.

I regularly crash past midnight with a ton of things still to do. I go to bed exhausted and ill tempered and I wake up exhausted and ill tempered.

I know I’m not alone and I know it’s the same for everyone, but complaining about and wishing it were different hasn’t made the slightest bit of difference.

What has made a significant difference is waking early. I’m not talking half an hour early, I’m talking waking two or three hours early.

Drastic or what?!

But what a difference it makes.

During the first couple of weeks of this challenge to get up early every day in January, I really struggled. I was trying to get up at 6am but it wasn’t happening. I woke up but went straight back to sleep because I was still crashing my bedtime and I knew I couldn’t make much of the first hour – so it was easy to stay asleep.

Last week I resolved to get up at 4.30 every morning and I’ve done brilliantly.

I’ve managed to do it every weekday morning. At the weekend I slept until 7am as I’ve developed a cold and needed to catch up on the sleep debt. But I’m starting to see that I’ll be able to make this a regular feature.

It’s odd to be awake so early, but I get so much more done.

After about half an hour my brain is awake and capable of fresh thinking. I feel I work twice as fast and that feeling carries through the day.

By the time the rest of the household is ready to wake up I’ve already done the bulk of what I want to achieve for the day. I’m happy and smiling and taking my wife tea and toast in bed. The children’s antics in the morning don’t bother me so much and the mood in the house generally has improved.

The downside is that I feel like falling asleep about 830pm but I’ve been using this time when my brain is fatigued to do chores that will get me ahead of the game for the next day.

Actually there’s another downside… I’ve been eating more and putting on some weight. I can live with that for now as I work on building waking early from short term success into a long term habit.

For me, this has been about making time for myself, time to do things that will make a real difference to my life and my family.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth the effort.

Go ahead and check on the originator of the Project 30 Days, David Wright as he continues his decluttering challenge.

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Tagged as: building a home business, home business, project 30 days, stay at home dad, stay at home parent, waking early