Early risers have long been hailed as smarter, more successful, and wildly ambitious. "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," Benjamin Franklin once said. The most lauded of CEOs-PepsiCo's now former chief executive Indra Nooyi and Apple's Tim Cook, for example-spring out of bed no later than 4:30 a.m.
About 1 in 2 people have relatively “normal” sleeping habits; they function most optimally when they don’t stay up too late or wake up too early and stick to a consistent sleep schedule.
Waking up early, getting out of bed and starting the day has, for some reason, become the ultimate challenge for so many people. Yet, waking up early is one of the best things you can do. Why? I hear you ask. For a start, early mornings are the most beautiful time of the day.
The endorphins that you get as a result of exercising work wonders for your mind.
Researchers have shown that exercising improves overall brain function, long-term memory, and information processing skills.
"Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time." - Mark Twain I've learned a lot about changing habits in the last 2 1/2 years, from quitting smoking to taking up running and GTD and vegetarianism and waking early and all that.
No matter how much enthusiasm we have for the goals, taking on even just two habits at once is setting ourselves up for failure, because greatly increases the difficulty of sticking to it.
Pick only one habit to change and devote all of your energy to that, and once it’s on autopilot, move on to the next one.