Improving your sleep

Forget about getting up insanely early every morning.  How much time we have in the mornings is far less important than how we spend the time we do have.

Good sleep makes everything better. It’s extremely hard to do cognitively-demanding and creative work when we’re sleep-deprived. 

Low energy, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, irritability, and poor motivation can all come directly from poor sleep, especially consistently poor sleep.

Psychologically, by doing all the things that go along with showering like combing your hair, brushing your teeth, getting dressed, etc., you’re communicating to your brain in no uncertain terms that it’s time to go and get started with the day.

Reduce the number of decisions and tasks you have to do each morning in between waking up and doing your work:

• Decide on and lay out your clothes for the following day the evening before and gather all other pieces of stuff you need (supplies, equipment).
• Make ...

Don't rely on willpower. The smarter way to tackle the morning is to build routines and rituals that pull us out of bed and toward our goals.

Create a pre-work morning routine that’s rewarding and enjoyable. For example: go to your favorite shop and grab a coffee on your way.

In addition to hurting the quality of your sleep, snoozing is detrimental psychologically: it leads to an erosion of self-confidence and the ability to follow through on our own best intentions and goals.

Working for extended periods with full concentration and no distractions, on a single task requires:

• Knowing the day before what exactly you’re going to be working on during your Deep Work hour.
• Putting your phone somewhere out of sight and earshot while you’re do...

The magnitude of the reward isn’t very important; it’s the ritual of the reward that matters. So it’s enough to do something small as long as it signifies that you’ve completed your​ task.

• Routines drastically reduce the amount of logistical and psychological friction in between us and our goals.
• Good routines are also powerful motivation generators. In addition to cutting down on morning friction, good routines can become sustainable sources of motivatio...

• Get a monthly calendar.
• At the top of the calendar note the task or action you’re tracking. 
• Each morning after you’ve completed the task, put a big X or some kind of mark through that day.
• Try to go as many days as possible without “breaking the streak.”
• If y...