When I first began this adventure into woodworking, I utilized the 1.5-2 hour naptimes that my kids took on the weekends to work on my projects. This worked well since it wasn’t taking time away from the little ones or leaving my husband to fly solo too often. This was going well until life started getting in the way as it usually will. First there were weekend trips out of town or projects around the house that my husband and I needed to do during their naptimes. There was even a period this past winter when we took up brewing beer during their naptime (and quite a bit past their naptime).
The real kicker was the change in the naptime. My then almost-four-year-old began taking shorter naps and some weekend days no nap at all. I was three months or into my toy storage project when I told myself this is enough. I needed to find or set aside time more regularly to finish projects- especially since the projects I’m doing now could easily be done in a weekend or two. My husband recommended I start getting up early like he was to get things accomplished before the kids woke up. The problem that I saw with this is that I love sleep. When Juan met me, I was sleeping 10 hours most nights just because I could and what’s better than a warm bed in the winter?
Anyway, a couple mornings later, as I lay there, already awake as I was most mornings listening to him get ready, I decided to just get up. I didn’t go out to the garage that morning but instead got caught up on some notes for my private practice. I felt great all day! So accomplished! I had just finished The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg so I knew to be skeptical about this change since it was likely I’d be back to sleeping in within a few mornings if not tomorrow morning.
Luckily for me, as my theory goes, I started listening to Atomic Habits by James Clear that week. In one of his earlier chapters when he is explaining atomic habits, he discussed the compounding effects of our actions. While the 15 minutes of work you do today may not seem like it matters much, it does if you continue to do 15 minutes every day. And that the 15 minutes you do today is 15 minutes that you free up for yourself tomorrow to do more things, be more productive, accomplish more, etc. These ideas played in my head the first few mornings that I went out to the garage to work. Even if I was only able to get out there for 30 minutes before my husband left for work (an amount of time that I had previously been telling myself wasn’t even worth going out there), it was 30 minutes more time I had tomorrow to work on the next step. My project began moving along quickly.
I waited to write about getting up earlier for a month now since I wanted to see if it would stick first. It has so far, and I’m happy to say that I finished my project this past weekend! While getting up earlier is far from being a habit, let’s hope it continues.