Daily blog #32

Do early birds actually get the worms?

In Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers he quotes a Chines proverb- “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”. To give some context that quote comes from a rice farming area in China. It is extremely tedious work and requires every second of daylight there is, success for the rice farmer spells out life or death for the them and their family. We all know people who “just aren’t a morning person”, or maybe you are that person.

It is not to say that waking up early and working a hard, long day is the only way to accumulating wealth nowadays but it is a good start, especially if you are not exceptional in an area (exceptional meaning people will pay you handsomely for your skill or service). Few ways are as time tested as the good old-fashioned “get up early and get a job method”.. It’s no secret that the majority of successful people are early risers yet it’s often you meet a young dreamer who just can’t do it. That person was me, I used to get up only in time for my first appointment. Because waking up early was never a habit for me, it never became a skill, nowadays it’s a point of pride.

If I was jobless tomorrow, I know the competition for the early shift is going to be the slimmest. As an experiment, consider each day of rising past dawn a sleep in, then start to see how many days out out the year you are “sleeping in”. Now if you have one day a week that’s already 52 days a year. If you sleep in half the year, you have some work to do. When you making waking up early a habit you will be amazed at the person you become when you are able get up as early as you want and start getting things done while others sleep. Say goodbye to the late night distractions and junk food and hello to productivity.