How I Prime My Day

I've been setting my alarm for 4am for the past three weeks. My 11-month-old doesn't wake up until 7, which means I have three hours that are completely mine.

The apartment is quiet, the city is still mostly asleep, and nobody needs anything from me yet.

Here's what's weird though - I've started looking forward to these stupid early mornings. Not for meditation or journaling or any of that stuff. I spend the time reading newsletters, learning, basically getting a head start on my day before it officially begins.

Three things I've learned about early morning discipline:

1. Your brain actually works better Usually when I try to read or learn during the day, I'm distracted by work or checking my phone between meetings. At 4am? I can actually focus. No notifications, no decisions about what to make for breakfast, no wondering if I should be doing something else instead.

2. You get ahead of everyone else By the time most people are checking their phones and seeing the latest news or developments, I've already processed whatever I needed to process. It's like having a three-hour head start on every conversation.

3. The consistency compounds When you're consistently putting in time to learn or work on things that matter to you, it adds up fast. Three weeks of this routine and I feel like I understand more about what's happening in my field than I did after months of trying to squeeze learning into random moments.

The specific stuff doesn't matter as much as just showing up. Some mornings I'm reading about AI tools. Other days I'm editing photos or writing. The point is having time that belongs entirely to me before the world starts asking for things.

This blog is going to document some of that process - the things I'm learning, the projects I'm working on, and how all of this fits together and raising a tiny human who thinks everything is a potential snack.

No grand plan here. Just showing up and staying disciplined.