How to start getting up at 5 am and start a startup

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Every morning, Min H. Park looked like this: getting up at 7 am, a shower in which he fell asleep, getting dressed, a cup of coffee and a painful journey to a crowded bus stop among the same sleepy zombies. He was not going to live like this all his life, so he learned to get up at 5 in the morning and created his own startup. Do you want the same? Read the translation of his article!

The last thing you want to do after an 8 hour day is work on your startup. But if you do not do this, if you do not open your own business, you will find yourself in an endless cycle of working for someone. And you will be forced to adjust to corporate rules, climb the career ladder and rush to the office by 9:00 every morning.

How to learn to wake up at 5 am

I decided to get up at 5 a.m. and do my startup before the juice-sucking workday in the office begins. I decided to become an early riser, but found that my morning zombie brain cleverly tricks me and overcomes all obstacles just to get some more sleep. On those happy days when I managed to get out of bed, I just sat and stared at one point.

Productivity blogs look easy, they constantly bombard you with examples of amazing feats that mythical people perform in the morning: “8 things everyone should do before 8 am”, “7 things that early risers do differently”, “Why productive people get up early”… Reading about the achievements of these superheroes, who manage to save the world a couple of times before 8 am, you feel guilty for oversleeping again. Are they people at all?

For example, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, gets up at 5:30, meditates, runs 9.5 km, and then works for about 8 hours on Twitter and Square.

The truth is, waking up at 5am is hell. Morning you are the enemy of your undertakings. This is your second person, who sneakily turns off the alarm before important morning meetings and constantly presses the "Snooze" button on it so that you miss the train. You cannot trust the morning demon, but you can overcome it by changing the usual wake-up pattern in the morning.

Find an alarm clock that's smarter than you

I do not know where this tradition came from - to jump up to the deafening ringing of the alarm clock, but for some reason we are quite satisfied with this every morning shock therapy. Instead of voluntarily being attacked by a wildly screaming alarm clock every morning, find one that gradually and gently wakes you up. A slow awakening allows your body to accept the fact that you are waking up. And when your brain really wakes up, you will no longer have an obsessive desire to crack the hated squeaker.

You can use an alarm clock that brews coffee at the appointed hour and wakes you up with aroma. Or an alarm clock that glows softly to simulate dawn. It seems to the body that the sun is rising, and it is easier to wake up.

Or try a smart wristband alarm. It will wake you up with a vibration on your wrist during your REM sleep cycle, but it won't disturb your partner, and they won't have the urge to kill you for getting up early. By the way, a cat, dog or a child also helps a lot to wake up, which at 5 in the morning may decide to look like your face.

Personally, I use the Warmly app along with a standard smartphone alarm. Warmly slowly wakes me up with a 5-minute chirping of birds, and finally I wake up to the vibrating sound of Yo-Yo Ma's cello. Outsmart your morning demon by starting with an alarm clock.

Establish a long distance relationship with the alarm clock

Developing good habits is not rocket science; it can be learned quickly. A simple strategy for building good habits and breaking bad ones is to set affordances.

In design, we create affordances when we want the user to take an action. This encourages desired behavior (making it easier for the user) and discourages unwanted behavior (which is difficult to accomplish).

If you need to get into the habit of not turning off your alarm in the morning, create many obstacles in the way of turning it off. Set up a few alarms, download an alarm clock on your smartphone that doesn't stop ringing until you solve the puzzle, put your phone in the jar and close it. I want to fall asleep in an embrace with a smartphone, and when I wake up, I want to look at social networks. But if I decided to get up early, I'll have to put it away.

Force yourself to drink coffee

Those who survived the fight with the pillow, pulled away from it and even, it seems, woke up, another problem awaits: you want to go to bed again. You are still so young, there is a lot of time ahead, so why not get up early tomorrow? Oh, every day I hear that voice tempting me to go back to bed. Morning me is a terrible type. So let's get some caffeine in.

You can prepare coffee the way you normally would. Get up, put coffee in the coffee maker or put the kettle on to brew instant coffee. But be prepared for the fact that your morning monster will not let you reach the kitchen. His goal is to get you back to bed with all his might, and he will ignore your attempts to get to an invigorating drink.

Coffee needs to be integrated into your awakening process. The goal is to make the alarm clock a switch on the coffee habit. The alarm is ringing - you are drinking coffee. Experiment with automating the brewing process.

Initially, I tried to start brewing coffee when the alarm went off. But I didn't get to the kitchen. Then I tried to make coffee at night and put it on my desk. But I didn't get to the table. Eventually I started putting a cup of coffee on my smartphone. That is, to turn off the alarm, I had to remove the cup. And when the coffee is already in hand, not drinking it is completely weak-willed. Make 5 a.m. the start of your day, drink coffee, and start your startup.

By the way, here's another easy way to get up early: Twitter is here. With help, schedule this tweet in the morning: “I want to get up at 5 am. If you see this tweet and reply to it within 5 minutes, I will send you 100 rubles. Schedule a tweet for 5:15 am. You will have 15 minutes to get up and cancel it, otherwise you will have to pay off the nimble lucky ones.

Procrastinate to wake up

Still not awake? A little bit of procrastination won't hurt anyone. And ignore all of the self-taught productivity tips from the internet.

I spend an absurd amount of time looking at funny cats on Reddit, Imgur and 9GAG. Over and over again I refresh the pages, hoping to see something new there. Although I know that nothing fresh has appeared there.

Looking at funny pictures before bed, you earn insomnia, looking at them in the morning - helping yourself to wake up.

Looking at your smartphone or computer screen first thing in the morning will really help you wake up. The blue glow of LED screens affects the melanopsin photopigment, which leads to the suppression of melatonin production, and as a result, the feeling of drowsiness disappears.

If you can't jump into a startup right in the morning, spend some time playing on your smartphone or computer until your morning demons calm down.

How to create your startup

Divide the project into several micro-projects

And so I conquered myself and stood up. And I don't want to start the day by fixing a server error. I'm dull in the morning. And a difficult task is an additional incentive to climb back into the crib.

Do you know why all these do not work? 88% of people do not reach them, because it is unrealistic to raise the bar. "I want to defeat hunger in the world", "I will pump up abs" (although I have never been to the gym since school days). This is not a Miss Universe contest, why splurge?

The Art of Manliness magazine explores how microhabits line up into one big change. The goal is not to get a big chunk of work done for the startup in the morning, but to at least start doing something. Once you start your engine, it will be easier for you to get down to serious business.

If you want to get into the habit of flossing your teeth, start brushing just one tooth. Just one tooth is your goal for the day. Cleaned up - cross the case off the list. But here's the trick: When this micro-habit comes into use, it’s hard not to finish the job.

Break your project down into micro-steps that you can take half asleep in the morning. Develop your application by writing one line of code a day. Write to the blog one paragraph at a time. Add one sketch per day to your portfolio. You’re more likely to build your business by incrementing a little each day, rather than trying to set aside a full-time job for it. And once you're close to starting a startup, you won't sleep in the morning.

Build a Lean Startup

It's hard to believe, but at first no one really understands how the project should turn out. Even today's monsters have spent a lot of time to feel the ground under their feet. Airbnb survived by selling Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s flakes with political leaders painted on the packages. Slack grew out of the failed game Glitch. Even YouTube started out as the Tune in Hook Up video dating service.

Micro-startups work well with the Lean Startup methodology (read about this in Eric Ries's book ""). A micro startup is easier to launch and provides a short feedback loop so you can stay in touch with your audience. Given that 75% of startups fail, would you rather sit in the basement for 100 days inventing something your audience might like, or keep in touch with users to tailor the project to their needs?

Always assume that you are wrong. Test all your ideas and guesses with micro experiments.

When I started, I explained the functionality of the service like this: "Annotation blogging platform." And after a while I realized that most people have no idea what "annotation" means. We tried Smart Blogging, Highlight Blogging, Feedback Blogging, and Contextual Blogging Platform. And here's the surprise: people still didn't understand what we mean. Then we added the phrase "Highlight text and add a comment to the selected piece" under the heading …

Test your hypotheses.

Submit your work

We all have an irrational fear that as soon as we present our project, the trolls around the world will unite to shower us with dislikes. The truth is, they don't care. There are so many things happening in the world every day that you will have to try to get noticed. This is not an easy task, you need to really stand out.

If you can't even get up early and start your startup, then why do you already care if the public will like it? It's like worrying that you might become a Harvard professor if you study too much. If you have been suffering with your masterpiece for a long time, then presenting it to the public will help you finally get up earlier and finish it.

Blog the project daily

The blog will come in handy in any case for the subsequent promotion of the project. If, even before launching, you start recording what is happening with your startup on a daily basis, then here's how it will help:

1. As I write this post, I am discussing the progress of my project. How to improve engagement with your audience? Should you ditch the WordPress commenting system and switch to Disqus? What tasks can I automate? And have I gone crazy starting my own business?
2. Niche blogging takes time and it takes at least 1,000 short articles to start getting organic traffic from Google. The daily entries in the project journal will form the basis of the blog.

I blog TechMob on my Krown platform, it is located in a subdomain, hence every post promotes my blogging platform.

Get ready to run a marathon

At about 7 am you will have to switch to your main job - 5 days a week for 8 hours. Of course, I would like to devote all my time to a startup, but, unfortunately, people are in a biological trap: we need to eat, drink and sleep with other people. Damn you, Darwin!

Be sensible. Don't put your whole life on the line in a game of poker. Put some of your assets in a game that may change your life, but keep working in the casino itself. It takes time for a startup to grow, and you need to eat something.

Based on the barbell theory from Nassim Taleb's book "", you should devote 20% of your resources to high-risk, high-return activities (startups, bungee jumping), and invest 80% in low-risk activities: school, daily work, family meals. Get the best experience from both worlds. Start a startup as a side activity, make sure your hypotheses are correct, and then jump into the unknown.

Get up early and build your startup

Find an activity that suits your goals. If you're going to spend 8 hours doing a job you hate, spend at least one hour doing something you love. It’s very strange to do the same thing every day and expect some new result. Don't let "reality" lead you in the wrong direction. Face the chances that will change your life. Get up early and start your startup!