The empowerment that comes with a 4:30 a.m. start...

I consider myself fortunate to have been introduced to early morning rising...early on. As a nine year old showing a little bit of promise as a swimmer, I was up at around 5:00 a.m. and in the water by 6:00 a.m. Ever since then I have been an early riser; but I don't do it by necessity now. I do it because of the joy, the peace and the empowerment that the early morning starts do bring to me.

Looking quite deliberately up at the sky, I can see the pointers aimed at the Southern Cross as I push the front gate open and head off on my run to the the gym or the pool. There is something fresh and clean and positive about the early hours of any new day. Yesterday is just that. The trials and tribulations of the day before are somehow always less pronounced, strangely not so serious, when you are there for the dawn of the new day.

By 5:45 a.m. it is time for breakfast, the news, cleaning up email and looking and preparing for the day's schedule ahead. Some attention to personal and business administration and it's 6:30 a.m. .... and importantly to me, I'm on top of my day. Walk the dog, talk with the family at the kitchen bench and head to my first commitment which will be set at around 08:30 a.m.

By 08:30 I am almost always in a client's office and positioned somewhere amongst the sales team. The disciplined sales teams arrive from 07:30 - 08:00 a.m. and the less disciplined teams drift in like "brown's cows" from 08:45 on. The winners are on the email and the phone from 08:15 a.m. on and the not so winning arrive and then head straight out to get a coffee, read the paper in the coffee shop, chat with their colleagues there and get to their desk to make a start well after 09:30 a.m. Their day is now running them! Eisenhower would be unhappy, because for these stragglers, Urgent will beat the Important today. As I salesperson I always loved that! My internal competitors were starting their day when I was already four and a half hours into mine. It was always going to be very difficult to beat me from there. Now before you suggest something ill about that, I wasn't not being a team player, it was simply me wanting to be the best at what I do; and to be $ productive during the core business hours of every day.

I schedule a block of at least 30 minutes "white-space" around midday. This is think time, me time. I get myself to a quiet place and do a 15 minute meditation. This refreshes and relaxes me...a bit like half time in the daily game. I try to wrap my day around 4:00 p.m. Yes, that's enough for me! I update my To Do list for tomorrow, tidy email, return calls. Maybe some quick work on other projects after dinner. And by 10:00 p.m. I'm pretty much out of fuel. Oh, and I generally have a sleep in on a Friday. I get up at 6:15 a.m. on Fridays and schedule myself to start work at a more leisurely 09:30 a.m.

Starting at 4:30 a.m. does make it a long day, albeit a really fulfilling one; but the best thing is it starts with the beautiful early mornings. Someone one said "There is never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope." I do relate closely with that sentiment but the only qualifying statement that I would make is, hope is not really a determining factor if you get "up and at it" early in the day.