Get Up Early!

As a young teenager, I had no trouble staying up until 2 a.m. and getting up at 5:30 the next morning for school. For a while, I was very dedicated to sports and would work out for nearly an hour before hopping on my bike and riding 20 minutes to school over a hill that felt very challenging at the time. Whether my sleep habits back then were healthy and beneficial is another matter. But if there’s one thing I envy about my younger self, it’s the ability to get up and be ready for the day right away. If you were to cut to the present and rewind to the beginning of 2026, you’d find me in a frustrating situation. Let me try to describe it:

The alarm clock is ringing. This is already the fourth one. But it’s not just ringing—it’s been ringing for 10 minutes now. The goal was very ambitious. Get up at 6 a.m. to have some quiet time and then stretch my body. Then I’d still have to prepare food for the workday. Unfortunately, the alarm has been ringing for so long that if I finally got up, I’d barely have time for a cup of coffee before I have to rush off to work. Well, the alarm keeps ringing, and I finally manage to open my eyes, only to realize with horror that I'm already almost late. I jump up, get dressed, put my shoes out, and hear our youngest son start to cry. My frantic rushing around must have woken him up. I go to Amanda, tell her I’m running late but Ilai is crying. I put on my shoes and head out the door. What a morning. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop at the morning. Because this stress carries on throughout the whole day. I can’t catch my breath, and now I have to spend money on food for the whole day, too. I come home, exhausted from work, and all I want to do is rest. But that’s not an option. My kids are still here. And I want to give my wife my attention, too. I fight through the fatigue and finally go to bed. I've barely closed my eyes, and that stupid fourth alarm is already going off again!

I’ve described the day with a touch of humor now, but at the time, it wasn’t funny at all. It was frustrating. I got nothing done. The week flew by, and by the weekend, I didn’t feel like doing anything because I needed to rest. It was a vicious cycle that I couldn’t seem to break out of. Right around that time, it was my birthday. Amanda gave me a book. The book is called Atomic Habits by James Clear. And although it wasn’t ultimately the book that changed my life—I had to make that decision myself—the book provided the necessary spark and good ideas on how to put it all into practice. An important lesson I learned was that new habits have to be simple in order to stick with them consistently. Right at the start, I set myself the goal of getting up early every morning to go jogging. But in doing so, I had immediately placed three stumbling blocks in my path. First, I already had a hard time getting up early. So getting up even earlier was practically impossible. Second, while jogging is one of the easiest ways to exercise, I hadn’t considered my hip problems. I actually managed to go jogging once on a Saturday morning, but I was in pain for the rest of the weekend. The third problem was the phrase “every morning.” I wanted to go from zero to a hundred, so to speak, with a small decision, but I didn’t take into account either the weather or how exhausted I was from the day before. The goal—forming a new habit—wasn’t easy enough.

I accepted the reality that I had to tackle this in small steps. This is another point described in James Clear’s book. Instead of making big changes all at once, you make small changes and build on them. That way, you can achieve a lot with minimal effort and in a relatively short amount of time. And the best part is that you actually stick with these new habits.

So I decided to start by changing my evening routine. Instead of going to bed at some point and spending time on my phone while in bed, I started putting my phone in the kitchen at 9 p.m. Instead of wasting time, I began reading a book. This meant my eyes weren’t exposed to blue light for at least an hour before bedtime. My mind was no longer stimulated, making it easier to fall asleep. The goal was to be able to get up more easily in the morning. It took about a week, and I actually managed to be awake by 5:30 a.m. I wasn’t productive at all yet and wasted quite a bit of time doing nothing but waking up. But at least I was up. Later, I started reading the Bible and having my quiet time during those early morning hours. After that, I added the practice of writing down my thoughts in a journal every morning to get the most important and urgent things out of my head and onto paper. So, over the course of about two months, I completely transformed my daily routine. Because as my sleep improved, the rest of my day improved as well. I wake up feeling alert and ready for work, have usually prepared my meals in advance, and in the evening I still have enough energy for my family. Before I go to bed, I even look forward to the time I’ll have to myself the next morning.

The more I get up in the morning, the more I realize what a blessing and source of strength these early morning hours are. It is no coincidence that the prophets and kings in the Bible took advantage of the early morning to accomplish their great deeds. Take Moses, for example, who went to Pharaoh early in the morning to stand up for his people (Exodus 8:16). Or David, who went out to the battlefield early in the morning to join his brothers and saw Goliath there (1 Samuel 17:20). Jesus himself was even described as an early riser:

„And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.“ (Mark‬ ‭1‬:‭35‬)

Let’s not forget that late the night before, Jesus had healed many sick and possessed people. He is the one we should look to as an example. He got up early and sought an intimate connection with his Father there. Just imagine that. Jesus comes down from heaven to this world and is away from his heavenly home all day long. But in the morning, he starts the day with prayer and time alone with his Father. I imagine it as if he were recharging in the morning so that he would be prepared for everything for the rest of the day.

If you, too, realize that you’re missing out on a lot of your mornings and your day isn’t going the way you want it to, then I encourage you to start small. Improve your evening routine; improve your sleep. But most importantly: Do it with the right intentions. Seek time with the Lord in the morning. I am convinced that the Lord will then turn these efforts into blessings.