7am

A few weeks ago, on a random Thursday, I found myself inexplicably wide awake at 6:30am in the morning. With nothing else to do, I naturally headed into work early to get a headstart on the day.

Here I am, three weeks later, still coming in early to work on Thursdays (around 7am) every week.

In addition to all of the random benefits (i.e., I can actually justify leaving work to catch the 4:30 Pacific start time of the UNC game today), coming in early to work is actually something that I find myself looking forward to during the week. The opportunity for a few hours of complete quiet before the constant shuffle of the day is remarkably important to my week now.

I’m a big believer in the need to anchor your life around a few constants and pillars of consistency. For me, they currently happen to be: 7am Thursdays, Monday-Wednesday-Friday workouts, monk-like healthy eating, and beer… roughly in reverse order of importance.