For a long time, I used to go to the 5am CrossFit workout no matter what. It didn’t matter how tired I was or how late the night before had been. If the alarm went off, I got up and went.
At the time I was staying at G’s house most nights, and he would wake me up. Having someone there made it easier to get moving. When I’m staying at my own house, though, it’s a lot harder. When the alarm goes off at 4am and I’m by myself, it’s very easy to roll over and go back to sleep.
And that’s the question I’ve been asking myself lately: why is it so easy to hold myself accountable when someone else is around, but so difficult when it’s just me?
If I’m serious about getting back into the routine, I have to remove the excuses. That means laying out my clothes the night before. Shoes ready. Socks ready. Everything set so that all I have to do is brush my teeth, put on deodorant, and get dressed. No decisions. No fumbling around in the dark.
I also have to stop letting embarrassment get in the way. I’ve gained weight back—more than I ever wanted to—and that reality can be uncomfortable. But I don’t have time to sit in that feeling. What matters now is paying attention to where I am today. What can my body do right now? How do I start showing up consistently again?
Because the truth is, the gym at 5am has a different energy.
Before sunrise, it’s quiet. It’s not crowded. The people who are there are there because they are serious about getting their work done before the rest of the day begins. Many of them are incredibly successful people, and there’s a kind of focus in the room that is hard to explain unless you’ve experienced it. It feels purposeful.
There’s also a mental shift that happens when you wake up that early.
Getting up at 4am to be at the gym by five is not for everyone, and I fully understand that. Some mornings I’m not even sure it’s for me. But when you do it, something changes. You realize you’ve already been awake for hours before most of the world is even moving.
When I walk into class to teach at 9am and my students are just rolling out of bed to make it there on time, I’ve already been awake for almost five hours. I’ve trained. I’ve showered. I’ve eaten. My mind is awake and ready to go.
That kind of discipline does something important: it trains attention.
We often think of attention as something we either have or don’t have. But attention is actually something that can be practiced. Research shows that repeated engagement in structured attention training improves both mental clarity and sustained focus.
For example, Zanesco and colleagues (2018) found that four weeks of mindfulness-based attention training significantly improved working memory and objective attention performance while reducing cognitive failures. Other studies have shown that repeated cognitive training can improve mental efficiency and reduce attentional lapses, particularly when individuals engage consistently over time (Miller et al., 2019; Wong et al., 2018; Nassif et al., 2021).
In other words, showing up repeatedly matters.
The evidence for these improvements is strongest in groups like military personnel and healthcare workers—people who operate in high-demand environments—but the principle is still powerful: attention improves with practice.
And discipline is one of the most effective ways to practice it.
I’ll be honest about something though: I am not a morning person. I never have been. Waking up early has always been difficult for me. But I know something from experience—I feel better when I start my day with a workout.
I feel clearer. I feel calmer. I feel more capable of handling the chaos of the day.
Routine helps with that. Right now I have a lot going on between teaching, my PhD work, and everything else I’m trying to build. I can’t afford to stumble through the morning half-awake trying to find clothes or figure out what I’m doing. The routine has to be simple.
And if I’m being completely honest, working out also makes me a much nicer person.
I have a tendency to rage pretty hard sometimes. But when I’ve trained in the morning, that edge softens. The workout burns through some of that energy and clears space in my head. The day just goes better.
Over time, strength training becomes more than just exercise.
It becomes a practice of awareness.
You start noticing how your body feels, how your energy changes, how your mind responds to effort. You begin paying attention to things you might otherwise ignore.
Right now I know I need to rebuild that discipline. That means holding myself accountable to getting up at 4am. And if I’m going to do that well, it also means holding myself accountable to going to bed on time so I can actually get the sleep I need.
This is the work in front of me.
Not perfection.
Just attention, practiced daily through discipline.
