Life is totally unfair.

You’ve heard this too many times in your lifetime: “life is unfair.” Maybe life was unfair when you were a kid because you were never invited to as many birthday parties as Suzy and you still hold a grudge against her to this day.

It’s a truism that you sometimes wish would be false.

But is life unfair to the same degree for everyone? The answer is probably “no.” Life treats people differently, and it’s obviously unfair.

To examine whether life is fair, we must first define fairness. It’s a standard that would differ depending upon your views, personal beliefs, and geographical location. There are variances on what we deem is “fair”, and this includes a whole set of criteria such as access to resources, money, wealth, beauty, health, opportunities, and peace. Ultimately, if you define fairness based on these metrics, you’d disagree with someone else who has different standards.

So life is unfair, maybe to an unequal degree for everyone. How do we change that?

1. How do we define, measure, and evaluate fairness?

We first have to define fairness. Many things in life are not fair. There is rampant inequality, and I just mentioned them in terms of income, wealth, health, opportunity, education, and even things like the physical and emotional characteristics that you are born with.

If you were complacent about inequality, you’d say that others just have bad luck and that’s why they’re unsuccessful and unhappy. But is there a better solution than just saying that it’s the reality and we have to accept it?

If there was a scale that measures fairness, it would resemble a Gaussian-like distribution. The yardstick by which we measure fairness includes both material and immaterial things. Most people have an average amount of advantages. There would be some outliers and these would be the people with the worst luck, and the people with the best luck. At the extreme, people either fail miserably in life, or soar through life with all the confidence and success that life brings them.

We want equal opportunity for ourselves, to have as much success, health and happiness, as everyone else.

Whether you are destined for a fair or unfair life begins even before you are born, because you can’t choose your lot in life. For example, your upbringing determines whether you had money during childhood to take music lessons, enroll in summer camp, have birthday parties, and clothes in the latest fashion.

Unfortunately you can’t choose where you were born, and the family you grew up with. You can’t choose your parents, or go back in time and change the way you were brought up. Most of what brings us good or bad luck is out of our control. So how do we take control and conquer our powerlessness over what happens to us?

2. Life is unfair when freedom of choice and autonomy are taken away.

We’re the most powerful when we’re independent, when the choices we make are made because we have the freedom to choose.

Not everyone has the same freedom. For example, it can depend on your geographical location, the political climate in that location, and whether it is a war-free zone. People can have different standards of what constitutes a fair life, depending on where they live in the world.

Life is especially unfair when people don’t follow the rules, when anything goes, when they’ve gained their advantages by unfair practices. We all want a level playing field, with the same equal starting point as everyone else.

There is a lot of competition because there are fewer resources, and not enough to go around. That inevitably leads people to get to where they are by being dishonest. Some people mistake dishonesty for ingenuity, meaning that finding ways to beat the competition takes creativity and invention.

In the struggle for power, most will lose.

Do we need hierarchy? Do we need leaders who are more powerful than us? If not, will everything descend into anarchy and chaos? And can laws control fairness?

3. We use laws in an attempt to control fairness.

But people who are corrupt escape punishment. They beat the system and rig the system so that there are winners and losers, and those who play by the rules end up getting punished.

Life is unfair because there is deep rooted inequality in every society.

Most societies are structured to be hierarchical because it’s the least chaotic way of living with order and peace. The opposite of this would be living in a world where everyone got what they wanted. That’s not possible because everyone wants different things, and these things clash and oppose each other.

An interesting research paper proposes that fairness is related to self-esteem and predictability. This is a good proposition because there’s nothing more demoralizing to your self-esteem than when you are always treated unfairly.

Loss of control means that everything is unpredictable. There’s nothing less unpowering, and hopeless, than feeling like you have no control over anything, and that no matter what you do, you can’t change anything. If you were to grade your satisfaction in life, the score would be higher if you think you’d been treated fairly.

You could say that people in power have the most aggression, and are the most assertive. These characteristics allow them to get what they want, and have things go their way.

People are successful because they’ve discovered the secret to how to get what they want. If someone is ultra successful, you can’t help but think that maybe they got there by dishonest means. Does dishonesty and lying pay off? Should we all be liars?

Sometimes, to gain power, people must display the worst characteristics, and this is unfair.

If you evaluated the characteristics of happy people who are satisfied with their lives, assertiveness would probably score high on the list.

4. What can we do to make life fair?

Everyone has challenges in life, but it’s the way that they react to them that allows them to overcome them and be successful. If you feel you have a lot of disadvantages, hopefully you’d feel compelled to take action and create a better future for yourself.

By recognizing this, only then will you make positive and lasting changes to your life.

To change your fortune in life, be more receptive to opportunities or actively seek them. If luck doesn’t come your way, create your own luck. Don’t passively wait for good things to happen to you, because you could be waiting forever. The people who are luckiest seize every opportunity that crosses their path.

There have been some strides in making life more equitable.

That’s when society is prosperous and flourishes, to the exclusion of those not lucky enough to benefit from it.

Equal opportunity is not open to everyone. Bad things happen to good people. Justice for all doesn’t have to be a faraway dream though.

There is positive collaboration, and people working together to implement systems that make things more fair. In the workplace, there are rules against discrimination, and there’s a call for greater equity and diversity. Progress is slow, though, and there’s still lots of work to be done.

In a utopia, or ideal world, there would be no distinction between classes and everyone would be treated fairly and equitably.

It’s true, life is unfair.

If life was fair, you’d get what you deserve and that’s not always the reality.

So if you think life is unfair, you’re not alone. Lots of people would commiserate.

I can recall a few instances where I’ve put off starting a project because there were too many roadblocks that got in the way. Everyone’s been there, when you talk yourself out of doing something. You’ve quit before you’ve even started.

For example, you may put off starting because what you’re trying to do is too challenging. Or you think you’d never finish it. Or if you did, no one would pay attention to what you’d accomplished.

How do you get to the point where you just go ahead with your gut instinct and start even though you didn’t know where you’d end up? It takes a lot of courage to put aside those fears and just start.

In this blog post, I will examine why people quit before they even start, and how you can defeat those negative voices and get better at achieving your goal.

1. You are too critical of yourself

I put off writing because I wasn’t happy with anything that I wrote. I admit that I was held back by a lot of negative thinking. For instance, my voice was asking me, why would anyone want to read what I write? Or, I would read what I wrote and not finish writing it because I thought it wasn’t good enough.

If anyone’s experienced the same thing, the root of this problem is that you have high standards which you think you won’t meet. You get too discouraged for not meeting these standards which you’ve built up in your mind.

Sometimes, you are your own worst critic. You don’t allow yourself to dream. But what’s wrong with hope or thinking that you can live a better life?

You might think, I can never be as good as he or she is. But, there’s no one to prove you wrong if you don’t start. If you start creating something, you’d be surprised. You’d find out that when you thought you weren’t good enough, you were wrong.

2. Accept that what you create isn’t going to be a genius work of art

It takes time to develop skills in anything you do. It’s called learning, for a reason. It’s when you get to make mistakes and learn from them to be better and faster at what you do.

Keep in mind that nothing that you start is ever really perfect. That’s why it’s called a first, second or third draft. You can’t measure yourself against someone who’s done it for years while you are just starting out.

Perfectionists will have a hard time accepting that imperfectionism is okay. If you waited until all of the stars were aligned and for the best moment to start a project, you might wait forever for all the pieces to fall into place, for the perfect opportunity.

You could be waiting for the lightning of inspiration to strike. But as everyone knows, how often does someone get struck by lightning?

That’s why you have to just make a decision and start today instead of waiting until tomorrow. So don’t quit before you start!

3. Thinking that something is too difficult to do

I used to be discouraged whenever I thought that something was too difficult to do. I asked myself, do I really want to waste my time trying to do something that I can never achieve?

I felt ignorant because I didn’t know what was the first step to becoming knowledgeable, and that many other people who find it easy had an advantage that would put them ahead in the game.

But nowadays, we have the power of the internet and free resources to take advantage of, such as classes, seminars, and podcasts. If you don’t know something, ask someone for help or look up the information in a book or a blog.

Creating is also about learning. Learn your craft from mentors that you trust. Most people are not born knowing how to do something. They were taught. They went to class, to school, or attended a webinar, and they learned. There are plenty of instructors who have a wealth of knowledge that they’re more than happy to share. Make use of these instructors.

4. Thinking that you can’t reach your goal

If you think that you can’t reach your goal, a change in your attitude will help. Think of the benefits that you can derive from the journey towards your goal, and not the end goal itself.

This is especially true when you’re at the beginning and when you’re just starting. The goal might seem far away and impossible to reach, but this is because you just haven’t hit that first step yet.

You may be overwhelmed by all the things you need to do to make your project work. You may think that you will never achieve your goal.

That’s why you need to break it down into smaller, manageable steps. That way, you are hitting your smaller goals each time, which allows you to feel like you’ve succeeded, without feeling overwhelmed at the long list of things you have to do.

5. Quitting before you start makes you feel safe

Sometimes, you can talk yourself out of trying before you even begin. You put up a lot of road blocks, even getting creative with the excuses for not trying. There’s a lot of fear before you start anything, whether it be a project or business or even a hobby.

These roadblocks make you feel safe. If you don’t try, you won’t fail and your ego won’t take a hit. But if you don’t try, you can’t succeed either. Believe that you can do so much more.

If you’re still haunted by self-doubt, you will need to get out from under the shadow of that self-doubt. What else can you do about it?

6. What can you do to combat self-doubt?

Have a support system, or someone who will encourage you in your endeavors. Educate yourself. First understand what it is that you don’t know and try to fill in the knowledge gap. Create something, and be proud of how imperfect it is. Don’t rob yourself of your right to brag about your accomplishments.

Finally, find a mentor who has their own words of wisdom to pass along to you.

Don’t quit before you start, because the journey towards that goal is when you will learn and grow, and become stronger at what you can potentially achieve.

Searching for that elusive inspiration? You might be stuck in a rut and need to find a way to climb out of it. Maybe there is too much negativity in your life. What kinds of actions can you take to wake up and shake yourself out of hibernation? You can be inspired by implementing empowering action words in your daily life.

Inspiration can be fickle. Some days it’s giving and plentiful, and others it’s hard to find. But inspiration doesn’t have to feel like you’re searching for something that’s out of reach.

The trick is to pick empowering action words that summon positive emotions when you read or hear them. They are not just buzzwords that you add to a resume. To work, they have to be associated with feelings that will motivate you to stand up and take action. Keep a journal so you can jot your ideas down on paper. How will you implement them and use them in your life to bring about great, positive change?

To be inspired, designate one day or one week for each keyword. Get creative and craft some visual representations of these keywords. You can create artwork, frame it and hang it up on the wall to remind yourself to do these actions everyday.

To get you started, below are five empowering action words that you can start implementing right away to be inspired:

1. Discipline

If you are ever going to learn something new, it takes discipline, which means you show up and do the work. It takes self-control not to give up and move onto the next project, but to keep at it and be persistent to achieve results.

Just like in physical exercise, training yourself to do those reps will make you stronger by developing the right muscles. It’s the same with any endeavour, you will only get better with practice. Discipline will inspire you to reach for your goals.

2. Flourish

Flourish is another empowering action word. You want to find ways to grow and develop talents that are useful. To flourish, you need an environment that is conducive to growth, like keeping a plant alive with sunshine, soil and water. Continue to demonstrate discipline and work at getting better at the skill that you want to develop.

You will reach the point where things are happening and you are attaining your goals. This is the time to shine and show everyone what you are capable of. It is empowering to get better at what you, and to develop new skills.

3. Encourage

You have the courage to do something you’ve never done before. Set aside self-doubt and negativity, and recognize your achievements. You will need support, so it helps to have a supportive community who will encourage you to continue to do your best work. Your community will lend you the support you need to grow confident in your work.

Encouragement is essential to keep you motivated in your personal growth. If you ask anyone how they were able to succeed, the answer you’d often get is that they didn’t do it alone, they had someone encouraging them along the way, which kept them on track and inspired them to reach their goals.

4. Nourish

Nourish is another inspiring, empowering action word. Every intention needs to be fed to sustain growth. To keep going, you need to pace yourself and not burn out. It’s not fun to start a project with a lot of enthusiasm only to find out that you’re burning out before you even finish it.

Nourishing your growth includes doing things that will keep the inspiration going. Pause here and take a moment to remind yourself that you are doing this because you have goals and ambitions that are worthy of accomplishing.

5. Socialize

I put this in here because some people are introverted and need encouragement to get out there and network or make new connection.

Social isolation is a problem. Exchanging more than ten words each day with another human being can take some effort, but it’s not impossible. In the past, being an introvert meant that you’d rather not have to put up with the quirks that other people bring, but friendship is valuable. As in the keyword above, all friendships need nourishing. Socialization is an empowering motivator for inspiration.

Final Words

Further steps you can take to get inspired is to create mind maps. By going a step further, you can create phrases from these words, connecting them together to build an action plan.

Creating vision boards, a collage of photos and words that remind you why you have a desire to accomplish something, can be useful to remind you of the ways you can be inspired.

Don’t lose sight of your goal. With a lot of busy-ness going on in your life, you may forget that you have goals you want to accomplish. The vision board can be a daily reminder that you’re reaching for something, and that success is within your grasp.

When you first started on your journey, maybe you were stuck and you haven’t taken any concrete steps towards your goal or didn’t know where to start. Inspiration is out there for you to take, the way to do this is to look for inspiration in unexpected places.

Make these action words part of your vocabulary. Words are powerful, they can change your mindset in positive ways.

Focus on your empowering action words each day, every little step counts and gets you further to attaining your goal.

Repeat the empowering action words everyday to weave them into your life. If you encourage inspiration to show its face with a few empowering action words there’s a lot more that you are capable of than you think.

In the novella The Train Now Departing by Martha Grimes, a woman meets a friend for lunch; he is a travel writer who has been to far-flung locales that the woman only dreams of visiting.

She doesn’t know why she is friends with him when their conversations are fraught with antagonism and he is contemptuous of her meagre existence. She laments the places she will never see, experiences she will never have. The closest that she gets to travelling is visiting the cafe at the train station for breakfast. Her existence is dwarfed by the vastness of the travel writer’s experience but he doesn’t even appreciate the opportunity he has of travelling.

The novella is a study of the opportunities that one misses being a bystander to someone else’s greater purpose.

Have you ever encountered someone who is always on their game, has all the advantages that life has to offer, and even greater success and bountiful opportunities? Sometimes an appreciable percentage of their success is due to luck, but a portion of it is due to opportunities that just flow their way, or more likely, are of their own making.

There’s a high likelihood that these people are opportunists, and this is not meant to be insulting. They are good at recognizing an opportunity when they see it and they don’t hesitate to take advantage of it. This might sound unappealing. It’s understandable. The word “opportunist” has many negative connotations to it. It conjures up the ideas related to “self” that are not pleasing: selfish, self-serving, self-aggrandizing.

But no matter how unappealing, an opportunist who takes advantage does have a point. Most of the time, they are more successful because of it.

I was inspired to write this because I’ve had my fair share of missed opportunities. Being an introvert, there are times when I would not reach out to people even when they offered to give me a call. By not talking to these people, I missed the opportunity to make connections in my professional network.

When I was in graduate school, there were many opportunities to travel, learn, and publish papers, but I didn’t jump on the chance because it didn’t occur to me that I could be successful at it. Also, I didn’t take initiative. Instead I relied on other people to present these opportunities to me, and when they didn’t, I was left out in the cold.

But all that is about to change because I’ve learned from my past mistakes. Now I’m going to have the mindset of an opportunist who doesn’t hesitate to do what it takes to get ahead.

Let me stop right there. It doesn’t mean using people or being manipulative. Being an opportunist is different from being self-serving. It just means that I’m not going to leave success up to chance. It means that I’m going to take charge of my future and make things happen.

You’ve heard of the saying for it: Carpe diem. It means “seize the day.”

How will I do that? After thinking about it, I’ve come up with four conclusions.

1. Being an opportunist requires you to think far ahead into the future

You have to be forward looking and try to predict the future. Every time an event occurs, ask yourself, how can I use this to my advantage? Try to think of actions that you can take that will further your career or your personal achievements.

For example, in retrospect, you wonder how you could’ve missed this opportunity that would’ve helped you now. You didn’t realize what you’ve passed up on until it was too late. Maybe someone offered you a chance to try something, and instead of replying with an enthusiastic “yes!”, you were blase about it and didn’t think it through, leaving the opportunity aside for someone else to step in and capitalize on.

So when the next opportunity comes along, don’t think too hard about it! Just jump on the opportunity.

Here’s another example, relating to businesses.

2. Businesses are successful because they are forward-looking

They jumped on that chance when it presented itself, capitalizing on the moment when all the stars were aligned, where there was no better time than NOW to take advantage.

But sometimes we don’t jump just because we don’t recognize these opportunities.

This is because putting yourself forward is uncomfortable. You’re not used to thinking this way. You’re not used to bragging about yourself, or promoting yourself to other people. But this can translate to a major loss to your own personal growth. By looking for opportunities, it’s not only a chance to get ahead, but to learn and get out of your comfort zone.

3. How to recognize opportunities

You can ask yourself, is this going to help me, either now or in the future? Would I meet more people and make more connections?

With the unbelievably high level of personal and professional competition out there in the world today, it’s even more crucial to be an opportunist. It’s even more urgent to cash in on that wave now.

There’s no greater feeling of disappointment than when you’ve realized too late that you’ve missed the boat, or the train, or whatever method of transportation that would’ve moved you forward a lot faster than walking.

But not to worry. There’s a way to re-create that missed opportunity. First, go back to the moment where the opportunity had presented itself. Is there a way to get reconnected to that person who spoke to you about this fantastic opportunity?

4. Make your own opportunities

Initiative is a major jumping point for success. Maybe you’re a very lucky person whose success was handed to you and you were just a passive participant. But for the rest of us, we have to go looking for opportunities, or create them. We can’t just stand by and let luck find us. It will never work fast enough, or ever happen at all.

No one will tell you how to be successful, or give you a road map to success. They will help you, but you have to point your own way to success and follow through on it.

Show up for success.

To create your own opportunity, do some research. What are the first steps that you can take to set up a situation where you can win more opportunities? Talk to more people. Expand your network to include as many people as possible. Sign up for hobby groups, clubs and events, anything! Just do something.

So far, the reasons I listed sound pretty self-serving. But you have to think of opportunities as a two-way street. By helping others, your acts of kindness can open doors for yourself, too. For example, the person you just helped would’ve remembered this act of kindness, and recommended you to someone else in their network. The karma of paying it forward is returned to you many times over the more you help other people.

This is a call to seize the day, to make things happen instead of passively waiting for all the good things to happen to you.

Instead of watching that train that is now departing, it’s time to run and catch that train. It will get easier to be an opportunist. Pretty soon, you’ll be riding that train to success.

Striving for perfection can make you stop before you even start.

Everyone has these moments: when the voice inside your head tells you that you are not good enough, or that your efforts will be wasted because you can never achieve what you want in life.

Stop listening to that voice!

1. Your voice tells you not to take risks

That voice cares about your ego, which is why it is so persistent. It doesn’t want you to experience failure or setbacks, so it tells you not to even try to achieve your goals. It wants you to experience life in the safest ways, so to cushion the blows, and to make a harsh reality gentler, it talks you out of taking risks.

Sure, it protects you from failure. But not even trying is failure itself. So stop trying to be perfect!

2. We are all flawed

We all have ideals. We all want to be perfect. But that’s not reality. The truth is, we are all flawed. There are things about ourselves that we wish we can improve on or change all together.

I sat on this idea to start a blog, my own business, for about two years. Two years! That’s 730 days that I spent mulling over these ideas without doing anything that would get me closer to achieving my goals. There are lots of ways that that time could have been spent more productively, such as posting weekly or biweekly blogs, building my website and my community, and sharpening my writing skills. But self-doubt and fears of failure took up most of my time.

This paralysis by fear is something that many of you have experienced.

3. Fear is a challenge we all face

Starting this blog was a challenge in itself. Like undertaking any new project, my mind was already focused on failure before I even gave it a chance to live and breathe. There were a lot of fears, a lot of doubts, that got in the way of starting, such as, “I don’t have anything interesting to say,” or “It’s too much work,” and “No one will pay attention to what I write.” These were all valid points.

These were all challenges that many have faced before me. But for every objection that I raised, there were also so many rebuttals. For example, “this could work”. Or, “once I get started, and find my community, I will have lots to say”. Or, “People could find what I had to say to be both interesting, useful, and relatable.”

Beset by fears, I almost talked myself out of even starting. There were times when I asked myself, “Why am I even doing this?” I lost my sense of purpose. I lost sight of all the good things that could come out of starting a blog. Success with what I wanted to achieve felt impossible.

4. We are too comfortable doing nothing rather than do something

All those negative thoughts run through your mind, and they could all be right. By the end of all of your attempts, you can still feel like a failure. But what about all of those other chances where you could’ve been successful? These are equally possible but we tend to overlook these possibilities in favour of the doom and gloom because it’s more comfortable. We talk ourselves out of trying, because it takes such little effort to do nothing in comparison to doing something. Stop listening to negative thoughts and trying to be perfect!

5. Change your mindset about perfectionism

To stop perfectionism from holding you back, you must change your mindset. The path to success begins with the right attitude. Here are four mindset shifts that can set you in the right direction:

1. Failure is an expected part of the process. Remember that any successful venture has seen many iterations that failed before finally finding one that works. So practice resilience. Each blow that knocks you down is another reason for you to get up and try again. Before you throw in the towel, I challenge you to keep going at it even if you’ve suffered a setback.

2. Find your support group, your community, your like-minded people. You need someone to cheer you on when it gets tough, a sounding board for your creative ideas, and a party to celebrate your successes.

3. A calculated risk provides a cushion for failure. Not all risks are created equal. When you’re thinking of taking a risk, make sure it’s one founded in reality and that you have a fallback plan in place so that any potential failure won’t cripple your venture.

4. Don’t expect overnight success. Too many people give up before they start to see a glimmer of the results they were hoping to achieve. Building your own business is not easy but don’t let that deter you because anything worth having is worth the blood, sweat and tears it takes to achieve it.

6. We are our own loudest critics

One success, one step in the right direction, no matter how small, is the boost that keeps you going, your reason for being motivated and showing up each day. It’s easy to get trapped into thinking that the rewards are so insignificant compared to the blood, sweat and tears that went into your project. But it takes a lot of guts to start your own venture, so don’t downplay even the littlest mountain that you conquered.

Without a doubt, we are our biggest and most loudest critics. We set very high, and sometimes very impossible to reach, standards for ourselves. We want to be the best. So instead of using these ideals for self-defeating purposes, why not try to shape these ideals into goals with tiny, attainable steps? We all need the encouragement to just start, so try taking one small step. Chart your progress not just by visualizing the end goal, but by taking count of the steps you took to get there.

7. Our flaws make us all relatable

Don’t hide your flaws; they make you more relatable. Relatability unites you and your audience and gives them a greater reason to listen to you. It’s impossible to be perfect because there’s always room for improvement. Even when you think of someone who appears to be perfect, there’s a great chance that they’re not stopping at where they are, but are always looking for ways to improve and be even better at what they do.

I’m a confirmed night owl and I will wake up early only if I need to. But I am curious. Whether it be myth or fact, most likely you’ve heard that early birds are more productive and more successful. Is this true? Is it possible to reset my long established patterns of sleep and wakefulness to be an early bird?

Being an early bird might be the envy of some night owls, who want to be more productive and live longer and healthier lives.

My goal of becoming an early bird was motivated both by wanting to be more productive, and also for my career: I have a job that requires an early commute to the office (one and a half hours to be exact).

It’s the summer so I thought that with the sun rising earlier, it would follow that trying to wake up earlier would be easy. With the added bonus of getting enough sunlight to kick start the production of vitamin D, the summer would be the best time to stay fit and healthy.

I’ve been training my body to go to sleep early and wake up early. As someone who is used to waking up at 8:00 AM, I was determined to do a hard reset of my sleep/wake schedule and to be up and moving by 6:20 AM, and out the door by 6:50 AM. I have to improve my morning routine, which mostly involves skipping breakfast until I get to the office, and the hour and half long commute. I know it’s detrimental to skip breakfast, but I can only focus on one lifestyle change at a time. So what happened during the rest of the day?

Well, it’s no surprise that I was tired. Dead tired. By 11:00 AM, I was tired and sleepy, craving a soft pillow to fall asleep on, and extremely irritated, which was compounded by a craving for caffeine. Alas the caffeine didn’t help.

But within a few days, I was adjusting to waking up early, and the morning tiredness and sleepiness started to ease. I was more alert and ready to work, and less reliant on caffeine.

From this experiment, there were several questions that I wanted to answer. Are early birds more productive than night owls?

It’s been backed by scientific research that early birds are more productive, the reason being that there are less distractions very early in the day, so there are more opportunities to get things done and check off the items on your to-do list. However,studies also show that night owls are associated with greater creativity.

Do I have to choose between being more productive or being more creative? I’d choose both, but as you probably concluded, it’s not possible to be both an early bird and a night owl. The point is, there are trade-offs to being an early bird or night owl, which is why I think it’s faulty to conclude that being one is better than the other.

There are multiple factors that can determine whether you are productive, some of which have nothing to do with whether you are an early bird or night owl. Society and culture can both be at play here instead of something that is determined by your biology. Cultural norms and upbringing are factors that play a role in your productivity and work habits.

Furthermore, productivity can be seasonal. People report that they are more productive in September. This is probably the effect of memory and social customs: school starts in September. Remember the excitement (or dread?) leading up to the first day of school? And after a restful summer, people are recharged, their energy levels are higher, and they’re ready to start working again.

It would be interesting to study whether productivity is also affected by geographical location, for example, in regions where it is constantly daylight or constantly nighttime.

Are people naturally early birds or night owls, and do I have a choice between being one or the other?

There’s strong evidence that there is a genetic component to being an early or late riser. Your circadian rhythm, or biological clock, regulates sleep, blood pressure, body temperature, and metabolism. Also, your melatonin levels are a contributing factor. The release of melatonin causes you to fall asleep. Early birds have higher levels of melatonin earlier in the evening whereas night owls stay up later because their melatonin doesn’t kick in until later in the evening.

Studies have shown that disturbances in your circadian rhythm can lead to health problems such as heart disease and diabetes.

It might motivate you to be an early bird upon hearing this, but if you’re hard wired to be one or the other, it seems like a long shot to beat your genetics at its own game. If you’re a night owl like me, don’t think of it as being faced with the impossible task of beating your own genetics. Think of it as implementing small changes that will work in your favour and not against it.

It might be true that early birds are more successful, but getting enough sleep is better than trying to wake up early in the morning if you are naturally inclined to stay up late. Be the one that best suits your personality and lifestyle.

Some will say it’s better to be an early bird, others will say a night owl. There’s another camp that will tell you that it’s not right or wrong to be one or the other.

Making lifestyle changes, and making good choices instead of bad ones, will go a long way to improving your health.

There are the obvious measures that you can take to achieve this: cut back on alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. Exercise regularly. Get enough sleep.

There’s always room for self-improvement. As a night owl, my motivation to be an early riser is to ideally have a more organized morning routine with exercise, breakfast, self-reflection, either meditation or journaling, and to rely less on caffeine to wake me up.

Was it hard to change and did I succeed in being an early bird?

The answer was yes and no. I was able to get up on time on days when I had to be at work early, though I was just as tempted to sleep in on days when I didn’t.

Did I see any benefits?

Not yet, I conclude that it doesn’t matter how early you get up, if you don’t have the motivation you won’t be able to see the benefits. Even though I became an early riser, if the motivation to make good use of my time is missing, then there would be no benefits.

This experiment taught me that it is possible to reset my sleep/wake schedule to be an early bird, even if I was a night owl my entire life. But since my commute takes up most of my morning routine, I will have to try to squeeze in an extra hour where I can focus on getting things done. I found that my productivity stayed the same, though this could be the effect of other factors such as motivation.

So if you’re a night owl, give this a try and you might find that this changes your lifestyle for the better along with getting you motivated to work on other areas of self-improvement.