Why I Wake Up at 4:30 AM: Forging My Future in the Margins
“I don’t have time.”
It’s the most common and legitimate reason we don’t pursue our biggest goals. For a long time, it was my reality. My current work, while managed by the best boss I’ve ever had, operates in a culture of high demand. Late hours and weekend work are common, leaving me with little energy at the end of the day for deep, focused work.
In the previous chapter, I wrote about how a 9-day solo trip gave me the courage to resign from my job. The career break that followed demanded a new level of personal discipline.
My personal life felt the impact. Football, a passion I’d recently restarted after a long injury break, fell to the wayside. I became a ghost to my friends, too drained to connect. The person I wanted to be—engaged, active, and present—was being consumed by the demands of the day.
So, I stopped looking for time at the end of my day. I started forging it for myself at the beginning.
The 4:30 AM Club
For the last two and a half months, my alarm has gone off at 4:30 AM. After a quick workout, the hours from 5:30 AM to 8:45 AM are entirely my own. This isn’t a new struggle; it’s a well-established habit. This is my sacred, uninterrupted window for building my future. This is where the real work on my “AI Expedition” happens.
This system was forged in fire. A while back, I took on a high-stakes feature at work, committing to a tight deadline. The project’s complexity ballooned, requiring three times the estimated effort. To deliver on my promise, I started waking up at 4:30 AM to code, working weekends, and pushing through for over a month. It was intense, but I delivered.
In that period of professional pressure, I didn’t just build a feature; I built a system for myself. I learned that I could create a highly productive space for deep work when the world was quiet. Now, I’m using that exact same system not for a company deadline, but for my own.
It’s not about finding motivation. It’s about building a system so disciplined that motivation becomes irrelevant. The progress itself becomes the fuel.
One Brick at a Time
This routine isn’t about hustle culture or burnout. It’s about a simple, powerful principle: consistency.
I truly believe that massive, life-changing results don’t come from one heroic, 18-hour coding session. They come from laying one brick perfectly, every single day. The 4:30 AM start is my way of making sure I always have the time and energy to lay that one brick for myself.
Waking up before the sun isn’t a sacrifice; it’s an investment in the person I want to become.
This daily investment in time and discipline set the stage for the single biggest financial investment of my life. I cover that in the next chapter: The High-Stakes Bet: The Course That Cost 4 Months’ Salary.