This is how I start finding time. This is my trial run for getting up at 5:15 one morning a week. I'm not ready to commit to this early rising just yet so I'm taking this early morning as a chance to experiment with how well I operate first thing in the morning. The vast majority of my optional activities, things like writing these posts, occur after 10 pm. Who knows how much the accumulated stress and debris of the day impact my ability to think and write clearly. I usually just sit and stare the screen before writing one of these things. That didn't happen this morning. Maybe that's progress.

Getting up early is one way for me to go beyond what is required of me (getting up early enough to make sure that my kid is on the bus) and taking another step closer to The Edge. It feels a little ponderous to use that capitalized The Edge, but I put that there to mark another of the limits that define my life. It's easy to accept the current routine, the prevailing status quo, as simply given and find ways to operate inside of that normalcy. That's a great way to ensure that you're acting very reasonably. Achieving something noteworthy in whatever world you occupy means going beyond the limits imposed on you by that world. It's about doing more that what is required and pushing the limits. It's about ignoring the limits and restrictions that people in that world place on themselves to find new ways to achieve. Finding a new direction, discovering something, requires acting different, breaking out of the prevailing and accepted to see the world in a new way.