Routine is a healthy aspect of the lives of many people. It helps us to avoid anxiety and uncertainty, while giving us a strong foundation around which to build a healthy, successful life.

Maintaining important habits such as getting to work on time, self-improvement tasks, relaxation and recreation, and spending time with loved ones is important. We need these things to live, rather than survive.

Yet for many, waking up is still one of the hardest things to do. I’m constantly amazed at how I can wake up after such a small amount of sleep on a day off, yet I could have all the time in the world to sleep before work and still struggle to get out of bed.

It’s strange, because I do enjoy the work I do. I used to find it easier to wake up. Hell, I have woken up earlier plenty of times in my life. For some reason, something we can become so accustomed to can still be one of the hardest things we have to do in a day.

For some time, I’ve made it my goal to wake up half an hour earlier than I’d otherwise need to for work. I want to write more, do more with my time. The hope has long been that the more writing I fit in, the more progress I’ll see.

Sure, it makes me feel a lot better about myself in the morning after I’m done. I’m not noticing the difference to my productivity just yet.

If anything, this struggle is just an added difficulty to my mornings. I have to battle with the decision to rest another few minutes, or get up and do something extra before I even start work.

Perhaps it’s important to push myself like this. Sure, I’m someone who constantly suffers from sleep deficiency at one point or another. It’s something I’ve become quite accustomed to.

But it’s important to always give ourselves that extra challenge, I’ve found. If you decide to make grand sweeping changes to your life and attempt to do all of it at once, you’re likely not going to be able to sustain that effort in the long term. If you try little things, bit by bit, it can and will make the difference you’re looking for.

I’ve been writing far more than I have in a long time, but part of that is through small changes like this. They can be subtle and elusive, but small decisions like waking up a little earlier can have a big impact on your life – above and beyond what you would expect.

So now ask yourself – what can YOU do to change your life, from the very smallest of changes, to the very greatest of impacts?