Let’s just get this out of the way: waking up early is still garbage.
Sure, the workout felt easier today—only some shoulder soreness remains—but peeling myself out of bed was like trying to claw my way out of a black hole made of memory foam and regret.
I knew snoozing was a trap. I know the only way to win is to get up early every single day, no exceptions. And yet, I snoozed. Until 4:50.
That’s 20 minutes of bargaining. Of making excuses. Of pretending that somehow, today would be the day I broke the system and still got results.
So what finally got me up?
💡 Wife Mode: Activated
Audrey. My wife. My hero. My unsolicited human sunrise.
She got up. She turned on the lights. She didn’t say a word. She just detonated my sleepy little cave of excuses, and that was it. The day had begun, whether I liked it or not.
You want to know the real hack to waking up early? Find someone who loves you enough to ruin your comfort for your own good.
It’s not motivation. It’s not discipline. It’s someone willing to commit an act of war against your comfort zone out of love.
🏃 Cardio Without Tears
Workout today? Easier. Cardio only. Thirty minutes, nothing fancy. I wasn’t gasping, I wasn’t limping, and I didn’t swear under my breath even once. Progress. I’ll take the W.
My shoulders still feel like someone hit them with a baseball bat, but at least I didn’t feel like I was dragging a corpse on a elliptical this time.
Consistency really is magic. Painful, slow, unsexy magic.
😴 Sleep Like a Brick (Finally)
Last night I crashed harder than the economy in 2008. Deep sleep. Like, drool-on-the-pillow, REM-unlocked, subconscious-file-system-defrag kind of sleep.
Why? Because I actually stuck to my damn routine.
After the evening family walk (more on that in a sec), I showered, plugged in my phone… and walked away from it. No TikTok. No Twitter. No Facebook. No LinkedIn. No “let me just check my email real quick.”
I was present. And then I was asleep.
The difference is night and day—literally. Sleep isn’t just a passive recovery tool. It’s a damn performance enhancer.
🚶♂️ I Walked. Audrey Didn’t. This is Growth.
Usually I try to weasel out of our family walks like it’s a hostage negotiation. But yesterday? I had motivation. I went. Audrey didn’t. (She was washing our putrid, stinky dog, so fair enough.)
My son was hyped—though not for walking. The scooter came out immediately, and before we even hit the sidewalk, he was turning it into a race.
Halfway through, he got a side stitch and started complaining. That part worries me.
He’s already picking up some of my lazy tendencies, and with type 2 diabetes and cancer on his mom’s side, we don’t have wiggle room. He needs movement. We both do.
I want to model something better. Not just for me. For him.
🧠 Language Gains & a Lesson in Consistency
Checked off Lesson 2 of Pimsleur’s Japanese. Not quite conversational yet, but I can tell someone I don’t understand Japanese. Which feels useful… in a poetic sort of way.
One sentence. One click. One repetition at a time. That’s how the brain gets rewired. That’s how the walls fall.
It doesn’t feel like much now, but I know what compound interest looks like. And this? This is the cognitive version.
📚 Book of the Day: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Forget the self-help fluff. This one’s a punch to the gut.
Pressfield introduces the idea of Resistance—that sneaky, lying, soft-voiced inner demon whispering, “You deserve to sleep in. You’ll start tomorrow. Just one more scroll.”
“Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate; it will seduce you. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.”
Relatable? Yup. That voice was loud as hell this morning at 4:30am.
But here’s the thing: it only has power if you listen. Resistance feeds on hesitation. It thrives on your comfort and your doubts.
Lesson of the Day: Show up like a pro—even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t.
If you’re trying to rewire your life and still making deals with your inner sloth, this book should be on your nightstand. Or better yet, by your coffee maker. Where it belongs.
🧘 Final Thought: Slightly Less Broken
Yesterday stuck to the plan almost to the minute. I was in bed by 7:45 because honestly, I couldn’t wait to go to bed. That’s who I am now, apparently.
But today? Today felt… better. Not perfect. But a little more dialed in. A little more like I’m becoming the person I’ve been pretending to be in my head.
The momentum is real. The changes are stacking. And the Resistance is just a little quieter than it was yesterday.
Tomorrow? Same plan. But maybe this time I get up before the lights come on.
Drew Karriker is a self-proclaimed professional tinkerer, self-experimentation enthusiast, and lifelong learner with an inability to sit still. A former nuclear engineer turned DevOps architect, he’s built a career (and a life) out of breaking things, fixing them, and then making them better.
Despite wrestling with ADHD, anxiety, and an unrelenting need to optimize everything, he transformed his career and life in just a few years—not because he’s special, but because he figured out how to turn obsession into execution. Now, he’s doing it again—publicly—one 100-day challenge at a time.
His past projects? Some were successes. Some flopped spectacularly. Each one left him a little wiser (and probably a little more caffeinated). Now, he’s on a mission to document his transformation—mind, body, career, and everything in between—so that others might pick up a thing or two along the way. Or at the very least, be entertained by the chaos.
Follow along at RewiredWithDrew.com and get inspired, get motivated, or just grab some popcorn and enjoy the ride.