When I started waking up at 5 AM, everything changed. Regardless of when I went to bed the night before, I had clarity and energy.

I could get more done before 8 AM than I would normally achieve in an entire day. In time, waking up at 8 AM began to feel like more of a hardship than waking at 5. I was missing my best time of day.

I’ve come to suspect that there’s nothing intrinsic to the morning hours that makes me so productive. Rather, the act of waking up early makes me feel virtuous and on top of things. I’m starting my day with an achievement that I feel good about.

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My sister, a mother of three, dazzled the crowd in the school talent show, accompanying her daughters’ singing on cup percussion.

No one had known she possessed this skill, and their minds were blown. “You’re so talented!” they exclaimed.

She shrugged. “I spent a few hours learning it.”

My sister’s real accomplishment was to believe she could accomplish what she set out to do, and then to follow through by putting in the necessary time. Anyone could; not everyone does.

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When I wake up in the morning, if I have been unwise enough to charge my phone beside my bed overnight, my phone is the first thing that I reach for in the morning. After all, it’s my alarm clock, my weather report, and my connection to everything else in the outside world.

It’s also huge distraction. Every morning, under such circumstances, I have to be aware that every moment spent looking at my phone is another moment in which the traffic is stacking up outside; I’m not only delaying my arrival at my office, I’m increasing the total amount of time that I will spend commuting. Unfortunately, my phone is set up so as to increase the perceived rewards of engaging with it and to decrease the sense of immediacy I have about my obligations. With every click and swipe, I get a little hit of dopamine that creates a conflict: Will I listen to the little voice inside the tells me it’s time to put down the phone and go, or will I linger and keep hunting for the next thing that will give me that little neurotransmitter high?

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The human brain is extraordinarily good at optimization.

You do something a few times, and your brain goes, “Okay, I get it — we’re doing it this way from now on.” The neural pathways are strengthened so that next time, it takes less effort to get the same result. Meanwhile, unused pathways are ignored, like decommissioned highways.

Our nervous system facilitates and streamlines our learning. It gives us the so-called “muscle memory” we rely on when it comes to developing complex skills like learning a musical instrument, typing, or skateboarding. It allows us to chunk smaller pieces of information together, like recipes, times tables, and addresses, in order to memorize them.

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We’ve seen the moving TED talks where kids in Kenya or India talk about how desperate they are to have an education and how grateful they are to be able to go to school. But to kids who already have the amazing privileges of speaking English, living in the United States, Internet access, and literate parents, formal education doesn’t carry as dramatic a promise of advancement. It doesn’t feel like an incredible gift — it feels like a burden and a bother.

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