Your alarm is a note from last night’s you to this morning’s you. Be someone worth listening to.

You make promises to yourself across a gap of sleep, and the person who has to keep them is not quite the person who made them. Setting it was a decision taken in good faith at eleven at night, and switching it off is a small betrayal that costs you a little trust in your own word. Do that often enough and you stop believing your own plans.

Set an alarm this week for a time you will genuinely get up, rather than an ambitious one. Keep it, even badly, for five days. Then make the next promise knowing your own record.