The Bed Rotting Cure

Preview: The Bed Rotting Cure

It doesn't all come crashing down at once. That's the most frightening part.

No one wakes up one morning and says, "I'm not going to try today." What happens is more subtle. You sleep in late. You glance at your phone. You tell yourself you deserve a leisurely morning. Maybe you do. So you scroll. Just a little. Just until your eyes are used to it, until your brain gets caught up. But time waits for no mind. And before it catches up, the morning is over. The edge is over. The motion is over.

And that "just one day" is your default.

I started writing this book not through expertise, but through tiredness. Not the sort you sleep off. I was getting up in body after a good night's sleep and still not getting going. I'd lost steam. And the worst part was, it didn't feel like a crisis. It just felt. normal.

I believed I was alone. Until I began to listen. To my friends. My clients. My feed. The vocabulary was ubiquitous: "bed rotting," "doomscrolling," "low dopamine mornings."

No one was lazy. They were overwhelmed. Numb. Unmotivated not from lack of desire, but from drowning in overstimulation and lack of purpose. We had all gradually, quietly, relinquished the first hour of our day to distraction and delay.

So I began studying. Not for material. For answers. Neuroscience, behavioral psychology, reward systems, decision fatigue, environmental conditioning. I wasn't attempting to become a guru. I was attempting to figure out why so many intelligent, driven individuals — people like you, like me — were stuck. And the thing is simple, but cruel: the mind becomes attuned to what you rehearse. If every morning you discipline your mind to reach for comfort first, calmness first, scroll first — then that becomes your default program.

But its reverse is true too.

You can condition your mind to be action-hungry. To move before it negotiates. To do the hard thing before it has the opportunity to stiffen.

Let me share something intimate with you. I'm a two-time father. And there was one time—I remember it so vividly—when my youngest walked into my bedroom in the early morning hours, eager to share something she had drawn. I was in bed. I told her, "Just give me five minutes." I rolled over and picked up my phone again. Five minutes turned into twenty. When I finally got up, she was gone. The moment was lost.

That struck me more than anything else. Because it wasn't about productivity. It wasn't about routines. It was about presence. And I saw how often I was missing the things that were important because I couldn't win the first hour.

I've seen it in my nephews too. Brilliant, imaginative minds clouded by passive routines. They convince themselves they're unwinding, but what they're actually doing is putting life on hold. My oldest nephew, who is 12 years old, once told me, "I feel like the day gets away before I can catch it." I smirked, in a clear sign of impression. I mean what 12 year old says that? But he was serious. He didn't mean it as poetry. He meant it as a confession.

Even my wife, a woman of tremendous discipline and strength—has spoken to me about how difficult it is to switch gears in the morning, how easy it is to fall into the "I'll get to it later" trap. And we're adults. We've survived dial-up internet, we've navigated careers and bills and kids. If it's this difficult for us, what hope do younger generations have without a system to push back?

That's why I wrote The Bed Rotting Cure.

This is not a book of hacks. It's not about waking up at 5 a.m. or making the most of every minute. It's about establishing a reset point — a system that starts with the first hour and ripples outward. What you do with the first hour is not about getting things done. It's about who you are. That hour informs your mind what type of day it is going to experience. What type of person it belongs to.

You don't require more motivation. You require fewer decisions. You require momentum systems. And that's what this book provides. A protocol to override your default setting. A blueprint to move even when you don't feel like it. Especially when you don't feel like it.

Because the days you win are seldom the days you feel ready.

They're the days you act anyway.

I know this because I've lived on both sides. The side where you're barely getting by, quietly losing ground. And the side where your mornings become a weapon. Where motion isn't a fight, it's a reflex. If you've been still for too long—mentally, physically, emotionally—this book isn't here to inspire you.

It's here to interrupt you.

And from that interruption, rebuild the most powerful habit you can own.