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Best Of: Stuck in the Twilight Zone · The Daily Writer

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider, where we share a lesson each day to help you cultivate the habits for creative success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: These lessons are inspired by great artists, authors, and thinkers, both past and present.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most popular episodes of the original Twilight Zone series is one called Time Enough at Last.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, a bank teller with thick glasses who is obsessed with reading.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: One day during his lunch break, he goes to the bank vault to read.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly there's a violent explosion which knocks him out.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: He later wakes up to find that an atomic bomb has destroyed the world.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: But he was protected from the blast by the bank vault, and now he's the only person left on Earth.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Henry wanders the ruined city in despair and he comes to the town library, where he finds all the books still intact.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: He suddenly realizes that he has all the time in the world to read and nobody to bother him.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And in one of the greatest plot twists in television history, he reaches down for a book and drops his glasses, shattering the lenses.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Henry Bemis had all the time in the world, but he lost the one tool he needed to make use of it.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Most writers have the opposite problem.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: We have all the tools and technology we could ever want, but not enough time.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there we remain, stuck in our own twilight zone of missed deadlines and unfinished projects.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's the solution?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: How do we escape this parallel dimension where we always seem to be short on time?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the creator of the Twilight Zone himself, Rod Serling, can give us some guidance here.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: As the producer, narrator, and writer of 92 of the 156 episodes of the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling knew a thing or two about productivity.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: He gave us a little peek behind the curtain of his success when he said, I write much better in the nonconfines of the early morning than I do the clutter of the day.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Could it be that simple?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe it is.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at the habits and the rituals of some of the world's most successful people, writers or otherwise, most of them have one thing in common.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: They do their best creative work early in the day.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So give it a shot.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Try getting up 15 minutes earlier for a week and doing some writing.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then, if that's successful, add another 15 minutes to your routine the following week.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty soon you'll love this newfound sense of productivity, and you'll wonder why you ever stayed stuck in the region known as the Twilight Zone.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Daily Rider Podcast.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: We really appreciate your support and hope you enjoyed this episode.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can find more at DailyRiderLife.com.