The morning after receiving the command, Moses did not delay. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, gives us the pre-dawn discipline of the prophet.
"He hewed two tables of stone like the former, and Moses arose in the morning and ascended Mount Sinai, as the Lord had instructed him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone" (Exodus 34:4).
Three actions, one pre-dawn. First, the carving. Moses had to quarry and shape the stones himself. This is not a ritual the sages permit to be outsourced. Just as Abraham saddled his own donkey on the way to Moriah (Genesis 22:3), Moses cuts his own tablets. Zerizut, eager promptness in a mitzvah, begins with your hands.
Second, the rising. The Targum preserves u-qadim Moshe b'tzafra, and Moses preceded the morning. He was up before the camp was awake. The second journey up Sinai began while Israel was still dreaming.
Third, the carrying. He did not have angels bring the tablets up to the summit. He carried them himself, two heavy stones in two tired hands, up the mountain that had almost killed the people forty days earlier.
This is what repentance looks like at the national level. One man, carving his own stone, rising before dawn, carrying the weight up the same mountain where it had been broken before.
Takeaway: The second chance is never delivered to the valley. You have to carve it yourself, rise early, and carry it up the mountain.