If you can consistently wake up at 430AM in a standard workday and just carve out 5 hours of freetime in addition to the time others have you're either a savant, an inhuman monster who doesn't need sleep, or your job probably doesn't require you to do that much. Either way I'm not going to take your advice too seriously when it comes to universality.
Children. I get up about 4:45 AM. Thirty minutes for myself, then microwave my son's bottle. Twenty minutes to get him ready, if I'm lucky, then twenty more to get to a diner that opens at 6 for breakfast. Daycare opens at 6:30, at work at 7AM. Don't work more than 10 hours because daycare closes at 6PM.
Yeah, Before Children (BC) the World is your oyster.
> Children. I get up about 4:45 AM. Thirty minutes for myself, then microwave my son's bottle.
Sure, but that's when kids are fairly young. That'll pass when he heads off to primary school (elementary?). Well until the next one and then you decide NO MORE! :)
> Don't work more than 10 hours because daycare closes at 6PM
My advice would be cut that back to eight hours at most (or else burn out will hit you), unless of course you've got some mad distanced round trip between office/home/daycare in which case that's understandable. Or you get paid a stupidly amazing salary where sticking this out for 5-7 years means you can extricate yourself to a slower pace of life.
The good thing about children is every phase will pass. Them waking uber early will gradually lessen and you will be able to get up a bit early and enjoy some time to yourself. I’m finally past the super early phase with my second and I can now get up early and play guitar with no interruptions.
I do this. I exercise, chill out, and then write fiction for a few hours before I go to work.
I wouldn't say I'm an overachiever but I do work at a fairly high-pressure, competitive BigCorp. Haven't been fired yet, and my performance reviews are fine. The truth is that if somebody else owns 100% of your highest level creative output, he owns your soul too, and I'm just not down for that.
It does mean making sacrifices in other areas, but for me personally the alternatives are worse. Obviously not everybody has the luxury of so much (theoretical) free time.
It's amazing to me how many of the responses in this thread missed the "and" clause in the first sentence. If you're getting up early and your kids get up an hour or so after you, you don't have "5 hours of free time[sic]".
I tried this regime back in the 90's for a year or so in my late 20's. Woke up at 4:45am, showered, coffee, quick listen to the news on Radio 4 then read a book for an hour, fiddled with some code for work then jumped in the car to head to work at 8am.
At the time I was also a field engineer so I could be sent off on a 400 mile round trip to resolve a customer issue on-site. The drive to the office was 50-60 mins as well.
During the working week I often I wasn't getting home until around 7:30pm and by 9:30pm I was dead to the world.
It was shit. I had no social life and wouldn't see friends until the weekend (usually a Saturday because on a Friday I was buggered - I did in fact fall asleep in the pub one night after just one pint).
In the end I thought "fuck this", went back to my old regime of fall out of bed at 7:45am'ish, coffee, jump in car and life significantly improved. I got to see my pals in the evening if I wanted to and could also spend a couple of hours in the evening fiddling with code, reading books and even watching a bit of telly.
So yeah I kinda wholeheartedly agree with your comment.
2 children (1 can no longer be classified as young) and I get up between 4-5 most days. Occasionally I have breaks where I sleep in till 10 am (lol - see aforementioned kids) but it's definitely doable. Just don't be dogmatic and listen to your body.
I have young children and waking up at 5am every morning is a life saver for me. By the time I finish the bedtime routine at night I'm usually too drained to do much that's productive, but by waking up at least 90 minutes before the rest of the house it gives me valuable quiet time to after a decent night's sleep to get things done.
That was me too when I had a toddler at home. I got a lot done before the "work day" began and in the evening I was too fried to do much more than be a good member of the family.
Also could we maybe get an example of a person with a real job doing this? "Employee engagement" isn't exactly the kind of thing that requires, you know, faculties.
