Um, no. Getting up early might minimize distraction, but it doesn't give you extra time. The amount of sleep you need is, to very good approximation, a conserved quantity. And to get up at 4:30 or 5, most people would need to go to bed between 7:30 and 9. Hello, sunrise; goodbye, social life.
I've tried being a morning person. I spent 9 months getting up at 6 am to get to work before 8 am. I made it every day. As soon as that gig ended I immediately, literally the next day, started getting up after 9am again. I can't make myself a morning person.
I'm glad the author of the post recognized that it is possible to switch from being a night owl to an early riser. Anecdotally, I am a night owl... if it were not for work and kids, I would sleep late and wake early. That feels natural for me.
But, when my daughter was born, I was forced to switch and it has been fairly painless. If you're a night owl, it's worthwhile to at least experiment with waking early for a period of time to experience the productivity increase that occurs from waking early.
I find that on a night owl schedule, my creative side was heightened, whereas waking early allowed me more energy to "get things done".
> I'm glad the author of the post recognized that it is possible to switch from being a night owl to an early riser. Anecdotally, I am a night owl... if it were not for work and kids, I would sleep late and wake early. That feels natural for me. But, when my daughter was born, I was forced to switch and it has been fairly painless.
I am skeptical it is possible. Kids and teenagers spend years being yanked awake against their circadian rhythms, and they don't switch but instead their grades suffer as does their health (http://www.gwern.net/education-is-not-about-learning#school-...). As well, people suck at self-assessment - 'what do you think you know and why?'
Well yea, I didn't notice anything "bad". It took some adjustment initially to move my clock, but I pretty much get up at 5:30-6:00 AM and can get out of bed alert and refreshed.
I am still getting 8 hours of sleep a day. I can only assume that night owls who fail to switch, who wake up groggy and tired, are actually sleep deprived.
"If you're a night owl, it's worthwhile to at least experiment with waking early for a period of time to experience the productivity increase that occurs from waking early."
I have worked on a early schedule many times and I'm basically on autopilot for half the day. I am never tired before 3:00-4:00AM and dispite my best efforts, if I have to work on a day schedule I simply can't get up at a decent hour without feeling absolutely miserable.
Working a construction job led me to working 7:30-4:00, which means I'm up at 6am every weekday to take the dogs out and get ready for work. I find I can be in "get things done" mode from around 7am until around 7pm without a problem. I've even worked 7am until 7pm a couple times when I had to bank hours.
However, I've found my creativity was 'willing' late at night when I was my natural night owl. When I was working as a reviewer, I woke up at 10am and could get copy out in no time. I once did an entire rewrite in under half an hour, including entirely new references with cross checking the media. My editor was amazed. IIRC the timestamp between my emailing to say I'd handle the rewrite (rather than there be a delay and have someone else do it, which would have put us behind deadline) and my delivering it was less than 35 minutes. I even got an email back that evening saying he was amazed, and also sending me the word document with the corrections on, which ended up being purely comma placement (which was a long running joke between us, as comma placement is generally where the author would naturally pause and we both had very different speaking styles, which often descended into a "changing comma position changes sentence meaning" debate).
However, over the christmas break I automatically switched back to night owl. Every day I was up between 9/10am and was in bed around 4am. It was great, although my creative productivity didn't see a spike. I'd learnt to cope with my early bird, which meant I'd essentially killed that normal creative peak I used to get from 10pm-4am (which often finished with a sleep-deprived collapse into bed).
That hasn't worked for me. I've worked at jobs where I had to get up at 6 am every weekday for months. It gets easier when you do it regularly but I still hate it. I naturally feel more energetic starting around 2 pm and I don't feel like going to bed until after midnight.
This is one of those things that can kill itself if widely adopted. Several recent articles have touted the benefits of early rising. Being able to start your day in peace and quite is truly a benefit of waking up early. But if everyone adopted the strategy, if everyone was there with you to watch the sunrise, the gift of temporary solitude would be gone. I tend to like to work alone, whether early in the morning or late at night. The asynchrony with the rest of my immediate world is the key.
I'm not sure this is entirely true. I understand the logic, but it's important to note that theres still a net positive in the more subjective ideas of "greeting the day" and finding yourself in a more calculated, healthy routine. Waking up early in the morning, if surrounded by many who also do the same, also lends itself to being surrounded by a group of typically disciplined, motivated and honest people, where little downside can be seen. All of this is deeply subjective, but I think there's some logic to it.
All the advice and benefits listed basically boil down to the fact that starting work a few hours after you wake up is a good thing, it removes morning stress and the bad habits that follow that, and it allows you to be productive at a time when few other people are about.
But you can achieve that by simply moving your workday later instead of moving your sleep schedule back. That also has the added benefit of making you avoid rush hour if you commute to work.
Hacking your day to start later only works until you have kids unless you have somebody else to watch them. Post-kids you're pretty much doomed to follow the same schedule as everybody else unless you get up earlier.
You know, one of the things I realized as I get older is that somethings we are yet to figure out.
I don't know why, but the old adage that hard work soothes the soul is so true. If you're feeling down, or out of energy, for some reason, if you can manage to get yourself working hard on something, anything, you feel better. The task can range in difficulty from fleshing out that new start up concept, to cleaning your room. For reasons beyond me, this makes you feel better - even when you are dead tired, or super depressed. Sometimes this goes against what you would think follows rationally: if you are tired, a good work out and some rest should suffice. But it doesn't.
Similarly, I cannot come up with a good reason why waking up early works. For the past few weeks, I've adopted a new routine. I recently started a 9-5 after shying away from them for years. I wake up at 7, run for 45 minutes (about 4 miles), shower, and go to work. It is unbelievable how good this feels. I'm so addicted to it, that I look forward to my morning run all evening the day before. This is coming from someone who used to feel like shooting himself in the head whenever he had to get up before 9 and who has always suffered from serious sleep issues. (I should clarify that the benefit is not from exercising alone, I used to work out in the evenings when my day was shifted 4-5 hours)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should give it a shot. The benefits go beyond what one can see written on a sheet of paper (i.e., x amount of productivity gained, y amount of sleep gained, etc. etc.) I eagerly await for science to help us understand our complex brains better to understand why these things are so.
Aside from catching the sunrise, none of this has anything to do with rising early as in early in the day.
It's mostly about rising early meaning with ample time so that you are not rushed and have time to start the day in a mentally and physically healthy way.
I think that starting the day in a positive way is very important regardless of what time you wake up. You don't need to go to sleep at sundown and wake at sunrise.
About five and a half years ago, I accepted a position with the US Marine Band. It has been wonderful in many ways, but one way I thought it would change my life never came to fruition: I thought it would make me a morning person.
I'm still at my desk at 0730 every morning and I'm able to be effective during my working hours, but that happens in spite of the hour of day, not of because of it. Instead, I've become a coffee drinker and have learned to value the nights when I can really focus on something into the early morning hours because the alarm clock won't ring the next morning.
I think transitioning from a night person into a morning person or vice versa is possible, but I've learned that change can't be brought along by external factors. I think it's important that we remain aware of the social norms that influence when we choose to sleep when we embark on trying to make such a transition. For example, starting a job requiring a 0600 alarm was difficult when I was 24 because my social circle regularly stayed out past midnight. Changing my routine required changing my social circle. Now that I'm 30, that part of going to bed early is easier. The wanting to stay up late because I'm being productive - that part I still haven't figured out.
I am not talking specifically about the article here, but bear with me
I read in some psychology article(I can't cite it now, I don't remember where it is), that being a night owl is an adaptation in hunter gatherer society for guardians of night. So, being a night owl is not that idiotic, it is a proper adaptation.
Also, if it is quiet enough for you to get to sleep at 9 or 10 or 11 in night (assuming you would get 7-9 hour sleep), then it is quiet enough to get the work done without distraction.
PS: That guardians of the night made me tingly when I read it, and SMUG. Didn't it to you? But also probably added to a selection bias to that research article.
That's the thing I miss in all these guides. For me it might be possible to switch for weekdays, but the next weekend would desynchronize everything. Starting over by getting up on next Monday at 5 AM after few hours of sleep would make me give up. Knowing that I won't even give it a try.
I have been doing what the author describes for some time now (although I dont get up as early) and I find, that it works well to go to bed at any time on friday & saturday evenings as long as you give yourself enough time to sleep in as long as you want on the following day. On Sunday however, I will go to bed just as "early" as on e.g. Monday.
So it will just be you and the early risers that engage in this? Usually when I spend time with friends, it starts at a 2pm bbq or morning trip to the zoo and ends with an event in the evening, like a movie or what have you.
What I like about rising early (4am) to work on my own projects is that unlike staying up late I have both a hard stopping time (7am to help get the kids up and breakfast started) and I don't have to transition from thinking about programming to sleeping. I also do feel strangely morally superior to you late sleepers.
Personally I find working in the morning way better than working in the night. I used to work till about midnight and then get up at 7 AM to go to work. However in case I got stuck on some issue that I could not resolve, it would ruin my sleep. I would keep thinking about the fix. But now that I have started working in the mornings, I don't have that problem anymore. I can take some time out during the day and figure out the problem.
I've read reports that messing with the body's circadian rhythm is bad for the health of the aging brain. Presumably this is to do with the secretion of the hormone melatonin, which I understand is affected by light.
Whether natural light exposure can be simulated adequately by the computer monitor during waking hours and a blindfold during sleeping hours, or whether getting up at dawn is required, I would like to know -- anyone?
> Whether natural light exposure can be simulated adequately by the computer monitor during waking hours and a blindfold during sleeping hours, or whether getting up at dawn is required, I would like to know -- anyone?
Computer and electronics have been shown to damage melatonin secretion in the evening (all the blue light they emit), so it stands to reason that they could act like a light box in the morning.
There's a desperate, wishful-thinking part of my brain that thinks, "Just 10 more minutes is all I need to eradicate this unpleasant sleep inertia!", and it overwhelms all reason.
I have my alarm clock in the adjoining room; it goes off, I hit Snooze once, crawl back into bed, then eight minutes later I get up and dismiss it again. As a result, I have about eight minutes to linger in the border-lands of half-awakeness, think about any dreams, and ponder the coming day. It's more pleasant to wake up gradually like that than to transition from sleeping to "awake and trying to accomplish things."
Then it's off to boil water for coffee. and I leave Snooze on for a while to remind myself of the passage of time in the morning, so I can make sure I'm out the door in time to catch the train.
I suppose the key is that the Snooze is not so close to the bed that I can press it hassle-free.
I find some early risers to be holier-than-thou about their sleeping habits. They can easily be thwarted using the technique introduced on an episode of Seinfeld - just call very late meetings and watch how grumpy and tired they get.
There is nothing about being an early riser that is any better than being a night owl except possibly the sunrise (depending on how extreme of a night owl you are).
The best advice he had for getting up earlier is not to rationalize. If I give myself the chance to sleep a little more it turns into another hour worth of snooze. Jumping straight out of bed works every time.
There is no extra time. You just moved time at night to time in the morning. You can take advantage of that time regardless of whether it is in the morning or the evening.
The author suggests waking up at 05:30. Going to bed at 7pm implies you require 10 hours sleep/night (allowing 30mins to fall asleep) which is way off at one end of the bell curve. For many people, who require 7-8 hours/night, you should be able to go to bed between 9-10pm. Realistically, what do most people do between 9pm and their normal "going to bed" time on most nights? Something productive? Or watch TV?
I get around 8 hours. I go to bed at 1am and wake up at 9am.
I work for myself now so I can be on any schedule, but this one seems to be perfect for me. I'm never tired throughout the day and I feel like I can still satisfy the night owl in me. If I go to bed early, I feel like I'm somehow wasting the night.
I cancelled cable 6 months ago and I don't really watch that much TV anymore. I might watch an hour before I go to bed.
Um, no. Getting up early might minimize distraction, but it doesn't give you extra time. The amount of sleep you need is, to very good approximation, a conserved quantity. And to get up at 4:30 or 5, most people would need to go to bed between 7:30 and 9. Hello, sunrise; goodbye, social life.