Being the early riser has an extra penalty when your coworkers have later schedules, since it's acceptable to ask people to stay late, but not to arrive early. You will attend meetings when you'd normally be commuting. Plus, if an emergency occurs at the end of the day, everyone else's 9 or 10 hour day becomes your 12 or 13 hour day. If this happens often, you should try to find a workplace that doesn't make a habit of discovering critical problems at 4pm. It turns out they exist!<p>You can also alleviate the problem by doing something between waking up and working. I run in the mornings before I head to work, and it provides an extra daily boost. I admit that I prefer running in the afternoons (when it's not 4 degrees out) but life is full of constraints!
Due to the last unrest in Tunisia, studies and work has permanently stopped for around two weeks. I was following politics and life (study/work/house work) was the last thing to think about.<p>So I was sleeping when I needed it and waking up, when I just wake up. I've found during that period that I'm following a poly-phasic sleep instead of one phase sleep.<p>This can be caused by staying late (until 4-5 A.M.) on Facebook. However I let my body naturally wake and sleep. It organised itself, by itself.<p>- The day begin at 9:00-10:00 [around 4 hours sleep]<p>-> Feel good and fresh; have a considerable concentration; however my strength and concentration quickly drop at 2:00-3:00 PM<p>- So, I get back and sleep at 2:00PM-3:00PM [around 2,5 hours sleep]<p>-> Feels good too, and I can stand up to 4 or 5 A.M. with a considerable strength and concentration. From 1:00 A.M to 4:00 A.M, I have a considerable concentration and spirit.<p>So, I sleep 6.5 hours Vs. 7 hours, where is really the difference?<p>I found out that the difference is huge!<p>1. When I wake up at 10:00 I spend much less time at breakfast, I then quickly jump to do something. I don't feel I need to waste time. -30 min. gained-<p>2. I need a rest in the half of the day. Generally, I spend 1-2 hours in front of T.V or Internet. Now I sleep instead. So that's time earned. -2:00 hours gained-<p>3. I also need a rest before starting my night, generally an hours. Now I don't need it. I just woke up. -1:00 hour gained-<p>4. Finally, when it's 1:00 A.M, I find that I get back my breath. May be because it's calm and dark. There is no distractions.<p>So there is:<p>- Improvements in productivity and concentration<p>- I feel always fresh and no exhaustion<p>- I saved 3:30 hours
I've been starting my day at 5 AM for decades. There's something invigorating about getting a jump on the rest of the people in my time zone (and the time zones to the east as well). This does, unfortunately, mean that "sleeping in" on the weekends might last until 7:30 at best.<p>I need 5.5 to 6.0 hours of sleep, and will generally just wake up after I've been sleeping for that long, regardless of jet lag.<p>I like to blast through my email, do my online reading, review and rewrite my TODO list, and generally have things on the right trajectory for the day by 6 AM.<p>I use the alarm clock on my BlackBerry and don't have any special tricks for waking up. I've been getting up at the same time for so long that my eyes will often open up at 4:55 or so.
I went from the stay-up-till-the-sun-comes-up hacker lifestyle to getting a fulltime gig ... all of a sudden all of my old habits were in conflict. I was too exhausted after my commute to hit the gym in the evening like I used to, and I was not finding time to work on my freelance/personal projects.<p>So I made a drastic shift in my schedule ... now I'm up at 6am ... at the gym by 6:15am ... back home by 7:45 ... at work by 8:30pm ... out by 5:30 - 6 (at the latest) ... I get home and screw around for an hour and a half ... then from 7:30/8pm I get 4 solid hours of work in and hit the sack at 12am sharp.<p>Its completely changed my life and made working 60 hour weeks not seem so intimidating. Working out in the morning also makes it so that if I have a long night, I can get up and go with only 4 or 5 hours of sleep without a problem, where before I'd be dragging for at least half the day.<p>The problem is that my schedule is very regimented and the slightest thing (or very rough week of work for example) can throw everything out of whack ... but I've been learning to plan ahead so that I can adjust accordingly (not schedule side work during a particular stretch, or plan on not working particular days).<p>Its been 3 months and it requires a lot of discipline (which I really need) but I'm very much enjoying it, plus I value my time sooo much more now.<p>Highly recommended.
From my experience, the big advantage of waking up early to hack on a side project vs. staying up late is that I'm way more focused in the morning. If I manage to drag myself out of bed early, I don't waste the time with mindless surfing.<p>YMMV, but it is worth giving it a try.
In agreement with the author when he says ''Dark, rain and cold, makes it harder.''<p>I think a seasonal schedule would be best (something like 5am in summers transitioning to 7am in winters), but that's hard to do with our clock-dominated world. And certainly it depends on one's local climate.
When I started to get up early in the mornings I found it pretty hard. So I devised a plan to help me out.<p>I have three lights on timers. The first is a short string of blue lights, the second is a longer string of blue lights and the last is a 40watt bulb pointed indirectly at the wall.<p>First the short string turns on about 30 minutes before I have to get up, then the longer string 15 minutes later, and lastly the the white light.<p>I also have two alarms, the first is the radio followed by the oh so annoying standard alarm sound.<p>Most days I wake up with the white light and the radio. The alarm sound is my drop dead, get the heck out of bed, notification. If it goes off I need to get moving.<p>It's my own personal sunrise.
For the sake of adding more hours for work on personal projects, I can add two things that works for me:<p>1) It might not be necessary to sleep exactly 7 hours. I found out that if I sometimes sleep less, nothing tragic happens.<p>2) What also works is that I don't need to spend every evening with my wife. I don't mean it in a negative sense, we have a very good relationships, but in a lot of evenings, I just do my things on the computer, and she does her things, and it's totally ok.
Waking up at 5am would not do much for me. Starting at 6, it's getting kids out of bed and ready for school. The very deep sleeping 14 yr old is very difficult to rouse. As soon as he's out the door, time to start waking/feeding the 3rd grader. By the time he's gone it's 8:30 and off to work.<p>Night owl hours are by far more productive for me. Everyone in the house asleep, no interruptions, quite and calm.
<i>"I found it easier to have a list of 2 or 3 actions ready near the bed or the desk. So when I wake up, I know what I have to do."</i><p>Isn't it possible that this change is the one that made him more productive rather than a change of schedule?
I've been waking up at 0546 for a long time (at least a year, maybe two?), and I tend to get more "maker work" done between 0600 and 0800 than any other part of the day. (and yes, my alarm clock is a pager sound). It's especially free of online distractions when you're on the east coast of the US or in Europe.
I wonder does he drink at all/much. I find that a beer or two at the end of the day makes me considerably more groggy the next morning (the length of sleep being equal). I think if I were to start waking up at 5 I'd have to eliminate drinking entirely. Probably a good idea but unlikely to happen.
I wonder how much of the benefit is specifically from waking up at the specific time 5am, and how much is simply waking up, then using the morning time to be productive in a way that isn't hurried or scheduled.
My understanding is that he's working from home? I dont really see how this could work out if you are not working from home and your partner works as well. A simple example would be that you wake up at five, go to work at 8 and then come back at six or seven. Your partner wakes up at 8, goes to work and comes back at six or seven. You are dead tired by eight and want to go to bed at nine.
I personally cant go to bed before 12 or 1 as I work long days and I feel that I have 'wasted' the day if I dont spend some time for things I enjoy (be it hacking or gaming or something else).
Would like to see something concrete - "lots more productive" is fine, but how much more?<p>And, dude, tip on the shower schedule - double up. May not save much time, but starts the day out way better.
Frankly, I don't think I could do this. I've been a nite owl since I was 8 years old and it's quite difficult to change a 21 year habit. I've actually tried before. In college I had a 7:00AM(it was the only time the course was offered) math class that I barely made it through because I was always exhausted. So if it works for you, congratulations, that's awesome. But for me, I'm going to continue to keep the hours my brain likes.
If you need some help actually getting out of bed when the alarm goes off (instead of hitting snooze and rolling over), check out this article:<p><a href="http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-when-your-alarm-goes-off/" rel="nofollow">http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right...</a>
I'm curious about how caffeine consumption goes up when waking up earlier. I find that when I wake up earlier I will sometimes drink an extra cup or two of coffee throughout the day to try and stay alert, though I suppose if waking up earlier became a habit then maybe caffeine consumption would level off?
Has anyone tried always waking up with the sunrise?<p>I sleep in a house with a full eastern exposure, so I think it would be pretty easy for me to do it. Sure it would require going to bed at different times every night in order to get my 8 hours of sleep, but a simple warning alarm should do it.
Nice write up. Thanks for sharing.
I found this routine to work and cement the habit for me to sleep 5 hours a night:
<a href="http://blog.ernestsemerda.com/2010/08/06/sleep-5-hours-night/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.ernestsemerda.com/2010/08/06/sleep-5-hours-night...</a>
I've been a night owl since, more-or-less, middle school. Lately I've been imitating my roommate & sleeping outside some days, and I've found that makes it a lot easier to wake up earlier.<p>It is, of course, much easier to do in California.
Regarding being tired before everyone else when you do decide to go out at night because you got up at 5am, try taking a little nap for an hour or two before going out.<p>Some people call these siestas, I lovingly refer to them as "Disco Naps".
I started waking up at 6:00am when we switched off of daylight savings time in the fall. It gave me a nice 1 hour bonus from when I was normally used to waking up.
why not modify your schedule by season? It looks like one can avoid the cons by getting up "with the sun." I might give this a try! I can totally see how this can be motivating!