Hacker News Reader

Comment by mykowebhn | Hacker News Reader

I think the key point here that was left unmentioned is that the writer seems to be working from home. If I had to get ready to leave the home and commute every day, I think a lot of my morning time would be spent just getting ready and commuting. This is one of the chief reasons I prefer to work from home: the productivity gains one gets from having free time in the morning to work.

EDIT: I just noticed that the author does commute. Still, I'm not sure I'd be productive if I had to commute an hour each way every day.

View on HN

He explicitly says in the article that he arrives at his office by 6am.

That said, I suspect he doesn't have a 1.5 hr commute like many do (and I used to have, at times). Working from home does indeed provide a tremendous advantage, particularly with those quiet early morning hours.

Getting to work by 6am usually means he drove without many cars on the road.

This is specifically the reason why I changed from a person that got in barely at 10am to somebody that comes in at 6am.

Way less traffic and that cuts my commute down by half. (1hour to 30 min)

And I found I actually like 2-3 hours of no distractions at the beginning of the day.

When I came in at 10am, it was 0-100 almost immediately because somebody always wanted something.

Took me a good month though to actually learn to go to sleep before 11pm. Originally whenever I slept before 11pm, even if I was dead tired, I would wake up at 2-3 am and not be able to sleep again.

If you had pushed it just a little bit farther to 11am you would have been commuting in the daytime lull and had the same benefits.

Not possible with my employer. 10am is the latest I am allowed to arrive. And to be honest, I already hated being in office at 8pm some times, so being out from work at 3/4pm is also a plus in my book.

Probably depends on where you live/work. My experience is that the roads go from empty to busy around 6:30 and start to get seriously clogged around 7:15. They're worst 8:15 - 9:30, but 11-2:30 is pretty similar to 7:45, partly because of double-parked trucks everywhere.

Sounds like the key to a productive, quiet morning is to work from home, or get up at 4:30am in order to avoid traffic and get to work by 6am. I think I prefer the former.

Plus they're likely doing something they enjoy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com