Waking up at 5am, my nearly 1 year review | Hacker News Reader

Waking up at 5am, my nearly 1 year review

notgeeklycorrect.com

161 pointsSpyou81 comments

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!

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!

That's true... Until you make it clear that they are stealing your time.

I had some issues with that for a while, until I started making it clear that people were inconveniencing me. At that point, they started apologizing but still doing it. Later, I made it clear that overtime for the company was stealing personal time for me. I work overtime in emergencies only. (Okay, sometimes I do it because I want to get something done. That's my choice.) Since then, they have almost never asked me to do something after my scheduled time.

It also helps that my early arrival helps the company... They know that there's someone there to watch the system in case of any problems early in the morning.

When I was working in the office, I was arriving earlier. And started to work straight when anyone was there. Fortunately enough the times when we needed to stay longer than usual were quite rare, so I never had to answer this question myself.

A good manager can help this by instituting fair meeting hours. The most common track I've seen is to say that meetings can occur between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm. That way the early risers aren't held hostage by somebody not showing up until noon and then wanting to schedule meetings until 6:00. (Or the late risers aren't tormented by somebody who wants meetings at 7:30 every morning.)

I am a late riser, but I would actually look forward to early meetings---that would give me something to get up early for.

(I see your point, though.)

I am at the office at around 5AM ever morning for the last 8 months. By the time meetings starting (~9:30AM), I have already hacked for nearly 4.5 hours with no single interrupt.

When I am out at 3:30PM, I pick up my son from his kindergarten and have around 4 hours together until he's going to bed.

It is true I "miss" some "important" meetings, yet, in the corporate I am working for as a consultant, there are ~12K employees (~11K are meeting requesters) and I am glad I miss those useless meetings.

there are ~12K employees (~11K are meeting requesters)

That about made my day. It is true that in large organizations there are people whose only task seem to be to ask others to meet and talk about previous meetings and arrange the next meeting to talk about the current one.

They're called Project Managers. :-)

So you start at 5am and work for 10+ hours/day ? Ouch

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.

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.

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.

- The day begin at 9:00-10:00 [around 4 hours sleep]

-> Feel good and fresh; have a considerable concentration; however my strength and concentration quickly drop at 2:00-3:00 PM

- So, I get back and sleep at 2:00PM-3:00PM [around 2,5 hours sleep]

-> 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.

So, I sleep 6.5 hours Vs. 7 hours, where is really the difference?

I found out that the difference is huge!

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-

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-

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-

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.

So there is:

- Improvements in productivity and concentration

- I feel always fresh and no exhaustion

- 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.

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.

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.

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 read through this comment and thought "This guy is probably very successful. Let's learn more about him." and sure enough, Lead Web Services Evangelist at Amazon.com, my favorite company.

I like to start my day with a healthy dose of confirmation bias.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

YMMV, but it is worth giving it a try.

Yup, I wake at 330 every morning and have a good 3 hours to hack on a side project before work.

I used this in high school when I had to write reports. Instead of trying to work on them late and winding up chatting with my friends rather than working, I got up at 4:30. It wasn't fun, but I got those papers written because there was absolutely no way for me to distract myself that early. Procrastinating meant I wouldn't get that sweet, sweet 15 minutes of sleep before school. I handed in every single one of those reports on time.

That said, I don't recommend this approach for anything requiring creativity. They were mostly fact based, so creativity was less of a concern. My mood suffered because of poor sleep, but that was already an issue due to high school's early start time. Still, it's a good way to get mindless tasks done.

I very rarely sleep past 5:30 but I feel the opposite way, particularly during the winter. There is something about getting up a couple of hours before sunrise that is very conducive to getting through a morning routine with the entire world running as a background process. I find myself standing in the kitchen with a half finished cup of coffee, listening to the BBC and been totally unable to recall anything that I had done for the previous 30 minutes.

I usually get up around 7:30, so getting up at 6:00 is somewhat special. Maybe the effect wears down once you get used to rising early.

I'm a 5:30 riser and have been for most of my life. I'm energetic in the morning, but I often find that I can't even remember if I locked the door on the way out because I was on auto-pilot. (I've actually only ever forgotten to lock it once.) I couldn't tell you anything I did in the morning unless it was out of the ordinary, like playing a video game before work.

But once the auto-pilot stuff is done, I'm wide awake and fully productive.

Exactly, good to hear I'm not the only one. Fortunately nobody locks doors where we live or I'd been retracing my steps every day.

Do you ever crash around 4PM? I find that there are many days where I absolutely need a strong cup of coffee right around then, just to get me through to about 6PM when I perk back up again.

I suffer from this. I can rise around 6am, but around 2 or 3pm I crash hard. Staying the full day at work becomes a serious chore. I suspect this is because I haven't settled into a proper routine of doing this for more than a week straight. Unfortunately, when I've attempted this, I get incredibly unproductive in the afternoons, then I just feel like crashing when I get home, so in general my quality of life goes significantly down. Actually, I'm quite interested in reading this as I write it, because I've never explicitly anlayzed it before.

I find I'm typically happiest and most productive when I go to sleep and wake up as I wish. Normally for me this is sleep around 23h or 24h and waking up around 9h-ish. Of course, having to work an 8-hour day in the middle of my 14-15 waking hours only leaves me with 6-7 hours for commuting, cooking, eating, working on side projects, working out and spending time with my fiancee. Unfortunately, I often while away the hours working on side projects to the neglect of the rest of the things I care about. :\ When I do this, I often stay up well past midnight, so I get less sleep. My schedule winds up being something like: sleep from 2am to 7:30am, prep + commute + work + commute until about 6pm, eat and veg with fiancee until about 8pm, then work on side projects until 2am.

When I was drinking caffeine I did!

That stuff is particularly bad for me, so I'm off it totally. I definitely feel more energetic over the course of the day than I did drinking as much caffeine as I could. Or anything in-between.

In agreement with the author when he says ''Dark, rain and cold, makes it harder.''

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.

I want to do this. Currently not possible due to the fact that I have to drive my wife to school on the way to work but we are moving soon to were we can take public transport.

Winter kills my internal clock, I feel so much better when I wake after the sun is up than right before it. But around where I live currently, that's rather late.

I agree, but with more emphasis on the affects of one's local climate. I also think a schedule timed with the local sunrise has very much helped me be productive in my current location (florida). Unfortunately in my hometown of seattle, I find my mood too affected by the seasons. In the winter the sun rises at about 900am, and is set by about 5pm. Combined with constant overcast, it never really feels like the sun rises, and it makes it very hard for me to feel productive/happy.

I have the same issue with living in Vancouver. It might be worse having come from Calgary, Alberta. Generally, in the prairies, the winters are bright and sunny. It's even nice further north around Edmonton where they get more significant snow, because the snow reflects a lot of the sunlight. By contrast, the Pacific Northwest is full of rain and overcast skies. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a term everyone here is familiar with. Most people seem to think snow is the big issue to face in the winter. For me, snow is no problem. Overcast and rainy skies 90%+ of the time is a big issue to consider, however.

same thing here - I live a bit North of Atlanta, and work at home most of the time. When I do go into the office, I have a lot of flexibility to determine my hours. I find that I get up much earlier in the Summer, and much later in the Winter.

I deal with datacenters around the world, so my work schedule is not a rigid 9 to 5 (or 8 to 6), so doing this doesn't seem to cause any problems at work. Especially when I have early AM concalls (EU), and late afternoon calls (AN/NZ).

Yeah, I can tell you that this year in ND driving anywhere early am might not be the best idea. The weather has been particularly bad and the snow plows are not really done before 7am.

When I started to get up early in the mornings I found it pretty hard. So I devised a plan to help me out.

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.

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.

I also have two alarms, the first is the radio followed by the oh so annoying standard alarm sound.

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.

It's my own personal sunrise.

Did you build that system yourself or is this a off-the-shelf solution?

Off the shelf. My alarm clock has two alarms. The lights are on standard power plug timers I got at the hardware store.

I'd like to custom build a system that uses LEDs. It'd be nice to have it fade transition from red, to yellow to yellow/blue to white. And it'd be nice to hide it all behind crown molding.

This sounds genius. I'll give a go soon.

Up here in the dark north, bright-light sunrise-simulating alarms are becoming commonplace[1]. Mine increases in intensity over 30 minutes and uses a bird tweet as the sound alarm (I have it set to 14/20 final intensity, brighter means a headache). This works quite well.

[1] And seem available in the US: http://www.usa.philips.com/c/light-therapy/hf3480_60/prd/

All of the simulated sunrise alarms I found before I cobbled my own together were out of my price range and limited to one bulb. I like my solution because it uses long strings of colored lights which politely brighten the room.

Another approach : have kids. You can forget about ever waking up late again :-)

This "new experiment" is on the pipeline for the end off the year :D

We're progressively teaching our son (3yo) to stay in bed in the morning during the week-end, and it's actually working great.

One thing I found as well is that it's easier for me to put an alarm clock slightly before he wakes up, vs. being woken up by him!

That's improved my ability to get up early - if I want to get something done in the morning or just get some quiet time to myself, I have to do it before the boy wakes.

Hm, my kids are the same as me: they get up late as well. And if the oldest wakes me up early I just tell her to go back to bed or her chamber since I want to sleep some more.

I find that making myself wake up >1hr before my kids is a giant boon to my happiness/productivity. All bets are off if one of them didn't sleep through the night for some reason, though.

For the sake of adding more hours for work on personal projects, I can add two things that works for me:

1) It might not be necessary to sleep exactly 7 hours. I found out that if I sometimes sleep less, nothing tragic happens.

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.

I've tried different sleeping times and 7 hours seems to the one that suit me the most. Obviously this is not an exact science and I guess that as long as you have between 6 to 8 hours sleep, it's ok.

Regarding my relationship, we've got a very close one, but obviously we do thing on our side in the evening. Sometime I'll reading or gaming and she'll doing something else. But we like to keep the "going to bed together" and "having breakfast together" as much as possible. It's just more quality time added to our relationship.

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.

Night owl hours are by far more productive for me. Everyone in the house asleep, no interruptions, quite and calm.

"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."

Isn't it possible that this change is the one that made him more productive rather than a change of schedule?

Glad someone pointed it out. Even when you're tired it seems that specifying what you need to do makes you much more productive.

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 don't drink on a regular basis. If I drink on an evening event, then my limit is 3 pints, after that, I know I'm going to struggle the next morning ;)

Over the last year or so, I have significantly lessened my consumption of alcohol, and it has greatly increased my quality of sleep, but I was never one to oversleep because of drinking anyways. I will usually wake after only 4-5 hours after a night on the town. My biggest issue is getting to bed on time those nights ;) .

One thing that does help me out when I drink is to stick to spirits like whiskey and vodka. Beer seems to have much more of a draining effect on my body as do any mixed drinks with sugars in them.

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.

I don't think it has anything to do with the specific timing but instead that he made it a habit and stuck with it. If he were truly a night owl and made a habit to stay up and work from 10:00 PM - 1:00 AM on personal projects and wake up at 8:00 AM, he would accomplish the same thing.

I agree that my post was more about making it the habit than morning is better than evening. It was just that I struggled to manage private life and work life when hacking in the evening. I might amend the post to make it clearer.

How does your fiancee feel about you going to bed 9-10 most evenings, I'm guessing that's a fair while before she does? Tempted to give this a shot but I'm not sure how that part of it would go down.

She used to get up around 6.30am so this wasn't an issue as she is not a night person. But now, she is an early bird as well, working on some study, and wake up at 5am, so it's definitively not an issue ;)

I thought it was very clear, and the benefit was for your relationship.

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).

I am working from home, but when I started the 5am thing, I was freelancing for a company in the city center. So I was going to their office every day (for about 6 months). And it was still great. My gf finishes her work at 5 and is at home around 5.30pm or 6pm, so yes our schedules works quite well with this lifestyle.

Would like to see something concrete - "lots more productive" is fine, but how much more?

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:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right...

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?

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: http://blog.ernestsemerda.com/2010/08/06/sleep-5-hours-night...

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.

It is, of course, much easier to do in California.

Where do you sleep outside? I usually keep the curtains open, wake up with the sunlight.

The enclosed yard/patio of the house the first floor of which my roommates & I rent.

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.

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.

Doesn't his girlfriend get seriously pissed off with him getting up at 5am and waking her 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!

The concept was good, but overwhelmed by typos.

I'm sorry, English is not my mother tongue. I try to make as less typos as possible and use grammarly.com to avoid most of them, but it looks like it's not enough :(

Yes, but if you are looking for work from English speaking areas, at least check your posts in Word or Google Docs before posting them, otherwise WTF.

EDIT: I am ESL.

I live and work in England, and my spelling has never been an issue to find work. Ok my vocabulary is still limited, but I learn everyday. I might do some very strong grammatical mistakes and typos, but usually people just correct them I try to avoid doing them twice. All my post are now checked in Grammarly, to avoid those situations, but I know the process is not 100% accurate, but it's still better than nothing. I've just copy pasted the text in Google Docs and you're right there are few typos. I've going to correct them now.

Don't worry about it. It was perfectly understandable and a very informative post.

Thanks!

The content is clearly understandable despite those few typos. Don't worry about it too much.

Feel free to send me the spotted ones, and I will correct them. nicolas.alpi at gmail

Those that downvoted: was this too critical? Is it a mistake to be concerned with the quality of posts? I'm still new to HN and learning the culture: please forgive any trespass or offense I may have caused.

Try to go the extra mile in being polite. If your words can be interpreted as hostile, on the internet they will be.

Pointing out typos to the author is generally appreciated. There are two helpful things to do: Instead of just complaining in general, list the typos; and try to reach the author directly, e.g. by email.

English is my second language, but I'll take that question.

I believe is a matter of politeness and being helpful. You could have asked the author if English was his second language and sent him an email with a list of typos. Instead you chose to state publicly what you found wrong with the form of the post offering no possible solutions for the author and adding nothing to the discussion. Also, because you didn't write much, it looks like you are dismissing the blog post because of a few typos.

I get what you where trying to convey: typos are annoying, and sometimes they make consuming the content really difficult. However, to say that the concept was overwhelmed by typos is a big overstatement. I had no problems reading and understanding what Spyou was talking about, and for the looks of it the mayority of the readers did not either.

Don't mean to offend you nor make you angry, I'm sorry if it comes out that way.

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