Why I wake up at 5AM - The value of purposeless moments | Hacker News Reader

Why I wake up at 5AM - The value of purposeless moments

elleluna.com

26 pointsbmull8 comments

They gain 3 hours in the morning at the expense of 3 hours in the evening.

What did they lose?

Family time. They no longer spend those 3 hours with family. (Or friends, or however they were socializing that made them waste this time.)

I wake up at 5:30a every morning and have done so for years. I love it. But then, I work at 7a (used to be 6:30a) so I'm not losing much time in the morning. Certainly not 3 hours.

That extra 30 minutes I gained recently is mostly wasted. Sometimes I study Japanese, but mostly I read email, RSS, or just watch TV.

On the other hand, my evenings are filled with things... I program, I game, I watch TV, I read... Sometimes I sit and think about apps or games I want to write. Sometimes I practice piano or Japanese.

Why is after work different? Because the deadline of going to work isn't hanging over my head. I can stay up as late as I want and continue doing things. When I get sleepy, I go to bed. No deadline.

No, I don't have a family at the moment. I live by myself, and my time is all my own. But don't pretend to be gaining 3 hours in the morning when you're actually stealing it from the evening. I'm in the same place they are, but without having made the family commitment.

My guess is that the difference is in the evening, everyone else is awake and there are more distractions where in the morning, it's more quiet and peaceful.

Plus, at the end of the day you have thoughts of the day racing through your head where in the morning, it's a fresh start.

I go to bed often around 4am, and get up at 10:30am. That actually means I'm awake for 30mins more a day then Elle does with her 5am - 10pm routine. And I get to work during my most productive hours - late afternoon and after dinner.

So I don't see how this has anything to do with what time you wake up.

If your day is so busy that you need to find 2hrs a week to allow for creativity, rather than going to bed at 10pm why not hire a cleaner or put extra money on the table and eat out an extra night each week -- all to save time doing chores that you can then spend on being creative?

Identifying when you're freshest is a huge first step. You'll get more done, you'll be more effective, things will be less exhausting. For me, my most effective hours were the morning, but I was never allocating morning time to work/think/whatever. So once I figured that out, I went out of my way to get up early and have repeatedly dedicated myself to that time, which has made all of the difference...

One thing I've found (which I'm not currently doing as well as before) is if I set one time to wake up each day and actually get out of bed (no snooze), I start waking up more and more refreshed. It could be 5, it could be 8, but if I am consistant, it doesn't matter the time, I wake up and am not groggy.

So, could be useful for super early wakeups like 5 AM.

I've often had this thought. I am not a morning person at all. But if I could just sleep 1 hour less M-F I'd have a lot more time on my hands. 5 AM might be extreme but what if you just made it 6:30 instead of 7:30 or whatever. You'd probably feel pretty equally rested and have a better start to every day.

Yes! After 3 awesome, creative hours in the morning, I am a different person when I walk into the office... It's great.

Yeah, for the thing with mornings and evenings is that in the evenings i am a total dumb-dumb. in the mornings i am overflowinh with ideas, projects etc. so thereis.serious hain for me when

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