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Comment by perplex | Hacker News Reader

I wake up at 4am everyday to work on a personal project for 2 hours or so. Once the house wakes up I wrap things up.

I had to adjust my bedtime to accommodate waking up so early. I'm fairly disciplined about it and never stay awake past 9:30pm.

The reason I chose morning instead of evening is I'm pretty tired after work to do anything. And so I get to dedicate my evenings to family time.

Edit: typos.

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So no exercise I guess?

Modern life is just so depressing, we have so little free time. Everything must be scheduled, compartmentalized, etc

We erred by applying ideas from the industrial revolution to our personal conduct. Humans were not meant to live the way modern capitalism demands.

Well that cat is firmly out of the bag by now. You can find a less stressful work environment though, you just need to get rid of the attitude that a strong work ethic is good for you. It’s good for your employer.

We are starting to reflect the way we have organised the world in technology. Everything about life used to be fuzzy but now it's hard lines and definitions. It's going to do strange things to human culture.

I don't see how you draw this conclusion. Working on personal projects at say 22:00 does not preclude you to work out at any other time of the day.

I usually do some programming when the kids and partner have gone to bed but I also do some exercise at lunch together with my partner.

Your workouts aren’t that strenuous. So you don’t need rest and recovery. If you are pushing past your limits, you won’t even have the desire to code in the evenings.

I exercise 5 days a week for 30 minutes right after my day job ends. I'm WFH so and have weights and stationary bike in my office, so it's easy to jump onto.

I am leaning towards this, by 9:30p, I am starting to feel very sleepy and I am usually in bed and asleep by 10p.

So, 6.5 hours of sleep though? I need either 7 or 9, but 8 does not work for me.

So, I would be looking at 5a.

Let me ask you, do you immediately start coding, or do you need a few minutes to ‘warm up’?

What is the morning ritual, if you don’t mind me asking?

Haha .. I thought I was unique in waking up early/feeling asleep early. Guess I have good company. Ritual for me is tip toeing to the basement to avoid waking up the kids and grabbing some caffeine. Biggest challenges are distractions - news, youtube, and hacker news. I need to get better at just focusing on code and not going off on tangents.

What I have found to be helpful is that sites that I might find myself wasting time - Twitter, Reddit, etc. - I block these sites via the `hosts` file. I do this on the machines on which I want to find myself productive.

On my whatever laptop - the Internet is fair game.

I've done this sort of schedule quite a lot since my first kid was born (nearly 2 years ago). We share a bedroom, and they sleep a lot easier when I'm there too - often I just go to take them to bed, and end up falling asleep too at 9pm :D

I will wake up and let my brain wonder, then get up after 15 mins or so. By that time I'm wide enough awake to start coding straight away and know what I want to accomplish in the time I have. I don't check my phone at all in this time, as that'll lead to spending two hours down a rabbit hole on Reddit.

> do you immediately start coding? What is the morning ritual?

I wake up, get dressed in the dark, and go downstairs where I immediately start coding. I leave all the lights off and focus solely on my task at hand, and I typically use a todo list in bear.app to know immediately what to work on.

Breakfast comes at 6:30am when house wakes up. Since I'm WFH for day job I can shower do morning routine before work, which usually starts around 8am.

edit: typo

Do you share a room/bed with a partner? I find if I wake up early it disturbs my wife's sleep.

How long have you been doing this for? Because people do get used to things like that over time. My girlfriend usually sleeps right through me getting up at night.

Get a smart watch/band with alarm functionality. It will wake you up with vibrations on your wrist, no sound.

Yes I share a bed and I use the iPhone built in alarm on lowest volume and typically silence it within seconds.

I'm on this schedule to accommodate living where I want to live while still keeping my job. It's not bad tbh.

That's so cool. I find it so hard to go to bed on time - how did cultivate discipline to do so?

Getting up at 4am every day is a good start. I do this too, and there's no discipline involved in going to bed - I just get very sleepy around 8 or 9 and want to go to bed.

I'm glad it works out for you (I actually mean that), but getting tired at 9:30pm every day would make me unhappy. I really want my free/"me" time do be after everything I have to do is done.

Same, I don’t get up as early as you but it’s the only way to get in consistent time for my side-business.

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