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Comment by memset | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for posting this. I find myself in a similar boat; I find it very difficult to focus after work, and projects get done at a glacial pace.

I have tried what the OP suggests; set the alarm for a couple hours earlier. But getting up at 6am (need to be in the office at 8am) is also hard - it is too easy to turn off the alarm when nothing "bad" will happen (i.e. nobody will get fired) and get a little bit more sleep.

Does anyone have any particular techniques ("hacks" in HN parlance) for making an early wake-up+coding session a habit?

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I've often had the thought that you can split the day into thirds of 8 hours each, 1/3 is work, 1/3 is personal time, 1/3 is sleep.

The usual pattern is work -> personal time -> sleep. Why not reverse personal time and sleep? So when you come home from work, you sleep (thus getting an 8-hour rest), wake up around 2am fully charged and then work on your bootstrapped business during your personal time. You'll get more than 2 hours. Finally, work time comes last.

This way, your business gets your best energy and effort for that day, you get more rest, and work won't notice the difference.

Quality sleep is very important for long term productivity.

Anecdotally, lot of people need to 'wind down' after finishing work, so that they get a good sleep; hence the sleep-work-personal ordering.

On a related point, is it bad to set out to shortchange 'work' by giving them your least productive hours? Wouldn't it be better to try negotiate a 6 hour working day with them, on the basis that you weren't going to be productive for the last 2 hours, anyway?

:) How would you propose approaching your manager with that? Seriously? "Hey boss, I'm not really working these last couple hours anyway, why not let me just go home?" I'm not saying it can't work. I'm just saying. I haven't met a manager who would look at this lightly, at least in the corporate world. It's not exactly a positive impression to give. And, I would think typical managers will try to find a way to get more out your last couple hours. Plus there's company policies to think about.

People commenting negatively on a 6 hour work day must be old school flex hours are very popular nowadays. I know someone who negotiated 11-5 with no lunch, and another person who gets 10-whenever (normally leaves between 3 & 4) as long as they are productive and fit in 30 hours a week. Same salary.

I agree, and I was considering starting to wake up at 5 am instead of 6, but I decided that it wouldn't be fair to my employer. This way I'm a little more tired, but I can still be productive at work.

That's basically challenging your boss to find you more work.

I think it highly depends on each person's work situation. It would be nice if we could all have employers who would agree to that kind of arrangement, but unfortunately, that's not always the case.

I figure, if you're bootstrapping a business on the side, you're probably looking to get out of working for your employer anyway. If your employer can't tell the difference between when you're giving them your most productive hours and your least, I wouldn't consider it to be shortchanging.

In my case (I am the OP) it was easy enough because I'm close to the first beta release and I'm pretty excited about it ;)

I can only add that the comment that inspired me was from someone who woke up at 4 am and did exercises immediately, to really wake up. I told myself that if he could do it at 4, I AT LEAST had to wake up at 6!

Yes, stop eating 14 hours before you plan to get up. It is a life hack and explained here http://parentingsquad.com/easy-way-to-reset-your-sleep-cycle...

Having just recently started something similar on the same schedule you have, I can say the only thing that has worked so far is repetition.

I absolutely loathe getting up early, but after 2 weeks or so 5:30am begins to feel more... possible.

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