Benefits of getting up early even if you don't want to code

While it doesn't give you extra time, it may make time-management easier. If so, that has an effect much like giving you extra time.

Disclaimer: I'm not an early riser. At all. This is really just a guess.

Working a construction job led me to working 7:30-4:00, which means I'm up at 6am every weekday to take the dogs out and get ready for work. I find I can be in "get things done" mode from around 7am until around 7pm without a problem. I've even worked 7am until 7pm a couple times when I had to bank hours.

However, I've found my creativity was 'willing' late at night when I was my natural night owl. When I was working as a reviewer, I woke up at 10am and could get copy out in no time. I once did an entire rewrite in under half an hour, including entirely new references with cross checking the media. My editor was amazed. IIRC the timestamp between my emailing to say I'd handle the rewrite (rather than there be a delay and have someone else do it, which would have put us behind deadline) and my delivering it was less than 35 minutes. I even got an email back that evening saying he was amazed, and also sending me the word document with the corrections on, which ended up being purely comma placement (which was a long running joke between us, as comma placement is generally where the author would naturally pause and we both had very different speaking styles, which often descended into a "changing comma position changes sentence meaning" debate).

However, over the christmas break I automatically switched back to night owl. Every day I was up between 9/10am and was in bed around 4am. It was great, although my creative productivity didn't see a spike. I'd learnt to cope with my early bird, which meant I'd essentially killed that normal creative peak I used to get from 10pm-4am (which often finished with a sleep-deprived collapse into bed).

"If you're a night owl, it's worthwhile to at least experiment with waking early for a period of time to experience the productivity increase that occurs from waking early."

I have worked on a early schedule many times and I'm basically on autopilot for half the day. I am never tired before 3:00-4:00AM and dispite my best efforts, if I have to work on a day schedule I simply can't get up at a decent hour without feeling absolutely miserable.

> I'm glad the author of the post recognized that it is possible to switch from being a night owl to an early riser. Anecdotally, I am a night owl... if it were not for work and kids, I would sleep late and wake early. That feels natural for me. But, when my daughter was born, I was forced to switch and it has been fairly painless.

I am skeptical it is possible. Kids and teenagers spend years being yanked awake against their circadian rhythms, and they don't switch but instead their grades suffer as does their health (http://www.gwern.net/education-is-not-about-learning#school-...). As well, people suck at self-assessment - 'what do you think you know and why?'

Sleep debt takes up to a month to pay off (http://preview.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15892922); people don't realize this. People sleep in 23 minutes a day on the weekend (http://blog.myzeo.com/sleep-by-night-of-the-week/); people think they sleep longer. People restricted to 4 or 6 hours of sleep may claim they have adapted to it; they haven't and their mental performance still suffers (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sleep-t.htm...).

Why do you and the OP think you can switch, and have? (What do you think you know, and why?) Because you didn't notice anything bad. I see...

That hasn't worked for me. I've worked at jobs where I had to get up at 6 am every weekday for months. It gets easier when you do it regularly but I still hate it. I naturally feel more energetic starting around 2 pm and I don't feel like going to bed until after midnight.

I'm not sure this is entirely true. I understand the logic, but it's important to note that theres still a net positive in the more subjective ideas of "greeting the day" and finding yourself in a more calculated, healthy routine. Waking up early in the morning, if surrounded by many who also do the same, also lends itself to being surrounded by a group of typically disciplined, motivated and honest people, where little downside can be seen. All of this is deeply subjective, but I think there's some logic to it.

From the blog post:

>Quietude. No kids yelling, no babies crying, no soccer balls, no cars, no television noise. //

Um, yeah, if you live in the countryside and don't have children or neighbours.

The quietest time is actually about 2am-4am IME. Provided your kids aren't up yet ...

Not that anyone cares but I'm not productive in the mornings, also commuting later is easier too.

You know, one of the things I realized as I get older is that somethings we are yet to figure out.

I don't know why, but the old adage that hard work soothes the soul is so true. If you're feeling down, or out of energy, for some reason, if you can manage to get yourself working hard on something, anything, you feel better. The task can range in difficulty from fleshing out that new start up concept, to cleaning your room. For reasons beyond me, this makes you feel better - even when you are dead tired, or super depressed. Sometimes this goes against what you would think follows rationally: if you are tired, a good work out and some rest should suffice. But it doesn't.

Similarly, I cannot come up with a good reason why waking up early works. For the past few weeks, I've adopted a new routine. I recently started a 9-5 after shying away from them for years. I wake up at 7, run for 45 minutes (about 4 miles), shower, and go to work. It is unbelievable how good this feels. I'm so addicted to it, that I look forward to my morning run all evening the day before. This is coming from someone who used to feel like shooting himself in the head whenever he had to get up before 9 and who has always suffered from serious sleep issues. (I should clarify that the benefit is not from exercising alone, I used to work out in the evenings when my day was shifted 4-5 hours)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should give it a shot. The benefits go beyond what one can see written on a sheet of paper (i.e., x amount of productivity gained, y amount of sleep gained, etc. etc.) I eagerly await for science to help us understand our complex brains better to understand why these things are so.

Hacking your day to start later only works until you have kids unless you have somebody else to watch them. Post-kids you're pretty much doomed to follow the same schedule as everybody else unless you get up earlier.

That's the thing I miss in all these guides. For me it might be possible to switch for weekdays, but the next weekend would desynchronize everything. Starting over by getting up on next Monday at 5 AM after few hours of sleep would make me give up. Knowing that I won't even give it a try.

You can plan earlier social activities. A 2pm bbq for instance. A 12pm hike.

> Whether natural light exposure can be simulated adequately by the computer monitor during waking hours and a blindfold during sleeping hours, or whether getting up at dawn is required, I would like to know -- anyone?

Computer and electronics have been shown to damage melatonin secretion in the evening (all the blue light they emit), so it stands to reason that they could act like a light box in the morning.

There's a desperate, wishful-thinking part of my brain that thinks, "Just 10 more minutes is all I need to eradicate this unpleasant sleep inertia!", and it overwhelms all reason.

I have my alarm clock in the adjoining room; it goes off, I hit Snooze once, crawl back into bed, then eight minutes later I get up and dismiss it again. As a result, I have about eight minutes to linger in the border-lands of half-awakeness, think about any dreams, and ponder the coming day. It's more pleasant to wake up gradually like that than to transition from sleeping to "awake and trying to accomplish things."

Then it's off to boil water for coffee. and I leave Snooze on for a while to remind myself of the passage of time in the morning, so I can make sure I'm out the door in time to catch the train.

I suppose the key is that the Snooze is not so close to the bed that I can press it hassle-free.

The author suggests waking up at 05:30. Going to bed at 7pm implies you require 10 hours sleep/night (allowing 30mins to fall asleep) which is way off at one end of the bell curve. For many people, who require 7-8 hours/night, you should be able to go to bed between 9-10pm. Realistically, what do most people do between 9pm and their normal "going to bed" time on most nights? Something productive? Or watch TV?