Still waking up at 5am to code? | Hacker News Reader

Still waking up at 5am to code?

mattgreer.org

53 pointscity4128 comments

It's good to see the other side of the early riser fad (which isn't really a fad. If you think it started in 2006 with Steve Pavlina, you need to read more Benjamin Franklin).

On balance, waking up early seems better than waking up late, but there are real consequences to waking up really early, and not all of them are good. Unfortunately, the internet can be a confirmation bias echo chamber, leading those who actually try waking up early on their own wondering "is it just me".

No, it's not "just you" if:

- None of the clever tricks successfully "train" you to get up earlier

- You're up, but are mentally incapable of doing anything other than staring at the wall or browsing reddit

- Even after several days, you haven't really seen that mythical burst of energy and mental clarity everyone talks about

- You do enjoy having those hours before anyone else wakes up to get some work done, but it doesn't seem to matter because you're out like a light at 8:45PM instead of your normal 11:30PM - 1:00AM range

- You get hungry at really weird times that seem out of sync with everyone else

- The 4PM nappy time feeling turns into a 3:30PM coma time mandate

- You don't think you can "tough it out" for weeks at a time just because you've been reassured that "your body, family, and friends will get used to it"

I'm not saying that getting up early is a bad idea or that you won't benefit from it. I just think it can be damaging to have all this ra-ra self-help guru stuff all over the web that turns to incredible loneliness when you actually try it out (because no one on those forums seems to be having any of your problems).

> because no one on those forums seems to be having any of your problems

My most enlightening online experience is probably hanging out in #polyphasers for a while. It's a tiny echo chamber full of people trying überman sleep and similar sleep rhythms without any success (in the time I've been there). Yet everyone only blames themselves for not having enough discipline.

(Not implying that early rising is as dubious as überman sleep, and even the latter has its use cases for a day or two.)

I would be surprised if anyone actually manages to achieve true uberman sleep. Not only is it very difficult, it's also pretty bad for you. Despite all the talk to the contrary, it's not to you benefit to try to squeeze all of your REM sleep into 20minute sessions, and your body does need the other stages as well. Even if you were able to get to uberman some how, I don't think you could last for more than a week or 2 before you crash. When you consider the "fact" that it takes 10 days for your body to adjust to uberman (and those 10 days you are essentially a zombie), I don't think it's worth it. I don't think that would convince anyone in #polyphasers, but my 2 cents from a medical perspective (I've discussed this with several doctors, including sleep experts). What is interesting, gurkendoktor, are the observations you're doing. I'm curious, what do you make of the actual productivity of people trying to game sleep? Are they hyperproductive and want more time, or are they constant time wasters that think uberman will solve all their problems? or is it a mix?

Sorry - I should've written "was", not "is" :) I've left the channel quite a while ago. I remember that most people were blogging and graphing their progress; at least that's all we talked about. I could do some very light coding but nothing that required more than 10 minutes of focus.

That said, at least people weren't sticking to überman religiously- everyone seemed to drift towards a longer "core sleep" with a few naps during the day.

I don't really see waking up early as a "life hack" that you need to train yourself to perform on regular basis. I simply activate my intergalactic ear plugs and make a general announcement (unfortunately I live with night owls) - good night everybody, the one to wake me up will be defenestrated and that's it. I'd rather be fully aware and productive at 5am than keep my brain up with infinite stream of coffee in the middle of a night.

- You're up, but are mentally incapable of doing anything other than staring at the wall or browsing reddit

On my ideal schedule, which I don't hit all the time but have sustained for a while, I get up at 5:20 to exercise. When I first wake, I'm usually not capable of much mentally but I don't need to be to do something much more useful than staring at the wall or browsing reddit.

But in my defense, my two posts were not "rara self help guru" posts. Just me reporting on an experiment I did. I don't know the ideal answer here. But I like to see people trying things.

I think long-term follow-up on productivity "hacks" are really important. I've tried a bunch of them, and my experience with all of them so far has been that none of them can be sustained indefinitely.

Even Adderall use (which I haven't tried) eventually has side effects and physiological costs (as well as immediate costs in terms of creativity for many users).

It would be neat if there were a way to cheat the rules about how much the average person can produce in their lifetime. I think many of us have a tendency to look towards extraordinarily productive people and want to try to match their output. But, either they seem to have won the genetic lottery which allows them to get away with things that other mere mortals cannot, or they eventually pay the price in insanity or exhaustion or early demise.

I'm starting to come around to the idea that the best possible productivity "hack" is healthy living and a laser-like focus on just one or two projects at a time, and delegate everything else.

I definitely agree that long term follow-ups are important.

For me the best productivity hacks aren't adderall/redbull/caffiene pills, sleep cycling, standing up or locking myself in a hotel room. And it's not knocks on those methods per se, its just that I have a very hard time doing them with enough regularity to be relevant.

The best productivity hacks in my experience are still simply staying positive[1] and hiring interns.

[1] which includes things like adequate exercise and rest, but nothing outlandish.

Can you elaborate on hiring interns? I'm doing my second internship at the moment, and it would be interesting to hear some opinions from the employer's point of view.

Someone has to fill the coffee ;-). Jokes aside, having someone else ask you questions about your software is a pretty good way to become familiar with it.

Another good one: using social support.

Say you want to get fit. It's going to be a lot easier if you recruit your friends to go to martial arts and cook healthy meals in bulk together a few times per week.

This can be extended to all areas. Social support lets you put hard work on autopilot. It's still hard work but you have a safety net of accountability which doesn't permit you to slip up easily.

I used to work at a call center around 5 years back here in Bangalore. I reported to office around 2 AM in the night. I would leave home at around 1:30 AM. I loved the shift. Reasons:

1. Travel time was down to nothing. Like totally an hour because I traveled at odd timings, when most of the traffic was off roads.

2. I would come back to home by 10:45 AM in the morning sleep till 5 PM next learn coding and prepare for software interviews till like 11 PM in the night.

3. Nobody disturbs you as you sleep when they work and you work when they sleep.

4. Practically zero meetings in the call center, Coupled with 5-10 mins of 'coffee grab' Aux breaks given throughout work timings between uninterrupted sessions of work. Somehow this is more productive. I don't know how but it works. And colleagues are generally helpful, if you need a sandwich and someone is out for their 10 min aux break- They get you one.

5. Work 'flow' is maintained as you go from a call to another without distractions like blog reading, meetings, tweeting, facebooking and other stuff.

These days I miss all these. When I look back at my call center days I just thank myself to have gone into that industry first before software. None of colleagues I know ever managed to miss their targets back then.

Software world is plagued with desires for lesser meetings, distraction and helps to beat procrastination.

Back in my call center days I didn't even know the words 'procrastination', 'distractions' etc. My mom was a teacher and Dad a cab driver- Incidentally I've never seen them talk about things either. I hardly remember my mom taking any work back home.

Disrupting your circadian rhythm is linked to an increase in cancer.

http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20071130/night_shift-work-m...

My personal opinion on the causes of the inability to keep virtuous habits is that people lack external stimuli, review and pressure.

Talk to teenagers who train for swimming competitions. They have to be in the swimming pool by 6:30 or 7:00. This means that they, their instructors, their parents, even the swimming pool janitors will have to wake up at around 5:00 or 5:30, every day for years and years. Unsurprisingly most of the swimming athletes wake up at those ungodly hours and do that for years.

I suppose that the thing that helps swimmers wake up early is the social stigma that would arise from being late. Being late means disappointing your instructor and wasting the time of your parents and all the people that work at the swimming pool. This pressure, if well balanced, keeps you in check, even after the Hawthorn effect fades away.

Hawthorn effect [1] seems to explain why most productivity hacks seem to work initially but later relapses: "Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition."

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

Waking up really early makes me feel like I am getting more out of my life, the day seems to stretch out longer. I also feel more happy somehow, like I am doing the right thing.

I'm not so sure that I am more productive, however. I seem to spend those early morning hours browsing the Internet, mostly. Well, unless I have to get up and go to a job. Then I am productive. But that also negates the happiness bonus. And it would probably be the same if I had to go up and go to a job at 2pm in the afternoon.

I'm quite suspicious about messing around with sleep too much. If you get up early, you'll eventually have to go to bed earlier, too. (Though apparently there's no 1:1 relationship between sleep debt that you have to repay and time you spend being awake when you should be sleeping - you only have to make up a fraction of that sleep.[1])

The >only< sleep hack that seems to work (and I've tried many) is the 15-20 + coffee nap. You know how it is: you wake up, and for the next few hours tons and tons of distractions present themselves (and I don't mean trivial stuff like Twitter or emails and such). Eight hours or so pass, and you've only managed to deal with tedious administrative stuff or other non-critical work that won't count in the long run. By that time you're usually dead tired - so the trick I use is to have a normal-sized coffee really quickly, then nap for 15-20 minutes or so (not much less and certainly not much more). The effect of the coffee kicks in right when the effect of the extra sleep kicks in, and if you don't sleep too long you won't get the usual 'exhaustion' that comes from lengthy sleep.

This trick has worked for me every single time (except when I was severely sleep deprived). It may not feel productive to have a nap when you should be working - and obviously it's not possible for everyone to do this - but I've personally found the extra energy and focus that you get invaluable.

[1] "Sleepfaring" by Prof Jim Horne: http://www.amazon.com/Sleepfaring-Journey-through-Science-Sl...

I wake up at 4am to code. Do I win?

Growing up I never could understand why my dad got up so early. Now that I'm just into my 40s I understand why:

1. I don't need as much sleep anymore. I could sleep until noon when I was a teenager. Doing that now would give me a headache and a stiff back.

2. I get 3 hours of uninterrupted kid free time.

You do have to realize that you don't get this time for free. I'm tired by 9pm at night and in bed and asleep by 10pm.

This for me is the crux of it.

You're not creating more time, you're moving your waking time to allow you to make better use of it based on fewer interruptions or whatever.

Early morning has fewer distractions than evening (nothing on TV, you can't phone people, e-mail isn't arriving, forums are quiet and so on) which is why it can be productive time for solo work, but you can't sustainably just take that time out of sleep without something (usually one or more of attention span, short term memory, general mood) giving out.

Considering you need 8-9h of sleep, is it not enough to just go to sleep at 8 or 9pm, to wake up at 5am? Sure, that's not for everybody - you would have to give up evening TV, but I think it should not be that much of a difference to a 11-7 rhythm. In summer, even the sun is already shining at 5am.

8-9 hours sleep? Try just sleeping less... (you might even live longer as a result)!

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1812420,00.ht...

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/15/us/study-ties-6-7-hours-of...

If combined with naps, then, yeah sure, 6-7h. But any less than 7h in total and you find me a walking dead ;) Productivity sinks to the bottom, and mood swings and general anxiety ensue.

I think giving up a lot of TV is an easy win. If you want to be more productive pick shows you really want to watch and watch them when it is convenient for you. Make a habit of not just turning the TV on and watching whatever is on.

Or just cancel the cable :)

I'm no one for going up that early. I have to do that from time to time because of our kids waking us up, but I would prefer to sleep until 8am, maybe 9am.

I can't start working before 10 or 11 am. I like it to work late though, I still get something done around 9-11pm.

Many older (70+) people wake up at 5 am, they usually go to be around 8-10 pm.

Used to before I started doing it professionally.

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