

Waking up at 5am, my nearly 1 year review - Spyou
http://notgeeklycorrect.com/2011/01/24/5am-wake-up-is-it-crazy-to-wake-up-early

======
jakevoytko
Being the early riser has an extra penalty when your coworkers have later
schedules, since it's acceptable to ask people to stay late, but not to arrive
early. You will attend meetings when you'd normally be commuting. Plus, if an
emergency occurs at the end of the day, everyone else's 9 or 10 hour day
becomes your 12 or 13 hour day. If this happens often, you should try to find
a workplace that doesn't make a habit of discovering critical problems at 4pm.
It turns out they exist!

You can also alleviate the problem by doing something between waking up and
working. I run in the mornings before I head to work, and it provides an extra
daily boost. I admit that I prefer running in the afternoons (when it's not 4
degrees out) but life is full of constraints!

~~~
tzury
I am at the office at around 5AM ever morning for the last 8 months. By the
time meetings starting (~9:30AM), I have already hacked for nearly 4.5 hours
with no single interrupt.

When I am out at 3:30PM, I pick up my son from his kindergarten and have
around 4 hours together until he's going to bed.

It is true I "miss" some "important" meetings, yet, in the corporate I am
working for as a consultant, there are ~12K employees (~11K are meeting
requesters) and I am glad I miss those useless meetings.

~~~
rokhayakebe
_there are ~12K employees (~11K are meeting requesters)_

That about made my day. It is true that in large organizations there are
people whose only task seem to be to ask others to meet and talk about
previous meetings and arrange the next meeting to talk about the current one.

~~~
run4yourlives
They're called Project Managers. :-)

------
csomar
Due to the last unrest in Tunisia, studies and work has permanently stopped
for around two weeks. I was following politics and life (study/work/house
work) was the last thing to think about.

So I was sleeping when I needed it and waking up, when I just wake up. I've
found during that period that I'm following a poly-phasic sleep instead of one
phase sleep.

This can be caused by staying late (until 4-5 A.M.) on Facebook. However I let
my body naturally wake and sleep. It organised itself, by itself.

\- The day begin at 9:00-10:00 [around 4 hours sleep]

-> Feel good and fresh; have a considerable concentration; however my strength and concentration quickly drop at 2:00-3:00 PM

\- So, I get back and sleep at 2:00PM-3:00PM [around 2,5 hours sleep]

-> Feels good too, and I can stand up to 4 or 5 A.M. with a considerable strength and concentration. From 1:00 A.M to 4:00 A.M, I have a considerable concentration and spirit.

So, I sleep 6.5 hours Vs. 7 hours, where is really the difference?

I found out that the difference is huge!

1\. When I wake up at 10:00 I spend much less time at breakfast, I then
quickly jump to do something. I don't feel I need to waste time. -30 min.
gained-

2\. I need a rest in the half of the day. Generally, I spend 1-2 hours in
front of T.V or Internet. Now I sleep instead. So that's time earned. -2:00
hours gained-

3\. I also need a rest before starting my night, generally an hours. Now I
don't need it. I just woke up. -1:00 hour gained-

4\. Finally, when it's 1:00 A.M, I find that I get back my breath. May be
because it's calm and dark. There is no distractions.

So there is:

\- Improvements in productivity and concentration

\- I feel always fresh and no exhaustion

\- I saved 3:30 hours

------
jeffbarr
I've been starting my day at 5 AM for decades. There's something invigorating
about getting a jump on the rest of the people in my time zone (and the time
zones to the east as well). This does, unfortunately, mean that "sleeping in"
on the weekends might last until 7:30 at best.

I need 5.5 to 6.0 hours of sleep, and will generally just wake up after I've
been sleeping for that long, regardless of jet lag.

I like to blast through my email, do my online reading, review and rewrite my
TODO list, and generally have things on the right trajectory for the day by 6
AM.

I use the alarm clock on my BlackBerry and don't have any special tricks for
waking up. I've been getting up at the same time for so long that my eyes will
often open up at 4:55 or so.

~~~
zackattack
I read through this comment and thought "This guy is probably very successful.
Let's learn more about him." and sure enough, Lead Web Services Evangelist at
Amazon.com, my favorite company.

~~~
zackattack
I like to start my day with a healthy dose of confirmation bias.

------
trustfundbaby
I went from the stay-up-till-the-sun-comes-up hacker lifestyle to getting a
fulltime gig ... all of a sudden all of my old habits were in conflict. I was
too exhausted after my commute to hit the gym in the evening like I used to,
and I was not finding time to work on my freelance/personal projects.

So I made a drastic shift in my schedule ... now I'm up at 6am ... at the gym
by 6:15am ... back home by 7:45 ... at work by 8:30pm ... out by 5:30 - 6 (at
the latest) ... I get home and screw around for an hour and a half ... then
from 7:30/8pm I get 4 solid hours of work in and hit the sack at 12am sharp.

Its completely changed my life and made working 60 hour weeks not seem so
intimidating. Working out in the morning also makes it so that if I have a
long night, I can get up and go with only 4 or 5 hours of sleep without a
problem, where before I'd be dragging for at least half the day.

The problem is that my schedule is very regimented and the slightest thing (or
very rough week of work for example) can throw everything out of whack ... but
I've been learning to plan ahead so that I can adjust accordingly (not
schedule side work during a particular stretch, or plan on not working
particular days).

Its been 3 months and it requires a lot of discipline (which I really need)
but I'm very much enjoying it, plus I value my time sooo much more now.

Highly recommended.

------
danielh
From my experience, the big advantage of waking up early to hack on a side
project vs. staying up late is that I'm way more focused in the morning. If I
manage to drag myself out of bed early, I don't waste the time with mindless
surfing.

YMMV, but it is worth giving it a try.

~~~
bobochan
I very rarely sleep past 5:30 but I feel the opposite way, particularly during
the winter. There is something about getting up a couple of hours before
sunrise that is very conducive to getting through a morning routine with the
entire world running as a background process. I find myself standing in the
kitchen with a half finished cup of coffee, listening to the BBC and been
totally unable to recall anything that I had done for the previous 30 minutes.

~~~
danielh
I usually get up around 7:30, so getting up at 6:00 is somewhat special. Maybe
the effect wears down once you get used to rising early.

~~~
wccrawford
I'm a 5:30 riser and have been for most of my life. I'm energetic in the
morning, but I often find that I can't even remember if I locked the door on
the way out because I was on auto-pilot. (I've actually only ever forgotten to
lock it once.) I couldn't tell you anything I did in the morning unless it was
out of the ordinary, like playing a video game before work.

But once the auto-pilot stuff is done, I'm wide awake and fully productive.

~~~
bobochan
Exactly, good to hear I'm not the only one. Fortunately nobody locks doors
where we live or I'd been retracing my steps every day.

Do you ever crash around 4PM? I find that there are many days where I
absolutely need a strong cup of coffee right around then, just to get me
through to about 6PM when I perk back up again.

~~~
GrooveStomp
I suffer from this. I can rise around 6am, but around 2 or 3pm I crash hard.
Staying the full day at work becomes a serious chore. I suspect this is
because I haven't settled into a proper routine of doing this for more than a
week straight. Unfortunately, when I've attempted this, I get incredibly
unproductive in the afternoons, then I just feel like crashing when I get
home, so in general my quality of life goes significantly down. Actually, I'm
quite interested in reading this as I write it, because I've never explicitly
anlayzed it before.

I find I'm typically happiest and most productive when I go to sleep and wake
up as I wish. Normally for me this is sleep around 23h or 24h and waking up
around 9h-ish. Of course, having to work an 8-hour day in the middle of my
14-15 waking hours only leaves me with 6-7 hours for commuting, cooking,
eating, working on side projects, working out and spending time with my
fiancee. Unfortunately, I often while away the hours working on side projects
to the neglect of the rest of the things I care about. :\ When I do this, I
often stay up well past midnight, so I get less sleep. My schedule winds up
being something like: sleep from 2am to 7:30am, prep + commute + work +
commute until about 6pm, eat and veg with fiancee until about 8pm, then work
on side projects until 2am.

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rubidium
In agreement with the author when he says ''Dark, rain and cold, makes it
harder.''

I think a seasonal schedule would be best (something like 5am in summers
transitioning to 7am in winters), but that's hard to do with our clock-
dominated world. And certainly it depends on one's local climate.

~~~
harshpotatoes
I agree, but with more emphasis on the affects of one's local climate. I also
think a schedule timed with the local sunrise has very much helped me be
productive in my current location (florida). Unfortunately in my hometown of
seattle, I find my mood too affected by the seasons. In the winter the sun
rises at about 900am, and is set by about 5pm. Combined with constant
overcast, it never really feels like the sun rises, and it makes it very hard
for me to feel productive/happy.

~~~
GrooveStomp
I have the same issue with living in Vancouver. It might be worse having come
from Calgary, Alberta. Generally, in the prairies, the winters are bright and
sunny. It's even nice further north around Edmonton where they get more
significant snow, because the snow reflects a lot of the sunlight. By
contrast, the Pacific Northwest is full of rain and overcast skies. Seasonal
Affective Disorder is a term everyone here is familiar with. Most people seem
to think snow is the big issue to face in the winter. For me, snow is no
problem. Overcast and rainy skies 90%+ of the time is a big issue to consider,
however.

------
Supermighty
When I started to get up early in the mornings I found it pretty hard. So I
devised a plan to help me out.

I have three lights on timers. The first is a short string of blue lights, the
second is a longer string of blue lights and the last is a 40watt bulb pointed
indirectly at the wall.

First the short string turns on about 30 minutes before I have to get up, then
the longer string 15 minutes later, and lastly the the white light.

I also have two alarms, the first is the radio followed by the oh so annoying
standard alarm sound.

Most days I wake up with the white light and the radio. The alarm sound is my
drop dead, get the heck out of bed, notification. If it goes off I need to get
moving.

It's my own personal sunrise.

~~~
rue
Up here in the dark north, bright-light sunrise-simulating alarms are becoming
commonplace[1]. Mine increases in intensity over 30 minutes and uses a bird
tweet as the sound alarm (I have it set to 14/20 final intensity, brighter
means a headache). This works quite well.

[1] And seem available in the US: <http://www.usa.philips.com/c/light-
therapy/hf3480_60/prd/>

~~~
Supermighty
All of the simulated sunrise alarms I found before I cobbled my own together
were out of my price range and limited to one bulb. I like my solution because
it uses long strings of colored lights which politely brighten the room.

------
mopoke
Another approach : have kids. You can forget about ever waking up late again
:-)

~~~
thibaut_barrere
We're progressively teaching our son (3yo) to stay in bed in the morning
during the week-end, and it's actually working great.

One thing I found as well is that it's easier for me to put an alarm clock
slightly before he wakes up, vs. being woken up by him!

------
greyman
For the sake of adding more hours for work on personal projects, I can add two
things that works for me:

1) It might not be necessary to sleep exactly 7 hours. I found out that if I
sometimes sleep less, nothing tragic happens.

2) What also works is that I don't need to spend every evening with my wife. I
don't mean it in a negative sense, we have a very good relationships, but in a
lot of evenings, I just do my things on the computer, and she does her things,
and it's totally ok.

~~~
Spyou
I've tried different sleeping times and 7 hours seems to the one that suit me
the most. Obviously this is not an exact science and I guess that as long as
you have between 6 to 8 hours sleep, it's ok.

Regarding my relationship, we've got a very close one, but obviously we do
thing on our side in the evening. Sometime I'll reading or gaming and she'll
doing something else. But we like to keep the "going to bed together" and
"having breakfast together" as much as possible. It's just more quality time
added to our relationship.

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ams6110
Waking up at 5am would not do much for me. Starting at 6, it's getting kids
out of bed and ready for school. The very deep sleeping 14 yr old is very
difficult to rouse. As soon as he's out the door, time to start waking/feeding
the 3rd grader. By the time he's gone it's 8:30 and off to work.

Night owl hours are by far more productive for me. Everyone in the house
asleep, no interruptions, quite and calm.

------
jpwagner
_"I found it easier to have a list of 2 or 3 actions ready near the bed or the
desk. So when I wake up, I know what I have to do."_

Isn't it possible that this change is the one that made him more productive
rather than a change of schedule?

~~~
ianhawes
Glad someone pointed it out. Even when you're tired it seems that specifying
what you need to do makes you much more productive.

------
rdl
I've been waking up at 0546 for a long time (at least a year, maybe two?), and
I tend to get more "maker work" done between 0600 and 0800 than any other part
of the day. (and yes, my alarm clock is a pager sound). It's especially free
of online distractions when you're on the east coast of the US or in Europe.

------
dclaysmith
I wonder does he drink at all/much. I find that a beer or two at the end of
the day makes me considerably more groggy the next morning (the length of
sleep being equal). I think if I were to start waking up at 5 I'd have to
eliminate drinking entirely. Probably a good idea but unlikely to happen.

~~~
Spyou
I don't drink on a regular basis. If I drink on an evening event, then my
limit is 3 pints, after that, I know I'm going to struggle the next morning ;)

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cynest
I wonder how much of the benefit is specifically from waking up at the
specific time 5am, and how much is simply waking up, then using the morning
time to be productive in a way that isn't hurried or scheduled.

~~~
watty
I don't think it has anything to do with the specific timing but instead that
he made it a habit and stuck with it. If he were truly a night owl and made a
habit to stay up and work from 10:00 PM - 1:00 AM on personal projects and
wake up at 8:00 AM, he would accomplish the same thing.

~~~
Spyou
I agree that my post was more about making it the habit than morning is better
than evening. It was just that I struggled to manage private life and work
life when hacking in the evening. I might amend the post to make it clearer.

~~~
msy
How does your fiancee feel about you going to bed 9-10 most evenings, I'm
guessing that's a fair while before she does? Tempted to give this a shot but
I'm not sure how that part of it would go down.

~~~
Spyou
She used to get up around 6.30am so this wasn't an issue as she is not a night
person. But now, she is an early bird as well, working on some study, and wake
up at 5am, so it's definitively not an issue ;)

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ffffruit
My understanding is that he's working from home? I dont really see how this
could work out if you are not working from home and your partner works as
well. A simple example would be that you wake up at five, go to work at 8 and
then come back at six or seven. Your partner wakes up at 8, goes to work and
comes back at six or seven. You are dead tired by eight and want to go to bed
at nine. I personally cant go to bed before 12 or 1 as I work long days and I
feel that I have 'wasted' the day if I dont spend some time for things I enjoy
(be it hacking or gaming or something else).

~~~
Spyou
I am working from home, but when I started the 5am thing, I was freelancing
for a company in the city center. So I was going to their office every day
(for about 6 months). And it was still great. My gf finishes her work at 5 and
is at home around 5.30pm or 6pm, so yes our schedules works quite well with
this lifestyle.

------
JoeAltmaier
Would like to see something concrete - "lots more productive" is fine, but how
much more?

And, dude, tip on the shower schedule - double up. May not save much time, but
starts the day out way better.

------
daimyoyo
Frankly, I don't think I could do this. I've been a nite owl since I was 8
years old and it's quite difficult to change a 21 year habit. I've actually
tried before. In college I had a 7:00AM(it was the only time the course was
offered) math class that I barely made it through because I was always
exhausted. So if it works for you, congratulations, that's awesome. But for
me, I'm going to continue to keep the hours my brain likes.

------
wmboy
If you need some help actually getting out of bed when the alarm goes off
(instead of hitting snooze and rolling over), check out this article:

[http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-
right...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-
when-your-alarm-goes-off/)

------
mymex1
I'm curious about how caffeine consumption goes up when waking up earlier. I
find that when I wake up earlier I will sometimes drink an extra cup or two of
coffee throughout the day to try and stay alert, though I suppose if waking up
earlier became a habit then maybe caffeine consumption would level off?

------
Aloisius
Has anyone tried always waking up with the sunrise?

I sleep in a house with a full eastern exposure, so I think it would be pretty
easy for me to do it. Sure it would require going to bed at different times
every night in order to get my 8 hours of sleep, but a simple warning alarm
should do it.

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semerda
Nice write up. Thanks for sharing. I found this routine to work and cement the
habit for me to sleep 5 hours a night:
[http://blog.ernestsemerda.com/2010/08/06/sleep-5-hours-
night...](http://blog.ernestsemerda.com/2010/08/06/sleep-5-hours-night/)

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akgerber
I've been a night owl since, more-or-less, middle school. Lately I've been
imitating my roommate & sleeping outside some days, and I've found that makes
it a lot easier to wake up earlier.

It is, of course, much easier to do in California.

~~~
dawson
Where do you sleep outside? I usually keep the curtains open, wake up with the
sunlight.

~~~
akgerber
The enclosed yard/patio of the house the first floor of which my roommates & I
rent.

------
OzzyB
Regarding being tired before everyone else when you do decide to go out at
night because you got up at 5am, try taking a little nap for an hour or two
before going out.

Some people call these siestas, I lovingly refer to them as "Disco Naps".

------
theycallmemorty
I started waking up at 6:00am when we switched off of daylight savings time in
the fall. It gave me a nice 1 hour bonus from when I was normally used to
waking up.

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JamesDB
Doesn't his girlfriend get seriously pissed off with him getting up at 5am and
waking her up?

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buckwild
why not modify your schedule by season? It looks like one can avoid the cons
by getting up "with the sun." I might give this a try! I can totally see how
this can be motivating!

------
tomrod
The concept was good, but overwhelmed by typos.

~~~
Spyou
I'm sorry, English is not my mother tongue. I try to make as less typos as
possible and use grammarly.com to avoid most of them, but it looks like it's
not enough :(

~~~
macov
Yes, but if you are looking for work from English speaking areas, at least
check your posts in Word or Google Docs before posting them, otherwise WTF.

EDIT: I am ESL.

~~~
Spyou
I live and work in England, and my spelling has never been an issue to find
work. Ok my vocabulary is still limited, but I learn everyday. I might do some
very strong grammatical mistakes and typos, but usually people just correct
them I try to avoid doing them twice. All my post are now checked in
Grammarly, to avoid those situations, but I know the process is not 100%
accurate, but it's still better than nothing. I've just copy pasted the text
in Google Docs and you're right there are few typos. I've going to correct
them now.

~~~
atonse
Don't worry about it. It was perfectly understandable and a very informative
post.

Thanks!

