
How to rise early and why successful people do it - maclover
http://www.ericosiu.com/rising-early/
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avalaunch
This is just silly. You get the same amount of hours in a day regardless of
whether you wake up early or stay up late. Other than missing out on the
sunrise, none of his arguments hold much water.

There's no reason you can't exercise in the evening. In fact, gyms are
typically busiest between 4-7 pm so clearly a lot of people find time to
exercise after work. And there's no reason you can't be just as productive at
night as you can in the morning. To follow the same name dropping technique he
uses, famous night owls include President Obama, Charles Darwin, Adolf Hitler,
Winston Churchill, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Keith Richards and Elvis
Presley. And finally, you definitely don't need to get up at 5 in the morning
to make a healthy breakfast smoothie that only takes 5-10 minutes to make.
Just wake up 5-10 minutes earlier if you're really that pressed for time.

From my personal experience, being a night owl is easier on the body. Waking
up early is great until you decide you want a social life that extends past
your normal bedtime of 9 pm. Then your whole schedule gets out of whack and
you struggle to make up for the sleep debt.

"Tis night: now only do all songs of the loving ones awake. And my soul also
is the song of a loving one." \- Nietzsche

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banachtarski
As Yakko Warner of the animaniacs put it "Early to rise and early to bed…Makes
a man healthy, but socially dead"

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avalaunch
I must be getting old. I had to look up Animaniacs.

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banachtarski
This was an 80s cartoon.

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trustfundbaby
I like the idea and I've done it successfully for a couple of months, but my
conclusion is that you can't fight your tendencies. I simply got a lot more
done by staying up late than by getting up early.

Also, I think its a little facetious to namedrop early risers without doing
research into similarly successful/creative people who stay up late.

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coolsunglasses
A common trait among type A early risers is that they assume that's the only
way to be a productive member of polite society.

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trustfundbaby
I have this experience too. In my experience Early Risers tend to be
suspicious of night owls, but I think it might be a deeper issue of
personalities. I found this link that says early risers tend to be
conscientious where night owls are more of the creative types and it makes
sense that two of those kinds of personalities might not necessarily get along
well ... at least initially

Here's the link [http://www.forbes.com/pictures/lmj45hjhj/more-
optimistic/](http://www.forbes.com/pictures/lmj45hjhj/more-optimistic/)
(forgive me for not providing something more substantial)

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GeorgeTirebiter
The Morning Fascists rule the world, however. While we're sleeping, they are
out there making noise and rules for everybody else. I was told that as I got
older, I would prefer rising early. Now that I've reached that age, I can say
that, no, I don't prefer rising early. I get much more done at night.

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sukuriant
Step 2: never have those 'fire drills' at work so you can leave at 5 every
day, all the time, so you can get to bed at a decent hour and still get your
6-9 hours of sleep.

It feels like every time I come in early to work, and yeah, my morning is more
productive, something happens and the world goes crazy that afternoon, forcing
me to stay until 7 or 8 or 9pm, because things went bad and it has to be fixed
right now.

I may be a bit jaded.

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imjared
I love seeing the sky go from dark to light. Nice way to end a night of
productivity.

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kintamanimatt
It's quite likely that Ben Franklin had a mutated gene that caused familial
advanced sleep-phase syndrome, and it's silly to try to shoehorn yourself into
a sleeping pattern that isn't right for you. Early risers seem to have a
genetic predisposition, just as do those few people who need less sleep than
most[1]. Chances are if you try to force yourself to be an early riser you're
likely to end up more tired, less productive, and more prone to mistakes for
absolutely no benefit other than a sunrise. (On a side note you don't need to
be an early riser to see the sunrise. I see the sun rise every day and it's my
cue to go to sleep.)

The rest of this article isn't worth refuting because the arguments are so
obviously flawed or subjective.

Also, just because Franklin said something doesn't make it correct.

[1]
[http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2009/08/13-02.html](http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2009/08/13-02.html)

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ams6110
If you're getting up at 5 and getting 8-9 hours of sleep a night it means
being asleep by 8-9 pm (i.e. going to bed a bit earlier than that). That's
just not very realistic in a lot of households, unless you can convince
everyone to do it.

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D9u
I've always been a "morning person."

From my childhood days of waking up before the sun in order to check the surf
conditions from our living room window, to military service, to my present
tendencies towards waking up at 4 am in order to be more in sync with my
online counterparts, I've always enjoyed waking up early.

I don't have any secrets as to how I maintain my early-bird ways, other than
"you just have to want it."

~~~
jebblue
I was in the military and I couldn't stand getting up early. At one point, I
was consuming close to a dozen cups of coffee (including the NoDoze) per day
to stay awake and try to be productive, in my 20's. It didn't work well and I
have stomach problems as a result.

My peak is 2:30 PM to midnight. On days when my company lets me work from
home, that works out great. So a couple days a week I get stuff done, the
other three days I'm drinking 4 cups of coffee to deal with getting in at a
reasonable hour (fortunately they aren't too bad about this) and to deal with
morning and afternoon traffic.

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D9u
I have never been a coffee drinker, nor a tobacco smoker. I do, however, drink
caffeine laden soft drinks, but I tend to not drink caffeinated beverages
after sundown.

I often work on projects for 36, or more, hours at a time, but I do see a
reduction in productivity when pushing myself to the limits, and often wonder
at the things I've done while sleep deprived, in pride as well as shame.

There's a saying about habits which goes something like the following:

    
    
        If you want to make something a habit make sure to repeat that act every day for two weeks, after which the act will become habitual.

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vincie
I don't draw the curtains so the morning light wakes me up. Unfortunately I
live in a place that does not have daylight savings (Queensland, Australia),
so the times differ. But I can work around that.

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altrego99
How is it better than sleeping late at night? The atmosphere is serene, you
don't get disturbed, and the sky doesn't turn lighter... which to me is an
indication that chaos is going to begin now.

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haldujai
My own experience agrees. Making the switch to waking up really early
increased my productivity and mood significantly. I found that melatonin pills
(in the short term) and the Sleep Cycle app (despite the iffy science behind
it) worked very well in adjusting and maintaining my sleep schedule.
Additionally, I programmed the AC to kick in about 30 minutes before I wake up
so it gets cold and hard for me to stay sleeping.

It also helps to have alarm clocks strategically placed in places hard to
reach while your eyes are closed.

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scoot
That all sounds extremely unnatural, and uncomfortable. What's I'd be far more
interested in is how to naturally change the sleep cycle to be "early to bed,
early to rise", and waking naturally rested, rather than the more typical
"stay up 'till dawn, sleep 'till lunchtime" routine, with enforced scattered
alarms to get up earlier, with resulting sleep deprivation.

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haldujai
I should have been more clear - those more extreme measures were only to deal
with the initial change in sleep cycle from going to bed at 4 am to going to
bed at 9-10 pm. It took me about a week to adjust and wasn't all that bad.
Otherwise you can try shifting an 45 minutes a day (which seems to be the
ideal time) until you're at where you want to be.

Now I just use Sleep Cycle.

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coldtea
> _Rising Early: Why Successful People Do It & How You Can Too_

Define "successful". Made lots of money? Happy? With a quality creative
output?

And why should I care that some -- surely not all -- successful people do it?
Correlation does not imply causation, and I've known many succesful people in
all of the above categories to know that there's hardly correlation either.

Perhaps some business and self-improvement junkies wake up at 5 or even 4, but
I'd hardly call those successful.

