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Can I Become An Early Riser?
16th September 2009
After doing a lot of thinking about focusing on the most important things, I’ve decided that I really do need to make some more time in my day. Since I’ve extracted virtually all my extraneous hobby activities from my daily routine, really the only thing left that I can take out is sleep.
Ok, you can stop laughing now…those you that know me well know that I have no problem sleeping late…in my younger years sometimes ’till 2, 3, 4, or even 5 in the afternoon! I am not a morning person. But…I’ve been doing pretty good lately…I’m usually up before 8am. Now I want to take it to the next level. My goal is to be out of bed each morning by 6am, adding an extra two hours to my day. (I thought briefly about attempting polyphasic sleeep, but I quickly dismissed the idea ;)
What am I going to do with the extra time? Get my required tasks out of the way, that’s what. I’m certainly not going to fill it up with the hobbies I just cut out. No, I’m going to focus on doing what I’m doing now, just doing stuff better. A bit of extra time composing, taking longer to really absorb the non-fiction I’m reading, giving myself permission to linger over dinner to enjoy my wife’s company–these are just a few ways I hope to make use of the extra time in my day.
I’m actually on day two of this exercise, and it hasn’t been easy. I’m following Steve Pavlina’s method (get up at the same time each day, go to bed when tired) and it’s definitely taking discipline. I’m sure it will take at least a couple weeks for my body to adjust, but man…it’s tough rolling out of bed! That being said, I’ve already been so much more productive during my morning that I really do think it’s worth it so far. Amber has committed to do this with me, so we’re trying to keep each other accountable.
Are you an early riser? Would the productivity/stress relief benefits of getting up early even be worth it to you? Let me know what you think in the comments.
Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/victius/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
You and me, both, buddy.
For me, I think I’m going to need to do this before I can even think about becoming an early riser. But it’s ironic, I have been thinking about becoming an early riser very much, lately, as well.
Though, at some point in the next couple years I do want to try polyphasic sleep. I’m thinking that I’ll give it a go the moment I’m able to work fully from home, and can quit the part-time job I have now. I think the biggest obstacle would be work (i.e., the need to go to sleep while at work, if working a shift longer than a couple hours). Once I no longer have an out-of-the-house job, I’m giving polyphasic a go. I realize there might be certain inconveniences, but I’m thinking that if you work from home, the possibility of 23-24 productive hours a day would be amazing! Compare that to now — I’m probably in the 8.5- to 9-hour sleep days Pavlina mentions, and also take a while to really get going and become productive, like he mentions — and I think it’s possible that the time gained could be well worth some occasional social awkwardness.
Not having measured it or anything, I’d guess I’ve probably got 15 waking hour a day right now (that’s a guess at an average, with a HUGE degree of fluctuation), with only about 12-13 of them being productive, since I don’t wake up early, and it takes me a while to get going.
Also, as I re-read Pavlina’s post, and the Part II follow-up, I was struck by his comments on self-discipline. It occurs to me that I don’t have very much, and I suddenly realize that this fact does not please me at all.
I hear you on the personal discipline front. I have a long way to go in that area.
It’s really quite depressing how lacking I am in that area.
So, I have some questions.
Because the issues of my inability to get up early enough, my complete lack of self-discipline, and my sad lack of productivity at times had really become frustrating to me this past week, your post was a timely one for me. I think I was already leaning towards making some changes, including getting up earlier, and when you posted what you and Amber were doing, that sealed it. (Anna, of course, isn’t doing this with me, because her day job already has her waking up early.)
But I’m curious about a few things. 6:00 a.m. seems like quite the ambitious target, as a first step? Is that because you were already getting up fairly early (i.e., 7:00 or 8:00) on a regular basis? Or did you just decide to take the “go big or go home” approach? I figure it’s probably a bit early to be asking for an evaluation of what you’ve done, how it’s worked, how you would do things differently if you had it to do over again, etc. So I’m mainly curious as to why, out of the blue, you decided to start getting up at 6:00 a.m.
I’ve started with a slightly less fixed goal: I’m getting up a half-hour before my wife goes to work. This gives me time to make us both breakfast. Normally, that’s 8:00 a.m., which I feel like is a good start, considering where I’m coming from (I typically wake up between 8:45 and 10:45 — some weeks, I get closer to the 8:45 mark on most days, and other weeks, I seem to fail in waking up day after day). However, there is a little bit of flexibility in that sometimes, Anna has to go in early. When she does, I still get up a half-hour before she leaves for work. Yesterday (Friday) was my first day at this, and she worked at 7:00 a.m., so I got up at 6:30.
Another question: What are you doing on weekends? Today is Saturday, and I got up at 8:00 a.m. today. It’s not something I plan to do in the long run (unless this “becoming a morning person” thing becomes so natural and agreeable to me that I actually want to) — however, I thought that in these early stages, especially, sleeping in even once or twice a week is likely to make it a lot harder for me to form this habit, and would probably set me back. So for the first few weeks, at least, I’m planning to continue waking up at 8:00 a.m. on weekends.
Like you, I’ve also decided to wake up on the first ring of my alarm clock — no snooze allowed. Another thing I’ve done, which applies very much to getting up on the first ring, is to quit using words like “try” and “planning” when it comes to waking up. As in, “I’m going to try to wake up at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow,” or, “I’m planning on getting up early in the morning,” or, “I’m going to try to wake up as soon as my alarm goes off.” I find that all that does is give you a subconscious excuse not to succeed. Now, I simply say, “I am going to wake up at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, and I am going to wake up the moment my alarm goes off, without hitting the snooze or going back to sleep.” I’m only 2 days in, but so far it has worked well, and I really do think the practice of saying you will, instead of saying you’ll try, is an important thing here. For me, at least.
If this goes well for a week, my plan is to step it up a bit. Maybe try getting up at 7:30 a.m. (or if my wife goes to work before 8:00 a.m., then still a half-hour before she leaves). And after I’ve done that for a week or two, try and push things back to 7:00, then on to 6:30 and eventually 6:00 a.m. I think 6:00 a.m. is going to be my primary medium-term goal; I think I would like to shoot for 5:30 or 5:00 a.m. in the long term, but I’m thinking that’s something I might get to over the next 2-3 years, whereas I’d like to be to 6:00 a.m. within the next 2-3 months.
Let me know your thoughts on why you started with 6:00 a.m., what you’re doing over the weekend, and whether you intend to gradually work up to 5:00 a.m., or just make a jump straight from 6:00 to 5:00.
Why 6:00 a.m.? Well, I really wanted a significant amount of extra time, because I knew that that would immediately give me motivation to keep developing my discipline. I was getting up right about 8:00 a.m. most days, so this provided me an extra two hours in the morning.
My alarm actually goes off at 5:45 a.m. at which point I sit up or get out of bed. Then I usually chill & stretch (sitting up in bed hopefully, not laying back down) ’till 6, when another alarm goes off and I actually start proceeding with my morning routine. I think that it might be best to actually just get started right at 5:45, but so far it hasn’t been too bad to have a 15 minutes or so to fully come to my senses.
My weekend routine is identical to what I do on weekdays. Today I was up and about right at 6:00 a.m…and it’s been pretty awesome. My weekend already seems longer.
As far as making the jump to 5:00 a.m. goes, I’m planning on making 6:00 a.m. a habit (do it for 21 days), then maybe continue for a month or so, and then make the jump to 5 a.m. IF I feel the need for the extra time. Right now I’ve been going to bed around 10:30 p.m. and waking up at 6 p.m., so I’m getting a pretty healthy 7.5 hours of sleep. I feel like I have plenty of energy through the day, and I’m happy with the extra time I’m gaining. If getting up at 5:00 a.m. means that I’ll be getting sleepier earlier, though (like at 9:30 p.m.) then it’s not worth it for me. A key to success is actually going to bed when tired, and for social reasons I’d like to be able to stay up till 10:30 – 11:00 pm without jacking my routine or feeling super tired.
I see. See, you were already getting up earlier than me. I was getting up at close to 9 on early days, and as late as 11 when I slacked — which might be twice a week, might be four times. That’s what led me to become so frustrated.
I told my dad today that I’m becoming a morning person. I can tell you that he didn’t sound disappointed.
I’m impressed (and glad) that you can survive on 7.5 hours per night. There was a time I thought you’d always be tired if you didn’t get at least 11.
Somehow, sitting there for 15 minutes while you come to your senses seems fitting, for you. Mainly because I can still picture that blank look on your face, and the super-hunched posture, that I’d see in high school when you had just woken up. You were always a bit like your computing platform of choice (at the time) — it took you a while to boot up. I, on the other hand, am quite different. I don’t need coffee, and 98% of the time, I’m fully awake and feeling fine the moment my feet are on the ground. However… if I stay in bed even for a few seconds, I’ll go back to sleep. In fact, I might go so far as to say that my skill at going back to sleep is unparalleled in this universe (not counting people with serious medical conditions). Also, I LOVE the feeling of going back to sleep. (Not to be confused with the feeling of simply going to sleep at night; that is completely mundane and boring.) Going back to sleep is one of my favorite feelings in the world.
Therefore, it’s important that I get up and on my feet right away. Fortunately, once I’m on my feet I’m no longer tired.
I plan to be an honest to God morning person by the time I visit my family for Christmas. They won’t know how to handle it when I’m at breakfast bright and early every morning. It’ll be awesome.
Oh dude. I need teh coffee.
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Hello,
I just stumbled upon your site searching for minimalist X config and windows manager.
Your new year resolutions and – particularily the early riser – lead me to ask you one question :
Why do you want to be an earky riser ?
If it’s you want to do more in a day, there also another path that you can explore : Making more in less time.
In fact, you can dig personal change (example NLP for installing an habit).
If you decide to give you a reasonable amount of time to do one thing (learning a lesson in 15 minutes per example), in the begining you won’t succede but after a while you’ll even do it in less time than planned.
The mless time you give you to do a thing, the more you’ll do because your brain will try to do the stuff in that amount of time.
regards,
J.Duron
Hi Jean,
I agree that setting time limits can be a excellent motivational factor and lead to accomplish much more than you initially thought was possible. I’d like to do both: accomplish more stuff in the time that I have and add hours to my leisure activities by getting up early.
For what it’s worth…my favorite minimalist configuration on Linux in terms of ease of use is IceWM + Rox-filer. For maximum configurability and sexiest look…probably Openbox + Tint2 (task bar) + Thunar.
Merci pour votre visite!