I've been waking up at 5am for the past 5 months so I can head to the gym (my first telecom meeting starts at 7am). Because no one is ever going to bother me between 5am and 7am, I've been able to consistently got to the gym at least 3x per week (trying to bump it up to 5x per week for the new year).
I started doing this because it was very difficult for me to consistently go to the gym after work. Things come up, I get tired, friends want to hang out, sometimes I just want to relax after work. But getting up and getting my workout done in the morning has many benefits: Being physical in the morning gives me an energy boost and is a great wake up call, I get my workout out of the way and I don't have to think about it the rest of the day, the gym in generally empty compared to the afternoon, helps me control my sleep cadence, and I feel great knowing that I already accomplished something significant so early in the morning (My whole workout usually spans between 1.5 and 2 hours, I do a lot of stretching and like to take my time). I also try my best not to use my phone aside from music and my workout/fitness apps.
Since I've had such great results from this, I'm thinking of trying to switch it up by working on my side project in the morning and attempting to do the gym in the evening.
I could never do this. Because even with really good sleep hygene and good early bedtime habits, the earliest I ever wake up is 6:30 am. And those are rare days. More often bedtime will slip to 10 pm or later and I will awake naturally between 8:30 am and 9:30 am.
I'm just not a morning person, no matter what I do. And I'm a 9 hour+ sleeper, so I need those sleep hours.
> I’ve always figured out that there 24 hours a day. You sleep six hours and have 18 hours left. Now, I know there are some of you out there that say well, wait a minute Arnold, I sleep eight hours or nine hours. Well, then, just sleep faster, I would recommend.
AFAIK it's pretty well established in the literature that some people naturally just need less sleep. We're not all made the same, we have different genes. There's this saying that humans have 99% identical DNA. What this fails to convey is that you and me probably have different versions of the majority of our individual genes (even though they might differ by just a single letter of DNA). In other words, genetic variation in the human population is huge, and it does have a measurable impact on sleep, stamina, personality, etc.
I don't want to sound like a biological determinist, but It's not all about willing yourself to do amazing things, there is some amount of biological reality we have to deal with as well. Consider that now olympic sprint runner prospects get tested to know if they have fast twitch muscle fibers [0], and if they don't, they basically can't compete, they're considered not worth training. For some reason, people like to imagine that things like sleep and motivation are different, they forget that the brain is a physical organ.
We can estimate. Assume that the OP needs 8 hours, like most of us do. That means a 9pm bedtime for adequate sleep. The OP mentions that the first call is at 7am. Assuming a 40 hour workweek, with an hour for lunch, that's a 4pm clock-out. This gives OP 5 hours in the evening/afternoon and 2 hours in the morning before work, and an hour for lunch, for a total of 8 hours 'off'. This is a very do-able schedule for morning people. Mixing kiddos into this is not too bad when they are young, but as they turn into teenagers, this is likely to shift towards later hours as the teenagers shift too.
Personally, my natural times are a 8am wake-up and an 11pm bedtime. I need the extra hour and I'm a night-owl. Couple that with a mandatory 8am stand-up and 6pm 'clock-out' time for my job's work schedule. It's ... less than fun in Corporate America.
Sleep deprived people can't tell how impaired they are. Sleeping only 7 hours a night has serious long term mental and physical health consequences, and is affecting your productivity short term. If you don't believe me, read Why We Sleep, it's a great investment in your future health.
I switched to a futon-style very firm mattress several years ago. Now any time we go out of town my back feels miserable in the morning. I honestly don't know why people subject themselves to the torture that is the modern box-spring mattress.
I think people would have much less back issues if they spent the two weeks it takes to sleep on a firm surface. Its all about learning to actually distribute your weight across the surface area of your body.
But I guess I am also relatively young and fit (I.e. 30 and not overweight or obese), so maybe I'm just not representative of the average person.
That's great if you sleep on your back but side-sleepers aren't going to be happy on a hard mattress, the shoulder becomes a single point of contact with the bed. I'm not convinced that people accustomed to sleeping in one orientation can easily change to the other. Although I would be curious if anyone has anecdotes about that.
I've always been a side sleeper. (6"2, 175 pound, early 30s male).
Due to a random medical issue (which has since become much more manageable), I got bad chest pain from sleeping on my side.
Despite this, I absolutely couldn't get a good nights sleep on my back, despite months of having to to. I end up being awake until I fall asleep from exhaustion and then waking up again after a few hours. It caused a lot of other problems as I was only getting between 3-6 hours sleep for weeks.
Months later when my condition improved, I went back to side sleeping, and even when it was still causing me pain, I slept much, much better.
Just an anecdote and I'm sure people are unique for things like sleep, but my own personal experience is that it isn't easy to switch.
That said, I actually like a hard mattress despite being a side sleeper.
I'm a side sleeper with an "ultra firm" mattress and soft mattresses mess up my whole alignment. I never get sore shoulders or hips, even if I sleep all day like I recently did. I can also reliably switch to back sleeping, which I usually do when I'm sick because of congestion.
It's all anecdata, but I think people are just different.
Well I’m a near 50 overweight guy (yeah, I know...) and sleeping on the side (if I sleep on my back I snore like hell).
If I sleep on a too firm mattress, I confirm my shoulder starts to hurt during the night.
When I’m sleeping, I can rest for several hours, even the whole night, without moving or changing side.
But on firm mattress I wake up several time during the night to change side.
About the orientation, it’s really strange, and I cannot explain why, but it depends. And I mean the side is VERY important, as I can’t fall asleep if I’m on the « wrong » side.
But it’s not always the same side. And sometimes it lasts for weeks or even month. And one day I switch for no reason I can find, because it’s impossible to fall asleep on the side I’ve spent weeks sleeping on.
Side sleeper here, i have very firm mattress. Shoulder pain is probably not because of the mattress, but because of weak muscles. Training your upper back/shoulder muscles just a bit will help a lot. I had a shoulder injury (bar/pub accident, yup.) which caused me to avoid using certain muscles. Got pain in my shoulder as well. Fysiotherapist recommended some excercises and it disappeared.
I have a firm mattress because i had a sore back, which in turn caused me to wake up tired.
A sitting non physical profession is the cause of all this. Sometimes i do have a sore back, but going to the (climbing) gym fixes it for weeks.
Best bed I ever had was a 10 inch futon mattress placed on top of a decent air mattress, using an old quilt to protect the air mattress from anything poking it.
At 5'11", I fluctuate between 115 and 120 lbs and cannot comfortably sleep or sit on any hard surface. It feels like my bones are touching stone directly, and sometimes causes parts of my body to fall asleep. It also doesn't help that I sleep on my side.
Fairly certain I'm an outlier as well, but a soft mattress seems to give my body the contour and padding I lack naturally.
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, it's the most mentioned book on sleep recently. According to this book there is no such thing as sleeping "too much". Sleeping a lot is correlated with higher mortality, but that is because sick people tend to sleep longer in order for the body to recover, not because sleep in any way causes ill health.
I heard this "energy boost" point many times and never understood it.
I tried waking up at 5 AM for a morning workout for a year (with proper 8-9 hour sleep at night) and I would always feel tired for the remainder of the day, especially for a few hours right after the workout. Maybe this depends on the type of a workout. I was doing mostly powerlifting with heavyish postworkout meals.
I am now working out a few hours before my bedtime and it is perfect. I get tired and physically can't stay up late after an evening workout; it really helps with keeping my schedule stable (i.e. not staying up late in front of a screen).
Exactly the same thing I realized. Working out in the morning actually drained me of energy for the day and made me super sleepy instead. Running though, has the different effect and made me feel a whole lot more fresher and ready to tackle the day. So i guess it depends with each person what activity you do in the morning to get your body ready.
This is the technique I used and the reasoning was the same. I can safely switch off my phone and leave it at home in the morning and focus on working out because no-one is going to call me at 5am. Also, no-one is going to arrange a meeting with me at that time of the day.
After having some success in the gym using this technique, I decided to try it for my studies. I enrolled for a 3-year IT qualification and managed to finish it in record time while working a full-time job and running a profitable side project.
I was doing 5 modules every semester. Every weekday when I wake up, first thing I did, was taking a shower and study for an hour, then go to work. I was studying just one module per day.
This year, I am planning to study further using same technique. I always recommend this technique for people who think they don't have time to do X. The best time to do X is always first thing in the morning when there are no distractions.
Agreed. One thing I do is book a recurring meeting for myself in Outlook to book out the time. It doesn't completely guarantee people will book a meeting during my gym time but it definitely minimises it.
When bumping training from 3 to 5 days/week, a common mistake is to increase total load to 5/3=170%. The trick is to lower the load on each day to 60-70% and advance from there.
I'm a very busy person when uni semester is live. I work 45 hours per week, I have my kids about 65% of the hours that I'm not at work and it leaves me about 20 hours per week to maintain my house, do jobs and complete what is meant to be 30 hours of prescribed university work. My secret is going to sleep at 8pm and waking up at 4am to get uni work done. I'm refreshed and I tend to be far more productive than if I do work at night.
I've barely adjusted waking up at 6 daily, and consistently going to sleep around the same time has been near impossible for one reason or another. What is your secret
What reasons? It takes some discipline but I get to bed by 10pm pretty regularly because I wake up at 6am and at the gym daily at 7:20. If I am not asleep by 10:30pm my morning suffers, so I make sure I stop myself to get the sleep I need. In general that means starting to wind down after 9pm (usually 9:30) and then doing some light reading.
I can recommend the practice; for the last few years, I've gone to bed around 10pm every night, and gotten up at five before heading to work around nine. (Adjust to taste depending on your sleep needs; the important point is to give yourself a few hours to yourself in the morning.)
In practice, this means moving discretionary time from last thing in the day to first thing, and I think there's great value in that. After all, the things we do with our discretionary time - don't we do them because they matter to us? Certainly I do! And I've found that starting my day with them, when I can approach them with a fresh mind, both improves my ability to pursue those avocations, and gives me a better platform on which to begin a day of work than scrambling to do everything at the last minute has ever done.
For me at least (speaking hypothetically, since I haven't tried this), that seems like it would fly in the face of "get your work done so you can play without it hanging over your head." And it means that (if I have a fairly hard work start time) I am watching the clock the whole time I'm using discretionary time, whereas doing it after work means I can just go until I'm tired, without really worrying about the clock.
The work will be there either way. So I can choose to work first and come home worn out from that and then try to do things I care about, or instead to do things I care about first, that don't wear me out, and carry a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment with me to work.
And, I mean, I'm not trying to finish a story before work - not from scratch, certainly. My current story is around 20k words right now, and it's somewhere between a quarter and a third done. I wouldn't get it done in one day if I had every minute to myself! And it'd be no good if I did. But if I can add a few hundred words, or a few dozen that cover a point that's been giving me trouble, or just a few pages of notes in my diary on where the plot's going to go at a given point - and I can do that in a morning - then that's enough.
I think that distinction between finishing and doing might make a difference here - if I thought about it in terms of the former, it'd only frustrate me because I'd run out of time. Thinking about it in the latter terms makes it a question of deciding and finding out how much progress I'll make today.
I don't know if that's how it works out for everyone, and it's anyone's guess whether it'll still work the same for me once I get an elliptical trainer into my apartment and start going ham on that every day. But this is how it's worked for me, thus far.
I'd like to put my hobbies and fun things first, but, I'm a little afraid that my performance at work would suffer, because I'd have less energy when showing up to work, especially at the end of the day. I already often find it hard to remain productive after 3-4PM. I'm worried that if I got up earlier and worked on hobbies before going to work, I'd have even less productive energy to dedicate to my job, and my performance would slide a bit.
I’ve overperformed throughout my entire career. That’s almost two decades now, and it’s already driven me into burnout once; I came back from that, but that was a long time ago, and I’m neither confident I can do so again nor willing to suffer through it again.
At this point I am absolutely ready to give less than all of myself to the job, and more to the things that bring me joy and give my life meaning. If that means overperforming less at work, and closer to par with what’s actually expected of me - if that means no longer giving 150% effort to my day job, and “merely” 100% instead - then I’m okay with that, and so, per relevant discussions, is my reporting chain.
If that changes - if it proves in practice that the company is unwilling to support a transition from the heading-for-burnout precedent I’ve set to a sustainable level of effort - then that’ll be a clear indication that this company is not worth keeping on as a customer of my labor, and I’ll replace it with a customer which is.
The tradeoffs are going to be different for everyone, of course, but I’m convinced the same model generally applies, at least for those of us who have a worthwhile product to sell in our labor. Given the enormous prevalence of impostor syndrome in our industry, I wouldn’t be surprised if the product you’re selling is more valuable than you’re in the habit of thinking.
And it’s also worth keeping in mind that every employer, with the best will in the world, still has a strong economic incentive to convince you to undervalue the product they’re buying from you. That incentive exists because they’re buying it from you, and want to do so as cheaply as possible. No judgment; it’s a business, that’s the game. But you’d be wise not to take their word for what your work is worth, and learn to play the other side of the game - because the better you are at the other side of the game, the closer you get to being paid what your work is worth.
> I am watching the clock the whole time I'm using discretionary time
Set an alarm on repeat.
I used to obsess about missing things all the time. Once I started making sure I didn't have to worry about missing things, my time is that much freer.
I work from home. I have an alarm for 10 minutes before the start and end of work. An alarm for 10 minutes before lunch time (I eat with the family, my wife stays at home with the kids). Pretty much eliminates all clock watching.
This is why being on 2nd shift doesn't work for me, and maybe 3rd shift as well. My entire day is wasted because I have to go into work in the afternoon when otherwise I'd be getting out of work in the afternoon. I simply cannot do anything productive, unproductive, or relaxing in my personal life with that schedule.
That definitely works for me. I’ve tried to work on side projects after my daily job but I often got home drained and with zero will to code anything. Since then I started moving this time into my mornings, before work. It definitely feels short and like you’re on a time constrain more than the evenings, but I’ve made progress on my projects like this, bit by bit.
Same here. I believe this is due to will power depletion (plenty of studies conclude that will power is finite resource) and after our normal 9-5 drains away our will power, people have a heard time being self-motivated - very true for me at least.
Sure, if the things you're doing before work require willpower to pursue. They don't have to be. And jriot's point in my sibling comment is in any case well made.
I do this and just front load my day to have the more demanding stuff in the morning with the less demanding in the afternoon. It works well for me and if anything I feel my productivity has increased.
The most productive I've ever been on side projects was when I had an hour long commute via public transport. It was a solid hour with few options for other activities and very little distractions. The ride home was a second hour but I was usually burnt out by then.
do you have a SO or kids? I ask because my experience is this doesn't work as well when you move past single responsibility. It tends (a) reduce discretionary time and (b) push it earlier or later
Exactly. Early morning routine becomes getting kids out of bed, dressed, fed, and off to school. If you're getting up before THAT to do your own things, it would need to be really early.
Casey Neistat has two kids and gets up at 4am to exercise before taking care of them. This video goes over his time management technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Cvl3_CH2A
By his own reckoning he sleeps for under 5 hours every day. Maybe he's one of the vanishing few who can get by on that amount of sleep (you are not though, so don't try to emulate him), or maybe he's not listing naps he takes throughout the day, or maybe he's just setting himself up for a lifetime of health consequences from prolonged sleep deprivation.
Whichever it is, it's not exactly the sort of routine one should take too much inspiration from for one's own life.
Yup - life becomes more complicated with kids especially. You get a schedule which works for a year or two, then school start times switch. Then your partner has to leave at 5.30am a couple of days for work shifts and you're on duty those days!
Currently managing most weeks Aikido twice a week 6:30-8:00 (I teach), and 1-3 runs per week with a buddy on a flexible schedule 6:45 - 7:30 start depending on getting kids off and being able to work at home a couple of days a week.
I first established this habit back when I was married, so I can attest that it’s compatible with at least some romantic relationships. Can’t speak to the problem of balancing discretionary time and parental responsibilities, other than to say “Good luck!”
It obviously depends on the kid, but they tend to sleep longer than adults anyways. Our 1 year olds sleep around 11-13 hours overnight. Our 4 year old sleeps around 11 hours overnight.
I can't read TFA, but wanted to note that there's an interesting statistic in the book Why We Sleep: Something like 30% of the population are hard-wired to be "night owls" and 20% early risers. The author hypothesized that this may be an evolutionary survival mechanism that allowed bands of humans to always have people who were awake or more likely to wake quickly if threatened after dark or in the early morning.
For the natural night owls (I am one) the power of a slow morning is just the way we roll. I am so much more productive at 9pm than 9am, and have reworked my daily schedule accordingly.
Okay so hear me out here. You can change. It’s not hard.
I am the owliest of owls. All my life, I’ve been up till 2am and struggled to get out of bed, snooze the alarm, last minute, dash through the shower, hurry to work, no time to think, sit down guiltily at 9:01am. I hated that morning rush but whatever, “that’s just who I am”.
Now, I’m 42, so maybe age makes this easier. But my girlfriend is an early riser, and she sometimes gets up at 5am. FIVE A.M. What? Mental.
Except when you do it a bunch of days in a row, and you see the benefits. You know who else is up at 5am? Nobody, because they’re not idiots. So it’s an amazing time of day. It’s calm, it’s peaceful. Nobody bothers you.
The best part by far is right about now. It’s 9:30am here in Australia and I’ve been up for 3.5 hours already (only did 6am this morning). It feels like midday, yet I have the whole day left. It’s amazing.
The trade-off? You have to go to bed early, of course. But when you do this regularly, your body just sorts that out for you. You will be tired at 9pm. Just you try not to be, buddy. No amount of telling yourself that you’re an owl will change that. And, help yourself. Put the screen away, read a book, you know all of this.
Also, help yourself in the morning. My advice: don’t be a hero. Don’t try and get up and run a marathon. Just get up and put the kettle on. Slouch downstairs. Rub your eyes. It’s okay to be sleepy, it’s 5am and probably dark [0]. Have a cup of tea and a slice of toast. Read HN or Twitter or the paper or a book or whatever. DON’T BE A HERO.
Now, it’s 5:45am, maybe 6am. Seriously, don’t rush. But now it’s 6am and you are thoroughly awake and you are ready to go.
Enjoy the day. Just try not to be too smug about it, us morning people can be a bit like that. :-)
Like a lot of well-meaning advice, this did not work for me. Getting up at 5am or 6am for a few weeks just means I feel tired all the time for a few weeks, and it just takes me a couple days to (gratefully) revert back to the night-owl schedule my body wants to keep.
The scientific evidence keeps showing that there are many people who are more alert at night, but of course morning people and morning converts seem to think that since waking up early works fine for them it must work fine for everyone.
No, I get it. It took me 40 years and like I say, maybe getting older itself has something to do with it. Also I 100% would not have done it without my partner, I needed someone to drag me along.
I do agree that the prevailing "earlier === better" mindset is harmful and should go away.
I really like the "don't be a hero" advice. I think people often try to do two really hard things at the same time. Wake up earlier and start running. Log all of my eating and eat less. You need to pick the easier one and go with that first, even if it doesn't get results right away.
Had to check this wasn't an alt account I didn't remember creating. This is me. Everyone complains I turn up to standup at 10am eating. For me I've been awake for 5.5 hours and had breakfast 5 hours ago, I'm hungry alright.
It took me a long time to get in the rhythm for this, the first few weeks I slept in more than I like to admit, and mostly it was because I couldn't admit I needed to go to bed closer to 9pm than midnight. Once I got into that habit the rest falls into place.
Now it's not unusual for me to roll into bed after a night out at 3am and at 4.30 or 5am I'm awake and having an argument with my body about what time I'm getting out of bed.
I don’t think everyone can do this. I’m generally an early riser (~ 7). I tried shifting to 5 am but was unsuccessful. I went to bed earlier. But the mornings were miserable. I did it for a month without change.
I'm confident you could work in the morning if you readjusted your sleeping habits. And there are a ton of jobs out there that start later in the day or have flexible work hours.
> I'm confident you could work in the morning if you readjusted your sleeping habits.
This subthread is about the possible/probable genetic reasons why some people have more trouble adjusting their sleeping habits to that of everyone else. Saying that he just needs to adjust his sleeping habits is not really helpful.
I was a night owl from the time I was 16 until 33(sleep 2-3-4AM until 10AM-11AM-12PM), and then I adjusted my sleep cycle to be an early riser(sleep 11-6). It took about 4 days before I felt physically right. The hardest part was lifestyle adjustments around the differing hours. I don't believe I have any kind of special power.
OP sounds depressed with a self-defeatist mindset. He considers himself unemployable because he is a night owl. I don't know if telling him 'It's okay, it's not your fault' will help his situation. And I don't think what I'm doing is similar to telling a paraplegic to just try really hard to walk - is there any science that these 'hardwired night owls' can't actually change?
I was fired from last job just because I couldnt stick with morning schedule and basically "had my own". I was supposed to be at work by 10am (LOL, we had standups at 10:45), and I just couldnt do it. Sometimes I came to work at 9, sometimes at 11:30, until they were fed up with this. I felt physical discomfort from this - vomited twice in the morning (I suppose it was from stress) and developed tick in the left eye after just 3 weeks into office.
I'm unemployed now (last 14 months), and I've given up so that I don't even look for job anymore since I don't think we'd be compatible. Saves my time and employers money.
Yes I'm slow-starter - it takes me from 1.5hr to 2.5hrs in the morning to start my day. Now I usually wake up at 7:30-8:30 because I'm happy owner of six parrots and they need maintenance and to make a lot of noise :)
All this combines with my inability to stick to just one single thing to do. I have to change stuff I do very often, which leaves many of my projects unfinished. From this reason I usually find myself very unhappy working on some project for longer periods, especially if those projects are too complex to even start contributing - because of this I then usually used to start working on something different in my "free time" (in member of local hackerspace) and my productivity (if there was any) goes away. This allowed me to acquire quite a lot of different skills and knowledge but left me uneployable.
Or maybe I just haven't come across a job that really suits me and be appreciable, yet
Why can't you wake up at 7:30AM, be with your birds and start your day for the next 1.5 hours, and then get into the office before 10AM?
It sounds like you have other problems that are preventing your employment that are not related to you being a night owl(I don't even think you're a night owl...you self-admittedly wake up at 730-830am).
Without clocks I will naturally go to bed between 5a and 7a and wake between 1 and 3p. I've had a "normal" schedule for most of my life, and have gone long stretches (months) where I was in bed every night by 10p. It doesn't stick. Without alarms and diligence, I will always revert to my natural schedule within days.
Sure, that's fine. It doesn't need to stick, because clocks will continue to be available. I'd rather be employable and have to use a clock to wake up, than unemployable but in a 'natural' state(to use the false dichotomy presented by OP)
Also, I'm curious what your natural bedtime would be if you not only removed clocks, but also removed TVs, screens and other artificial lighting. It seems unfair to say you would do something 'naturally' without clocks, but not without all the other technology that is actually causing you to stay awake at non-natural hours in the first place.
I would doubt genetic reasons until he tries without all the modern light/darkness. It’s insane how quickly my sleep schedule changes when I sleep in a tent and the sun is unavoidable at literally sunrise... I match the sun schedule pretty quickly, and then get out of it really quickly (1-3 days).
I absolutely don't believe in the genetic reasons because for me it tends to shift every few years. Let's take out childhood and puberty and only see my adult life. I can go years on 6h of sleep and everything's perfect (usually sleep 9h on the weekends) and then there's years where I absolutely need my 8h to function. Sometimes it's easy to get up at 6 sometimes I could sleep in to 9 every day.
It has nothing to do with summer or winter, that much I can tell. I am not a morning person, but compared to other people it's fine.
So yeah, maybe there is some reason I've never discovered why it shifts so much (eating habits, weight, general mood) - but I can only say it shifts every few months or years and hasn't significantly changed since I am an "adult".
My hours of efficiency are not like in grandparent, and after I'd tried a lot of things with switching the sleeping time, the only conclusion that these hours are tied to internal clock of what is day/night (1 to 10 a.m. for me, varies a bit in winter/summer). I know two ways around: constant jet lag or submarine mode, and can't go for any of them.
I just finished the book, and am putting a lot more focus on my sleep.
One thing it made me realize is, I don't think it's possible for people to know if they're night owls or not, until they're routinely getting 8 hours of sleep a night.
Of course if you're not getting enough sleep you'll find it hard to get up in the morning and thus claim you're a "night owl" and "can't function in the morning".
Well, it's not just about it being hard to get up in the morning. It's also about the tendency to stay up late when everyone else is tired, isn't it?
Though, I get your point that probably many claim to be born "night owls" when it's probably just the constant light from the monitor and internet addictions that keep them wide awake.
Sure, I suppose it could manifest itself in any number of ways. I've ALWAYS considered myself a night owl for both reasons; difficulty of waking AND desire to stay up late.
No matter how much blue light I get, I fall asleep just fine at night when I go to bed (assuming I don't have too much caffeine late in the day).
That said, I will easily/happily stay up until 2am. I just don't like to go to bed. Call it getting a second wind, or desire to avoid "ending my day" and having to go right to work first thing in the AM, or whatever. I might, in fact, be a night owl, I'm just realizing I don't know myself well enough to say for sure.
I agree. Modern life has created so many ways that artificially change our sleep/wake rhythms unintentionally (for example, binge-watching a show 'til 3am even though I was dead tired 3 hours ago and probably could've fallen asleep immediately).
I'm 30 and I'm still not sure whether I'm a night owl or not, even though I'm awake late into the night 90% of the time. Could just be a habit that I've developed over the years with the aid of artificial lighting and computing.
I always wondered if my night owl tendencies were nature or nurture (staying up late for inexpensive long distance and calling night-only BBSes) and I've gravitated to a career that embraces that mode (SRE, Operations, on-call positions) .
It seems that society seems to value the 'get up early' more than the 'stay up late' ability.
That's right. That may a holdover from our agrarian roots, when people had to get up early to milk the cows or work in the fields before it got too hot. It's become institutionalized in modern society ("9 to 5", schools scheduled in the morning and early afternoon, etc.)
In TFA, "slow morning" doesn't mean waking up late. It means waking up early but taking your time before starting work. If you're a night owl you're probably not doing slow mornings.
I've been doing this for years now and it's hard to imagine the old days when I used to wake up, shower, and run into work. At first it started with just waking up, making coffee with my aeropress, and sitting down to read a novel for up to an hour.
The past 2.5+ years have been: wake up, stretch and pranayama for 20 minutes, meditate for 30 minutes, make tea/coffee, write for 30-40 minutes, shower and then off to work. (I've moved the reading to the evenings before bed.) All in it's about 2 hours from waking up until out the door to walk to work.
My work days now start even more focused -- previously I'd just be sitting at my desk being only semi productive, waiting for the coffee to kick in. It's worth giving it a try for a couple months to see how it works for you.
For pranayama I practice things like nadi sodhana, bhastrika, and visama vrtti, with kumbhakas depending on what I'm doing.
My meditation is probably closest to what people call vipassana these days -- it's watching the breath or another meditation object without any active control of it (which isn't completely correct, as attention does affect the breath). Pranayama on the other hand is an active manipulation of the breath.
I see. So do you practice pranayama prior to the vipassana in order to increase the effectiveness of the vipassana? Or do they do function separately for you?
That's a good question. I view them as separate but interrelated, and often times I'll practice pranayama without doing a corresponding meditation (e.g. after asana).
Pranayama in many ways is exercise which readies you for meditation. The Anapanasati Sutta makes reference to a form of it as a preparatory practice. It has helped me investigate and understand bodily sensations that arise in meditation that previously would have been distracting to me. Or to not be overwhelmed with fear or thoughts in meditation when occasionally you realize "hey, I actually haven't been breathing for a while".
Happy to talk about it more off thread if you'd like (email in profile).
Yeah this is a core reason why a long driving commute is an absolute deal breaker for me and probably why I'll never end up working for a big corp in SF.
In Vancouver I can wake up at 7am, go to the gym in my building or the nearby community centre, read, do some shores, have a lazy breakfast and still walk or take a short bike ride into work at 10am.
I can't imagine throwing all that free time away just to sit in traffic.
I live in SF and your Vancouver day is the same as my day here.
I wake up at 7am, do my daily stretching routine, bike/ride the bus to work at around 7:30.
I'm at work around 8:00 - 8:15. I have breakfast and work for 3ish hours. I go to the gym two blocks from my office building at lunch, shower, and then go on with the rest of my day.
Habit is a really powerful thing when applied over the course of our lives and the truth is that people tend to follow habits most at the start of their days. If there is something you want to do every day (read, work, exercise, relax) do it in your morning and it will become a habit.
If it works for Jeff Bezos, it's probably good enough for me.
> He wakes up every morning naturally, without the aid of
an alarm clock.
> "I like to putter in the morning," Bezos told a gathering
of Economic Club of Washington, DC. "So I like to read the
newspaper. I like to have coffee."
I do this, but seasonality can be an issue. The last few winters I've added some artificial lighting that ramps up before sunrise, with seemingly positive results.
Yep. My bed faces an east window so during winter I can tell before opening my eyes in the morning what it's like outside. On days like today when it's 55F, I wake up naturally before my alarm with no desire to keep sleeping, my breathing feels amazing, I have no muscle soreness, and I just get right out of bed. When it's cold and the sun isn't out, I feel like I'm trying to get over a bad cold. Artificial lamps help quite a bit though.
Curious how you implemented this. I bought a Phillips “sunrise alarm clock” about a year ago, but the light was weak and I didn’t feel a difference at all. Did you hack together something yourself?
Slow mornings are the best (if you can afford them)! Going for a walk, going to the gym, making a real breakfast, walking to work, etc.
The last hour of a day is hardly the finest. If you move it to the morning, you'll get to enjoy your day in three parts, not two: morning/body/mind/soul, afternoon/work, evening/play.
I was a lifelong night owl. Six months ago I decided to start going to the gym and meditating every morning in an effort to completely reprogram my habits. Now I look forward to the mornings and find myself going to bed as soon as I feel like I can sleep. I'm convinced that our behaviors are mostly determined by our habits, and we can freely change our habits with sufficient commitment.
Good one, same here. About 2 years ago I started doing just this. One hour of seated meditation followed by exercise while still leaving 20-30 minutes of "nothing" time before starting work. It has changed my life for the better in so many ways its hard to overstate.
Over the past two years of my personal and professional life I've materially stressed slowing down to go fast. That means more down time to contemplate, plan, think, etc.
I still get up insanely early (always been one of those people) but I use that time for me between cooking, exercise, reading, thinking, meditating, etc.
Not sprinting to work (whether it be from home or in the office) has led to less hours "working" but more getting done with higher quality.
Now, I can't all pin it on going slower. It is probably cumulative between that time spent on me, focused on my kids (I take them to school almost every day now), and higher energy/focus time on work.
I've always said you can't schedule creativity (and no matter what your role within Product Development direct/indirect) we are all creative folks solving hard problems. I just don't fill that downtime with staring at my PC and instead invest it on me.
When in office I've even started taking a mid-afternoon nap. That also has had a big effect. I'm kinda rambling at this point, but taking material steps back daily have led to significant improvements in my throughput across the board.
I find that how much sleep I need depends on how present and moral I feel in my life in general at that time.
At one extreme, I once attended a week and a half meditation retreat in which you're up at 4, meditating for about 11 hours every day and the whole thing is silent. I felt such heightened moral and mental clarity by the fifth and sixth days that I began sleeping less, sometimes lying awake until 2 or 3am (and up at 4), but felt full of energy each day.
At the other extreme, carrying on in a big city, I indulge in vices, deviate from my notion of perfect morality, exaggerate in conversations, eat meat, engage in reactive behavior with others, fail to keep up a meditation routine etc., and I end up sleeping 7-8 hours like clockwork.
I have a twofold theory
1. Internal monologue creates excess pathways in the brain that need to be pruned, creating the need to sleep. Decreasing the amount and degree of our internal monologue (sometimes called 'being present') decreases the amount of these pathways and thus the sleep we need.
2. Failure to act rightly/morally/virtuously creates the need to sleep. The more our daily actions are in line with our sense of right action, right morality, the less sleep we will need. The deeper theory here is that immoral acts cause neurological agitation that creates toxins in the brain that sleep flushes away.
My theory is supported by my understanding of sleep as having the function of 'flushing toxins' from the brain and 'pruning' neurological pathways that the brain determines not useful, such as a thought you had that day in your internal monologue. Immoral acts tend to nag at us, even if only a little act and a little bit, creating anxious internal monologue, compounding the need for sleep.
The most effective thing for my mornings has been motion. I don't "get more work done" in terms of sit and think time, rather, by making the first thing I do be jog a little, maybe pick up a coffee, and relax, then I can face everything else.
The alternative is that I spend the first hour of the day in the way that I spend the last hour of the day, in front of a screen. Which doesn't seem to work well for me.
I really hope I can continue to live close enough to bike or walk to work. It makes a huge difference in alertness when starting the day with some activity versus driving to the office.
I have three kids, though none are school aged yet. My mornings are when I have the highest quality interactions with them. We are all the most well-rested we're going to be for the day, which means everyone is likely to be pretty agreeable. Plus we have our routine figured out, and going through the motions gets us all off to a good start to our day.
(But also, the chances of me getting "An hour of meditation and reading the paper" are roughly zero :) )
No tech after 930pm (read books, Kindle is OK)
No tech until I’m at the gym around 630 the next morning (checking phone first thing in the morning is a pit of disaster)
Bath, meditate, journal.
Work at 930am.
Goodness. I don't think I've ever met anyone else who values the slow morning as much as I do. If I could I'd go into work around 10:30AM every morning. I need 7.5 hours of sleep at least. Really 8.5 to be at my best. That means I'm going to bed at 11PM and waking up at 7:30AM ideally.
If I'm going to be at work by 9AM then I have to rush around to do everything. I've cut my morning activities down to do so but I'd like an extra hour or so every morning. An hour and a half would be ideal so I could get the gym out of the way.
But It doesnt look like that will happen anytime soon.
Out of curiosity, why not move your bedtime back a couple of hours? My own bedtime is 2230-0630 and I have been contemplating moving it back earlier to get more out of my morning as I tend to start work between 0730 and 0800.
I'm really a night owl. One of those people that just doesnt functional as well in the morning. Or at least right out of bed. 6-9 are when I get my me time before starting to wind down. If I moved my bedtime to 9PM I wouldnt have that time. In theory I would gain it in the morning which would be fine but I have other activities that require me to be up till 1AM most Friday/Saturdays.
I seriously considered switching jobs in December, as in had an offer and accepted it before backing out and taking the counter-offer from my current employer.
Honestly the deciding factor was that I couldn't stomach the idea of getting up two hours earlier every day. My mornings are long, drawn out affairs where I have ~3 hours to hang out with my kids, listen to the radio, do some chores, and generally prepare myself for the day. Having had that for the past several years, the idea of giving it up was just too much for me.
Weird how casually they drop in that the one woman spends her time in the morning selling essential oils, most likely via a MLM scheme (even mentions posting on social media to support it).
In my own experience, I believe people have been trained from a very young age to "get up and GO" and for many years working in Software I would wake up and immediately start thinking about work problems etc.
My conclusion is that it is a waste of mental energy which is very evident on days you are feeling under the weather etc. These days it is all about a gradual wake up, having a nutritious breakfast and spending time with my dog (walking) before I leave for work commute.
I've done this for years and would totally recommend it. I didn't know it was a growing "movement!"
I use it to foster an attitude of work-life balance. When you wake up in the morning in order to go to work, work is the focus. When you wake up and hours later go to work, it's just that thing that sucks up a lot of the middle of your day. I stay way saner and less burnt out due to this habit.
I was so sure I was a Night OWL - and I started waking up to learn Swift development to change my career. And I got used to it. The trick is to go to sleep early at a set time and do keep at it for a few weeks.
This is more or less devoid of any useful information...
When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up
Is what everyone already knows. The article implies that you somehow just do this and conveniently ignores how useless that advice is for breaking or replacing habits. Especially ones where you’re not going to be alert enough to even remember that you’re supposed to be be doing something.
If you simply go to bed when you’re sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, you’ll cure your insomnia
This is not how insomnia works at all. ”If you simply be happy you’ll cure your depression!”
This other one was much more useful. I tried this a few years ago and it seemed to work, but it was also really easy to fall back into old habits. Still though, might be worth a try.
> This is going to sound really stupid, but it works. Practice getting up as soon as your alarm goes off. That’s right — practice. But don’t do it in the morning. Do it during the day when you’re wide awake.
That’s that’s not the point of that paragraph - the advice there is still just as useless for anyone who might actually need It.
It would also probably be worse getting those instructions from someone who totally ignores how difficult it is to actually follow them.
Paywalled WSJ article. Curious, does this article consider people who have to punch a clock, or is it just for the 3%-ers who can lounge in the morning?
If you go to https://www.drudgereport.com/ then right click one of the hyperlinks and select Inspect you can change the URL in the HTML to the URL for this article. When you click the link you will be able to read the full article as WSJ whitelists drudge report.
you can paste the link after outline.com, which will allow you to read the text of the article, so outline.com/your-link-here (or just visit outline.com and paste the link into the box on the home page).
Is it just me or is this article also paywalled for you when you click web => WSJ article? If so, is there another way to read it other than paying for a subscription? I don't read the WSJ often enough to justify subscribing.
Open the FB Redirect page in an Incognito/Private browsing session to deal with that. Note that the FB page itself needs to be in the private browsing session, that way the referral data gets passed when you click on the WSJ link.
If you go to https://www.drudgereport.com/ then right click one of the hyperlinks and select Inspect you can change the URL in the HTML to the URL for this article. When you click the link you will be able to read the full article as WSJ whitelists drudge report.
in my case, waking up with the sun is what works best. We are not naturally adapted to waking up with a loud sound. We have been thousands of years waking up by nature and the sun.
So since I started doing this, my life has changed
I started doing this because it was very difficult for me to consistently go to the gym after work. Things come up, I get tired, friends want to hang out, sometimes I just want to relax after work. But getting up and getting my workout done in the morning has many benefits: Being physical in the morning gives me an energy boost and is a great wake up call, I get my workout out of the way and I don't have to think about it the rest of the day, the gym in generally empty compared to the afternoon, helps me control my sleep cadence, and I feel great knowing that I already accomplished something significant so early in the morning (My whole workout usually spans between 1.5 and 2 hours, I do a lot of stretching and like to take my time). I also try my best not to use my phone aside from music and my workout/fitness apps.
Since I've had such great results from this, I'm thinking of trying to switch it up by working on my side project in the morning and attempting to do the gym in the evening.