I'm naturally a night owl. My best sleep seems to happen between 7-9AM. However, I recently started getting up at 5AM. It was hard at first. It took a solid month before I started sleeping well again. However, I feel the tradeoffs have absolutely been worth it. Before, I worked on my side projects after work. The amount of brain power I had left at the end of the day was incredibly variable and completely dependent on how the day had gone. Now, I do the things that are most important to me first thing in the morning. I feel far more productive. It's been awesome. Also, I don't use caffeine at all.
Ok, serious question. What happens if there're days when you go out with people and get in bed at 2AM? Do you still get up at 5AM? Doesn't that mess up your body for days after?
This has only happened a couple times. I hardly function on less than 5 hours of sleep, and not very well on less than 6-7. So in this case I would get up at 5 to maintain the habit, do some reading for an hour, then go back to sleep for a couple hours. As I said, there are tradeoffs. I'm pretty much fried by 9-10PM, which is having an impact on my social life.
I'm a life long morning person and avoided social outings like that for exactly this reason. I'm less reluctant to these days since I think they're actually fun but yeah I can't sleep in later than like 8 AM generally. But I'll nap the next day. And let's be honest, if you're drinking until 2am, you're probably not sleeping well that night regardless of when you go to sleep.
Anyway, the clear cut advantage in my mind is that I'd rather be awake when the sun is out.
Same here. Definitely much more productive after 1am historically but for the past few years I've been getting up at 5am since I can do that every day and still fit in with regular people's expectations. Working through the night is something I could only do once in a while realistically these days. So the trade off is worthwhile for me.
As I said, it's taking a long time to adjust. I've previously consistently gotten up at 630AM every day, and it never felt as natural as waking up at 830-900. I still think those are the hours my body most wants to sleep, but it's not so hardwired that I can't choose a different schedule.
Interesting. This implies work gets the remaining variable mental energy. I’m all for having side projects, but given enough time, but not enough mental energy, which should get the leftover and presumably less productive bits?
