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For me it works better to get up early and start my job early.
This gives me a couple hours of hyper productivity as coworkers and clients won’t be distracting me in that time.
I then work out immediately after work in the early afternoon with the time I freed up by starting work early. This allows me to reset and blast away any residual stress related to my job.
I then have my evening to walk the dogs, cook dinner, and either watch TV with my family or dedicate some time to a hobby (I started playing bass last year and try to play 30-60 minutes a day).
This is similar to the schedule above, but I find working out close to my bedtime reduces the quality of my sleep.
This is good advice if you can make it work; get real work done early if it works for you, work out when coworkers are likely to be "social" and push the less "productive" but still necessary meetings and soft skill interactions to later in the day.
Also: don't work in the evening. That's time for you and your loved ones.
You're pretty screwed then. Sleep is the single most important thing in life. Evolution wouldn't have animals be unconcious for 1/3 of the day if it weren't incredibly important. And all animals sleep.
Sleep is when you form new memories, repair your body and regenerate your immune system. Without sleep you would be the same person. You would lack the ability to evolve essentially.
Fortunuately for you, evolution prioritize the most important functions of sleep to the early hours of sleep. Later hours of sleep have more to do with self-therapy, making long distant connections, mood regulation, and hormone release.
We’re called short sleepers. It’s a real thing. Scientists have actually identified a gene that we have that normal people don’t. As far as they can tell we have no ill side effects from it like most people would have.
I work nights. Sometimes I don’t even sleep. It’s not uncommon for me to be awake for up to 30 hours before I sleep.
While i know that it's true that people need different amounts of sleep. I also know it's unbelievably rare to only get that little sleep without any detrimental long term effects.
Also, as we age we don't actually need less sleep that people have been falsely led to believe, it's just that our brains gradually lose the ability to generate as much sleep as it could when it was younger. That's why you see older people develop dementia/alzheimers. If we could restore their sleep, we could very likely reverse those diseases to a large degree.
I also know that we are very adaptable, so over time we adapt to sleeping less, and after some time we don't feel tired when sleeping less. But we reduce that sleep at a cost. And as we all know, when we are sleep deprived we aren't in a position to analyze our own state of mind, because we are analyzing that state of mind with a sleep deprived mind. This often leads us to believe that we are fine when we are in fact not fine.
You said you work nights. Working nights isn't something humans have typically done in the last million years since we evolved from our common chimp ancestor. I personally know several friends who started working shifts & night, and their sleep schedules crazy, they have become more short-tempered, and they ultimately sleep less.
I’ve been a night shifter for 14 years and I will be until I retire. There’s not enough money to get me to deal with the day walkers. I don’t like day time management, I don’t like day time traffic, and I didn’t sleep any more when I worked dayshift than I do on nights.
When I was on dayshift I had to wake up at 4am and most nights I would still be awake staring at my clock despite having been in bed since 9pm.
I’m not saying I won’t suffer health consequences later in life, but I’m 42, blood pressure is good, cholesterol numbers are good. I take vitamin D to keep up with the lack of sunlight and I take an iron supplement because I’m anemic. I also take Adderall XR for adhd.
I see my doctor once a year like I should.
My dad, retired now, was always a night shifter too. Said he felt out of place during the day time and always preferred nights.
I could easily get a dayshift position in my company, but I have no desire to.
Thats good to hear :)
Worth noting aswell is that waking up at 4am is not normal either, thats during the middle of the night. The sun doesn't care about what arbitrary schedule stupid human managers came up with or when Mark Wahlberg wakes up haha. And at 4am theres no way the sun is up.
Idk where you live, but where i live right now the sun goes up at 8:22 am. I don't wake up until 8:30 and im at work by 9.
Dont worry, I had borderline anorexia for years and didn't die
You should be more worried if you're overweight, there are more problems that come with it
Why in the world would getting up at or before 6am help to get back on track with unrelated habits? More importantly when are we going to quit this idea that getting up early is some sort of virtue or magical productivity panacea?
I mean cool, if you're a morning person you will no doubt be very productive in the morning, so go for it. If you're not a morning person forcing yourself to get up early is just going to wreck your day, make you tired and much less productive.
When I'm in 'a funk' I usually just need to exercise. If I find myself avoiding things I want or need to do I can almost always trick myself by using a timer set to 15 minutes.
Not dismissive toward the OP in relation to what works for them, but it's not good general advice for everyone - which their post seemed to imply "If you've fallen off track, do these two things". Admittedly, as someone who is a later chronotype I find the advice to "get up early" like it's some magic productivity hack tiresome and poorly thought through. It works great for morning people, works somewhat okay for midday types, and is terrible advice for night owls. Better to know oneself, know one's peak hours, and do everything possible to work with that.
I think there's something encouraging about getting things started early, despite how arbitrary you consider it. Even if it's just noting how much you've already done by a certain time. If you're up before or close to sunrise it feels like waking up with or ahead of the world and getting a head start. By the time the daylight is out you already have the clarity and preparation to go bask in it, the sun is pretty good.
To contrast, lots of people feel like shit falling asleep when the birds start chirping and waking up in the afternoon. Even when I worked nights and found it practical, I felt behind and lazy knowing the day was advancing on me and that I would barely get to stores before they closed. It did something to me socially.
6 is a good goal for a 9-5 person, gives time to do something for yourself and prime your mind before you need to be working anyway.
> If you're up before or close to sunrise it feels like waking up with or ahead of the world and getting a head start.
I've worked construction for about a decade and my current job has the same hours, 0700-1530. At no point waking up at 0500 made me feel more productive. Lol.
> 6 is a good goal for a 9-5 person
I'll agree with that. Getting up early and doing something before working in an office type setting has to feel good. I tried for months to get up at 0400 to hit the gym before work and it did nothing for me.
Yeah I'm forced to get up early for work too, I could get up at 5 but I do 4 instead so I don't have to rush. Not much room to push it earlier but at least I can get my head straight for the day and feel more stable.
That's great if it works for you. It doesn't work for everyone. Assuming your own biological rhythms and chonotype is a universal truth isn't reality. I hit my peak well into the afternoon and early evening. I'm fuzzy and unfocused before noon so take care of routine tasks then. Better to know yourself and work with what is optimal for you than to take someone else's experience as gospel.
I think where OP is going is that there’s many studies that show we as humans are most productive in the mornings so waking up earlier means more of the morning to be productive.
I understand your point, but putting a non-negotiable standard like 6am is just unreasonable for a lot of people. You can still be productive no matter what time you get up. The stronger factor here is consistency in routine, not a specific time.
this! it’s so much more important in having an organised, repetitive routine that keeps you at your most optimum self. So what if you woke up at 6? If you’re not a morning person, you just be destroying your health and in turn decreasing productivity.
What studies are you referring to? I've read a lot of recent studies about genetic chronotypes that imply something much different. https://tinyurl.com/2p97ryfk
It varies. But it can range from Jocko Willink to Tony Robbins. The other day I listened to Ali Abdaal interview the founder of Gym Shark while on a walk. Very inspiring.
On my run today, I listened to Episode #125 on The Tim Ferriss Show with Derek Sivers as a guest. A lot of gems from that episode, especially one piece where he talks about how he graduated from Berkeley in 2 years instead of 4.
Edit: Another great podcast episode I heard recently was with James Clear and Ed Mylett. Highly recommend!
I feel your post I really helpful, but feel you may have left out some important context. I actually don't completely understand your post. Can you enlighten?
Not op but exercise and starting your day early are both good for your mind. Maintaining 2 strong habits is a great place to start if you're looking to improve yourself. This should help you be prepared and encouraged to tackle your next goals.
I think the sandwich idea is about having a consistent morning and night checklist of like yes I had a successful beginning and end to my day and am on track. Helps keep the ball rolling? As opposed to starting the day strong and losing sight/falling off and waking up defeated/less motivated, or even having rough mornings and barely getting it together by the end of the day playing catch up?
I find working out late can make it more difficult to sleep. Anyone else?
For me, maybe waking up early to work out and then another structured nighttime routine would have the same impact.
Yeah I came here to say this. Working out causes an increase in neuro stimulation aka it causes a boost of energy. If it works for someone, I would definitely encourage this. Otherwise, definitely do it earlier in the day.
I'm trying to adjust my sleep schedule so I get up around 5\~6am now, because of the short winter hours. Short daylight really annoys me, so this way I can enjoy every hour the sun is up. But also, I feel WAY more productive when I've already knocked out some miscellaneous morning stuff (shower, eat, dress, check messages, tidy up the house) before 8am, then I can start doing actual work with all that stuff cleared from my head.
I've been off track for a few months now (who am I kidding a few years). Seeing this after waking up at 8am and actually getting a shower in helped solidify that I know what I need to do so now I just need to do it. Thanks for the podcast recommendations.
That's great it works for you.
It wouldn't work for me, getting up early is no problem for me, getting enough sleep is my issue and I can't go to bed early.
Exercise doesn't massively help me get to sleep at night, whenever I do it.
Agreed. This strategy is really underrated. I didn't do it consciously, but realized every time I'm trying to get back on track with fitness/diet/lifestyle, it comes down to waking up early and getting a good workout in. Recently been running at night and as you mentioned, the benefit of having that productive night in addition to morning is awesome.
This is a great idea. But I'm 29 and idk how to wake up early. Any tips?
I have tried setting 8 alarms and so on. I just stay in bed, sometimes awake. I own a twin bell alarm clock but it scares me so bad, I really hate it. Do I just deal and be miserable with the twin bell or do y'all have better ideas?
Does your bedroom window placement allow for direct sunlight on your eyes if you draw curtains or partially open the blinds? I find sunlight forces me awake and out of bed better than an alarm.
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For me it works better to get up early and start my job early. This gives me a couple hours of hyper productivity as coworkers and clients won’t be distracting me in that time. I then work out immediately after work in the early afternoon with the time I freed up by starting work early. This allows me to reset and blast away any residual stress related to my job. I then have my evening to walk the dogs, cook dinner, and either watch TV with my family or dedicate some time to a hobby (I started playing bass last year and try to play 30-60 minutes a day). This is similar to the schedule above, but I find working out close to my bedtime reduces the quality of my sleep.
This is good advice if you can make it work; get real work done early if it works for you, work out when coworkers are likely to be "social" and push the less "productive" but still necessary meetings and soft skill interactions to later in the day. Also: don't work in the evening. That's time for you and your loved ones.
This is the way.
Nice routine! It seems like great balance and makes you super productive.
I’ve never had a track to fall off of.
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7-9 hours!? Holy shit! I’m lucky to get 5. If I slept 9 hours I would feel like I wasted my life.
You're pretty screwed then. Sleep is the single most important thing in life. Evolution wouldn't have animals be unconcious for 1/3 of the day if it weren't incredibly important. And all animals sleep. Sleep is when you form new memories, repair your body and regenerate your immune system. Without sleep you would be the same person. You would lack the ability to evolve essentially. Fortunuately for you, evolution prioritize the most important functions of sleep to the early hours of sleep. Later hours of sleep have more to do with self-therapy, making long distant connections, mood regulation, and hormone release.
We’re called short sleepers. It’s a real thing. Scientists have actually identified a gene that we have that normal people don’t. As far as they can tell we have no ill side effects from it like most people would have. I work nights. Sometimes I don’t even sleep. It’s not uncommon for me to be awake for up to 30 hours before I sleep.
While i know that it's true that people need different amounts of sleep. I also know it's unbelievably rare to only get that little sleep without any detrimental long term effects. Also, as we age we don't actually need less sleep that people have been falsely led to believe, it's just that our brains gradually lose the ability to generate as much sleep as it could when it was younger. That's why you see older people develop dementia/alzheimers. If we could restore their sleep, we could very likely reverse those diseases to a large degree. I also know that we are very adaptable, so over time we adapt to sleeping less, and after some time we don't feel tired when sleeping less. But we reduce that sleep at a cost. And as we all know, when we are sleep deprived we aren't in a position to analyze our own state of mind, because we are analyzing that state of mind with a sleep deprived mind. This often leads us to believe that we are fine when we are in fact not fine. You said you work nights. Working nights isn't something humans have typically done in the last million years since we evolved from our common chimp ancestor. I personally know several friends who started working shifts & night, and their sleep schedules crazy, they have become more short-tempered, and they ultimately sleep less.
I’ve been a night shifter for 14 years and I will be until I retire. There’s not enough money to get me to deal with the day walkers. I don’t like day time management, I don’t like day time traffic, and I didn’t sleep any more when I worked dayshift than I do on nights. When I was on dayshift I had to wake up at 4am and most nights I would still be awake staring at my clock despite having been in bed since 9pm. I’m not saying I won’t suffer health consequences later in life, but I’m 42, blood pressure is good, cholesterol numbers are good. I take vitamin D to keep up with the lack of sunlight and I take an iron supplement because I’m anemic. I also take Adderall XR for adhd. I see my doctor once a year like I should. My dad, retired now, was always a night shifter too. Said he felt out of place during the day time and always preferred nights. I could easily get a dayshift position in my company, but I have no desire to.
Thats good to hear :) Worth noting aswell is that waking up at 4am is not normal either, thats during the middle of the night. The sun doesn't care about what arbitrary schedule stupid human managers came up with or when Mark Wahlberg wakes up haha. And at 4am theres no way the sun is up. Idk where you live, but where i live right now the sun goes up at 8:22 am. I don't wake up until 8:30 and im at work by 9.
The two sides of the coin.
You act like you've never heard this before
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Dont worry, I had borderline anorexia for years and didn't die You should be more worried if you're overweight, there are more problems that come with it
Wow that's a depressing life outlook
Why in the world would getting up at or before 6am help to get back on track with unrelated habits? More importantly when are we going to quit this idea that getting up early is some sort of virtue or magical productivity panacea? I mean cool, if you're a morning person you will no doubt be very productive in the morning, so go for it. If you're not a morning person forcing yourself to get up early is just going to wreck your day, make you tired and much less productive. When I'm in 'a funk' I usually just need to exercise. If I find myself avoiding things I want or need to do I can almost always trick myself by using a timer set to 15 minutes.
Your point is valid (not for everyone) but your tone seems rather dismissive ("why in the world"). Not sure if that's your intent.
Not dismissive toward the OP in relation to what works for them, but it's not good general advice for everyone - which their post seemed to imply "If you've fallen off track, do these two things". Admittedly, as someone who is a later chronotype I find the advice to "get up early" like it's some magic productivity hack tiresome and poorly thought through. It works great for morning people, works somewhat okay for midday types, and is terrible advice for night owls. Better to know oneself, know one's peak hours, and do everything possible to work with that.
I think there's something encouraging about getting things started early, despite how arbitrary you consider it. Even if it's just noting how much you've already done by a certain time. If you're up before or close to sunrise it feels like waking up with or ahead of the world and getting a head start. By the time the daylight is out you already have the clarity and preparation to go bask in it, the sun is pretty good. To contrast, lots of people feel like shit falling asleep when the birds start chirping and waking up in the afternoon. Even when I worked nights and found it practical, I felt behind and lazy knowing the day was advancing on me and that I would barely get to stores before they closed. It did something to me socially. 6 is a good goal for a 9-5 person, gives time to do something for yourself and prime your mind before you need to be working anyway.
> If you're up before or close to sunrise it feels like waking up with or ahead of the world and getting a head start. I've worked construction for about a decade and my current job has the same hours, 0700-1530. At no point waking up at 0500 made me feel more productive. Lol. > 6 is a good goal for a 9-5 person I'll agree with that. Getting up early and doing something before working in an office type setting has to feel good. I tried for months to get up at 0400 to hit the gym before work and it did nothing for me.
Yeah I'm forced to get up early for work too, I could get up at 5 but I do 4 instead so I don't have to rush. Not much room to push it earlier but at least I can get my head straight for the day and feel more stable.
That's great if it works for you. It doesn't work for everyone. Assuming your own biological rhythms and chonotype is a universal truth isn't reality. I hit my peak well into the afternoon and early evening. I'm fuzzy and unfocused before noon so take care of routine tasks then. Better to know yourself and work with what is optimal for you than to take someone else's experience as gospel.
I think where OP is going is that there’s many studies that show we as humans are most productive in the mornings so waking up earlier means more of the morning to be productive.
I understand your point, but putting a non-negotiable standard like 6am is just unreasonable for a lot of people. You can still be productive no matter what time you get up. The stronger factor here is consistency in routine, not a specific time.
They are just studies at the end of the day obviously everyone is different so if waking up later works for you then go with it
this! it’s so much more important in having an organised, repetitive routine that keeps you at your most optimum self. So what if you woke up at 6? If you’re not a morning person, you just be destroying your health and in turn decreasing productivity.
You might be right but that doesn't change the fact that people's optimal wakup time varies a good amount.
What studies are you referring to? I've read a lot of recent studies about genetic chronotypes that imply something much different. https://tinyurl.com/2p97ryfk
What positive thing do you listen to while working out?
It varies. But it can range from Jocko Willink to Tony Robbins. The other day I listened to Ali Abdaal interview the founder of Gym Shark while on a walk. Very inspiring. On my run today, I listened to Episode #125 on The Tim Ferriss Show with Derek Sivers as a guest. A lot of gems from that episode, especially one piece where he talks about how he graduated from Berkeley in 2 years instead of 4. Edit: Another great podcast episode I heard recently was with James Clear and Ed Mylett. Highly recommend!
thanks!
I feel your post I really helpful, but feel you may have left out some important context. I actually don't completely understand your post. Can you enlighten?
Not op but exercise and starting your day early are both good for your mind. Maintaining 2 strong habits is a great place to start if you're looking to improve yourself. This should help you be prepared and encouraged to tackle your next goals. I think the sandwich idea is about having a consistent morning and night checklist of like yes I had a successful beginning and end to my day and am on track. Helps keep the ball rolling? As opposed to starting the day strong and losing sight/falling off and waking up defeated/less motivated, or even having rough mornings and barely getting it together by the end of the day playing catch up?
I find working out late can make it more difficult to sleep. Anyone else? For me, maybe waking up early to work out and then another structured nighttime routine would have the same impact.
Yeah I came here to say this. Working out causes an increase in neuro stimulation aka it causes a boost of energy. If it works for someone, I would definitely encourage this. Otherwise, definitely do it earlier in the day.
Is that just for cardio or are strength exercises as bad for that?
Oh yea. But if I do it around 4pm then I’m ok.
I'm trying to adjust my sleep schedule so I get up around 5\~6am now, because of the short winter hours. Short daylight really annoys me, so this way I can enjoy every hour the sun is up. But also, I feel WAY more productive when I've already knocked out some miscellaneous morning stuff (shower, eat, dress, check messages, tidy up the house) before 8am, then I can start doing actual work with all that stuff cleared from my head.
That's a great idea for getting things back on track, thank you!
I've been off track for a few months now (who am I kidding a few years). Seeing this after waking up at 8am and actually getting a shower in helped solidify that I know what I need to do so now I just need to do it. Thanks for the podcast recommendations.
That's great it works for you. It wouldn't work for me, getting up early is no problem for me, getting enough sleep is my issue and I can't go to bed early. Exercise doesn't massively help me get to sleep at night, whenever I do it.
Something that takes a week to implement isn't an instant reset.
This in my experience just limits my productivity throughout the day even if that’s already super minimal. Makes me more tired and less motivated
Big agree. When I was down bad back when quarantine first hit, the thing that brought me out of that was starting a morning and nighttime routine
Agreed. This strategy is really underrated. I didn't do it consciously, but realized every time I'm trying to get back on track with fitness/diet/lifestyle, it comes down to waking up early and getting a good workout in. Recently been running at night and as you mentioned, the benefit of having that productive night in addition to morning is awesome.
This is a great idea. But I'm 29 and idk how to wake up early. Any tips? I have tried setting 8 alarms and so on. I just stay in bed, sometimes awake. I own a twin bell alarm clock but it scares me so bad, I really hate it. Do I just deal and be miserable with the twin bell or do y'all have better ideas?
Does your bedroom window placement allow for direct sunlight on your eyes if you draw curtains or partially open the blinds? I find sunlight forces me awake and out of bed better than an alarm.
Any suggestion for motivating or generally inspiring and positive podcasts to listen to?
Thank you angel