Over the course of the past few months, I made a drastic lifestyle change: I am getting up at 5:30 a.m. instead of sleeping until 9 a.m. Lots of coffee was involved. But on the whole, the innumerable benefits I’ve experienced from early rising have far outweighed the losses (such as the loss of my ability to form coherent sentences after 10 p.m.)
Increased Productivity
My personal theory is that morning hours are just better suited toward meaningful work.When I stayed up till 2 a.m. every morning, my brain was far from thinking of those extra hours as ultra-productivity time. Usually, I would spend my bonus four-plus hours a day on the internet or binge-watching a favorite show. As my brain anticipated its coming rest, it wasn’t exactly helpful in motivating me to begin a new project or finish a lengthy task.
On the other hand, after I shifted those extra hours into a morning slot, I found they magically became five times more productive. As my brain anticipated the coming workday, I felt very motivated to get as much work done as possible (sometimes before the sun even came up) in order to claim more free time during the later parts of my day.
Stress Reduction
Even though I still get roughly the same amount of sleep, the net effect of early-rising is that I spend far less time feeling like a zombie at work. My “zombie-time,” still takes up the same few hours of my day, but now it has shifted to night hours instead of work hours. I can be a zombie while watching Netflix at night and a rational person while taking a test during the day. Win-win.This increased wakefulness has also decreased my stress a great deal. I am better able to approach problems clearly, logically, and without the disturbing knowledge that “I was up so late last night,” hanging over my head.
Increased Orderliness and Freedom
As a night-owl, my workday seemed to have no beginning or end. Now that I wake up very early, the first few productive hours of my day have a sequential and logical flow that pretty much remains the same every weekday.I have a set plan for the first few hours of my day. Not only does this allow me to accomplish tasks in a cleaner and more organized manner, but it also allows me to arrange (or not arrange) the rest of my free time as I please.
When my work was scattered in sporadic bursts throughout the day, I would often find that I had no time to fulfill my random desire for recreational activity. Understanding how to organize my work-time has increased my ability to be spontaneous during my downtime.
It’s often suggested that schools and businesses adjust their schedules to make compensations for “night owls” whose genetics make it difficult to rise before 9 a.m. This is a nice gesture, but does such coddling cause many to miss out on the beauties of rising early? Beauties that they, like myself, never even realize they’re missing?
