Getting up from the bed at the earliest hour possible is the pivot of all self-care articles ever written by the self-proclaimed life/productivity hackers on medium.
I have my share of periods of trying hard to get up at 7-8 in the morning, without hating it with every part of my body.
Over the years, I’ve been trying to wake up early because I wanted to be more productive at work(fewer people at the office when you are there at 7), or because for some reason I wanted to be at home by 17:00, or just to enjoy the company of my favourite colleagues a little more.
Whatever it was, from my memories it didn’t work. From what I remember, I could do it for a few weeks, but then something will force me to change my regime and I will go back to eating junk food at 21:30, then settling to be at the office around 9:30-10, at least this is what I remember from 2019. In the years before that, I was targeting to be at the office around 8:30-40 and it was okay, kind of in the middle because the company had very flexible working hours.
This year I can say that waking up early is the most prolonged fight I’ve had. For various reasons, I’ve tried to wake up at many variants between 7 and 9 in the morning. It just didn’t work for more than a couple of weeks. I can blame it on external factors, but now that I’m actually getting it under control, it would be an overstatement. You definitely can have social life and wake up in the dark, you “just” have to set healthy barriers for yourself.
These weeks I’ve decided that a radical change has to be made. I didn’t have to be awake at 7 or 6, I would’ve had to be out of bed at 5:30. Last time I started waking up at 6 was 7 years ago.
I actually had zero doubt. On the first day I woke up at 5:25 with no drama, and the following days have been great. I’ve been able to finish a (previously) day amount of work, just before lunch.
I can now say that waking up extremely early makes working and studying things really effortless, time wise. On average, I track around 30% more productive hours.
I can just hope to really keep this as a habit in the future because I have so many things to learn and do in the next few years and will need every help I can get.