5am

[Scorpibear]

Originally Posted by Andrew Brunelle

I know you may think that it's productive to wake up so early, and to do things while people are still asleep, but I think the whole objective is to limit your sleeping time and optimizing your awake time. I usually go to bed around 1 AM, wake up around 8:30-9:30, and I go about my day. I work a crazy shift, 2 PM to 10 PM, so it's physically impossible for me to get to bed very early, and I find I'm often eating as late as 11:30 PM, so I still have to digest before I get to bed. So I'm thinking that if you're on a different schedule, waking up at 5 AM might not be the best idea. If I were to go to bed at midnight or so, then wake up at 5, I'd be a walking zombie. So it's all about finding the right sleep schedule for you.

Andrew, agree with you, it will be difficult to accept the 5am habit without changing the shift/work.

[placebo]

I'm still a student and i have a habbit to go out on Saturdays. Problem is if i start waking up at 6 on Monday and come home from party in Sunday dawn my new formed habbit breaks and i'm on the start againd. Is there anyone with this kind of problem?

P.S. Not going to parties is not an option

[Brien]

I'm with Andrew and placebo; my lifestyle doesn't support waking up at 5:00 or whatever time the birds start chirping. Or rather, that sleep schedule couldn't support my lifestyle.

Between parties and demanding projects, my schedule needs to be flexible. I guess I should be glad that I'm young enough that I can function well waking up at 6 am one day and 11 the next.

But even if I could do it, I dont know if I'd want to. I dont really understand the point either. I've heard some puritanical nonsense about one morning hour being equalivant to 3 evening hours or some other arbitrary ratio. Personally, I get a lot done at night (or, actually, whenever I decide to do it).

[Hugh Hollowell]

Bryant Gumbel was famous for running on 3-5 hours of sleep. When asked about it, he said:

"Two things: No matter how much sleep you get, it is never enough, and 10 minutes after you get up, it doesn't matter anyway".

I run for days at a time on less than five hours a night. I get in bed around 1 or 1:30, and get up about 6am. I see nothing magic about 5am. It looks just like 6am, but only an hour earlier.

There are many advantages to getting less sleep:

1. Your body quickly adapts, forcing you to sleep "faster" (you hit REM faster).

2. There is an almost narcotic high from sleep deprivation, colors seem brighter, food taste better.

3. In A Movable Feast, Hemingway talked about how working hungry made him sharper, made the edges a bit more clear cut. I find something very similar when operating on less sleep.

4. The big one is productivity. If I sleep a hour less than you, I am gaining almost a work-day of productivity each week, or well over a month of productive time in a year. How much more could you accomplish if you had a month more to achieve your goals than your competition did?

Of course, that assumes you have something productive to do with the time. Getting up an hour early just to watch the Muppets won't help a bit.

Just my 2 cents.

[madgeylou]

simply sleeping less works for some people, but it does not for me. if i get less than 7-8 hours (and i really prefer 8), i may or may not feel like crap the next day, but i will definitely feel awful if i go 2 or more nights like that in a row. and then my evenings will be totally shot, because i'll be too tired to do anything once i get home from work. vicious cycle.

i guess everyone is different. i dont regard sleeping as a waste of time at all -- i think it's fun! i like my dreams! and i often find that, as i'm going to sleep, i can say to my brain "hey brain, tonight let's see if we can dream up some way to get all this work done on this project in a really elegant and smart fashion" or "hey brain can we try to figure out why i'm so hung up about this tonight?" and i will have dreams that directly relate.

so, not all my productive time has to be vertical. i'm glad of it. i like the mystery of the dreamtime.

[Scorpibear]

Originally Posted by placebo

I'm still a student and i have a habbit to go out on Saturdays. Problem is if i start waking up at 6 on Monday and come home from party in Sunday dawn my new formed habbit breaks and i'm on the start againd. Is there anyone with this kind of problem?

P.S. Not going to parties is not an option

I've heard a couple of times the following solution and it sounds reasonable:
in order to make habit, wake up at 5 am anyway
and in order to have rest, practice 15-30 minutes yoga relaxation exercise. If you make it right, it will substitute 3-6 hours of night sleep.

[Scorpibear]

I've got used to wake up at 5am! Today is the 32nd day without break, when I wake up at 5am.

[Susie]

Originally Posted by Andrew Brunelle

I know you may think that it's productive to wake up so early, and to do things while people are still asleep, but I think the whole objective is to limit your sleeping time and optimizing your awake time. I usually go to bed around 1 AM, wake up around 8:30-9:30, and I go about my day. I work a crazy shift, 2 PM to 10 PM, so it's physically impossible for me to get to bed very early, and I find I'm often eating as late as 11:30 PM, so I still have to digest before I get to bed. So I'm thinking that if you're on a different schedule, waking up at 5 AM might not be the best idea. If I were to go to bed at midnight or so, then wake up at 5, I'd be a walking zombie. So it's all about finding the right sleep schedule for you.

This is pretty much what I was going to say. I teach in the evenings, sometimes finishing classes at 9pm. I don't want to be groggy during those classes which I would be if my bedtime were at 10:30pm.

However I have definitely been staying up too late/sleeping in too late-- if I wake up and see that the hour is still in single digits, I put my head back on the pillow and keep it there. Ideally I'd like to go to bed at 1am and wake up at 9am. I guess 12am bedtime and 8am wake time wouldn't be so bad.

I'm actually going to be spending a month in another time zone where my noon is their 6am, and I'm going to try to keep getting up early every day. The only problem, as others have mentioned, is when I go out to socialize late at night, then any kind of sleep schedule gets way out of whack. Ohhh well.

[Merlin]

Originally Posted by Hugh Hollowell

Bryant Gumbel was famous for running on 3-5 hours of sleep. When asked about it, he said:

"Two things: No matter how much sleep you get, it is never enough, and 10 minutes after you get up, it doesn't matter anyway".
[...snip]

Firstly, I'd like to take issue with that - that's a very dangerous urban myth to be spreading. I remember seeing a docco on sleep deprivation that concluded that driving while tired was just as bad as driving drunk. And I'm speaking as someone who has actually gone to sleep at the wheel and I'm lucky to be alive and typing this right now. I'm also lucky I didn't kill the guy I hit head on... When I had my accident it was late afternoon after I had woken up early to do a day gig and I was driving home to freshen up before my normal gig.

I've been thinking about this whole waking up early thing for a while now and reading a lot about it. It's in the spirit of the new year coming up and starting to make plans etc. Let me tell you a little about my situation:

I'm a musician, so for over 20 years now I've mainly been working at night. Generally most gigs finish around midnight, sometimes 2 or 3AM. Then there's the packing up and driving home... Towards the end of 2005 I found that work was dropping off so I took on a part time job in a large company with rotating shifts. Well it's nearly killed me - to the point that I just finished up that job last week. I found it really hard to be awake and alert early in the morning. Going to bed early was no use - I just wouldn't sleep at all. Heck, I normally don't even start to feel hungry till around midnight. Night after night I would toss and turn for hours and wake up in the cold morning feeling rotten.

Well the break has been made, the job is finished so it's now up to me to make a plan for the new year that will work for me.


I think that the 5AM point may have been set to suit the majority of people who work 9 to 5 - so if they wake up at 5 they have 4 hours to get ready mentally and physically for work and have 5 hours to get home, have dinner, watch some TV and be in bed by 10PM. The point is presumably to be at peak alertness in the most important part of the working day - in the afternoon when deals are done, sales are made etc.

In my case, I need to be at my most alert when I am on stage - say, around 10PM to midnight. So I am thinking I'm going to try the same kind of principle, but shift it back say, 7 hours. So I am going to try setting no appointments, phone calls or tasks for myself before midday every day. I agree with the bit about keeping regular hours, so I'm trying to find something I can stick to [nearly] every day.

Those rotating shifts were the worst, man - it was like being jetlagged every couple of weeks!




What do you guys think - I'd be interested in hearing how you would fit shift work in with sleeping patterns. Pros? Cons?

Cheers...

[elainevdw]

Originally Posted by Merlin

Firstly, I'd like to take issue with that - that's a very dangerous urban myth to be spreading. I remember seeing a docco on sleep deprivation that concluded that driving while tired was just as bad as driving drunk. And I'm speaking as someone who has actually gone to sleep at the wheel and I'm lucky to be alive and typing this right now. I'm also lucky I didn't kill the guy I hit head on... When I had my accident it was late afternoon after I had woken up early to do a day gig and I was driving home to freshen up before my normal gig.

That was the first thought that occurred to me as well. If you deprive yourself of sleep, please don't drive.

I always think it's interesting that people say that they work better under [fill in the blank] -- less sleep, more stress, the influence of caffeine, the influence of alcohol, the influence of drugs. (The latter are excuses of those who want to be creative masterminds without the hard work.) They all seem like dangerous crutches to me, if not outright fallacies. I would also agree that such preconceptions set people up for failure... or at least some unduly difficult times.

However, I do wonder if it's possible for a young person in today's workforce to make an impression and start their career without considering things like time and regular meals a luxury. What do you guys think?

[Nico Kempe]

Woohoo, got up at 5am today!
Actually I woke up just before 5 even, the birds weren't even singing yet

I got up, splashed cold water in my face, and took a nice quiet walk outside by the water.
It's really lovely, almost nobody outside, all curtains closed, the sun just rising, fresh morning air and singing birds..)

[Susie]

I consider myself a dyed-in-the-wool night owl.
My aunt tells stories about how when I was a toddler she would put my brother to bed and I would pretend to go to sleep too, but actually once he was asleep I would get up and my aunt and I would stay up late drawing and playing games together. Hm, maybe that's why I've always associated night-time with fun! :-)

Currently I work mostly in the evenings (teaching) and I go to bed sometime around 3am and get up around 11am, sometimes an hour later, sometimes an hour earlier.

BUT I am going to try to put aside my skepticism and give the early-riser thing a try starting the week after next-- I'm going to a different time zone where my 11am is their 5am, so voila-- instant early riser! The challenge will be maintaining that for the entirety of my stay (about three months).

I've already ordered an alarm clock that has a pillow-vibrating feature to shake you awake, I figure I can use that without the sound and not wake everyone else up at the ungodly hour of 5am. I want to hit the gym first thing, and work on starting my own freelance business.

I may start a thread on this forum of the "30-day experiment" variety...we'll see!

[llong]

The next step for you new early birds is to wake up without an alarm.

[TheFlyingScotsman]

Hi everyone,

I work rotating shifts. I do 9:45am to 5:45pm one week and 2pm to 10pm the following week.

I can't set a fixed getting up or going to bed time and swapping between two sets of getting up and going to bed is making me jetlagged.

Anyone have any ideas on what I can do?

Thanks in advance. Thomas

[Freelancer]

I've been waking up at 5 am. for about 2 years, lately I'm getting back into the habit after losing it for a while.

The reason for me was simple, I HAD to get up to deliver newspapers. If I didn't get up and deliver I'd get a call, waking up my parents and a pissed guy on the phone for a amazing half an hour of sleep (he'd call at 5:30, that guy was sick. He woke up every morning for the past 10 years or so at 3 am. getting to bet at 9 pm every evening). In the two years I've overslept I think 2 or 3 times.

For the first half year or so my schedule would be something like, get to bet at 11 pm and up 5 am during weekdays. Get tired in the weekend and sleep in untill 7 am. (to deliver newspapers lol) while going out the night before. I usually needed 3 or 4 hours of sleep on sundays to catch up again. I was functioning quite well, although fridays where horrible.

After about half a year I got smarter and went to bed earlier during weekdays around 9 pm most of the time. I occasionally needed some additional sleep on sundays if I had a big party the night before.

My morning routine looked something like this:
Alarm goes of at 5 am.
Immediatley get up and GET DRESSED without thinking
Eat
Drink
Leave

Worked without fail unless my alarm didn't go off...
Often I'd wake up 2 minutes before the alarm goes off, which is a awesome feeling.

Going to do a slight variation on this now to get back into the habit:
Alarm goes of at 5 am.
Immediatley get up and turn the lights on
Write down my dreams
Get dressed in jogging cloths
Eat
Drink
Leave

Slight variation and it should work fine.


My advice:
Find a reason to get up every morning thats either binding (you gotta do it no matter what) or motivating/exciting and develop your own unique morning routine for the first 5 minutes (the toughest).

[moonlite]

As I mentioned here actual reason that I started to read Steve Pavlina site was that I became an early riser...

I get up at 5 am. since 4th June so it's exactly one month today. Not every morning I do get up at 5 am. on Saturdays there is no point in getting up so early because I do not work on Saturdays at all. So on Saturdays I make an exception and get up at 6 am., and experience no difficulties in getting up at 5 am. on Sunday.

I have very flexible working hours, sometimes I work from 1 pm. to 8 pm. and sometimes from 8 am. to 3 pm. Previously, it was exactly what made my week so tiring - irregularity. Now, no matter what I get up at 5 am. and usually have plenty of time before my job. If I have something to do "for yesterday", I've got the morning to do it. Recently I spent a whole morning making some project, I sent email to the firm at 8.30 am, so it probably looked like as I did it yesterday

Yet I do experience the problems mentioned in previous posts, so here are my solutions.

1. Socializing.

A very great dillema as most of my friends are "owls" and average party starts at 10 pm., and at last but not least - I do love parties!

My solution: I do my best to meet my friends earlier - preferably during afternoon. If a party is set I simply stay till 2 am., the next day get up at 5:30-6 am. and take a nap in the afternoon. Personally I don't consider staying till the end of party so essential. My experience is not so vast so I don't know what will be in the future, but I discovered lately, that my commitment to getting up early has rather unexpected benefit - leaving the party sooner I skipped some embarassing events...

2. Being languid in the evening

This was the problem because I take language classes in the evening and it was rather hard to concentrate and not to fall asleep... But... Only in the begining - after two weeks my body got acustomed to less sleep and I simply start to be active LONGER during the day.

3. Sleeping hours

I usually try to go to bed at 10 pm., but to be honest it almost never really happened My best result is about 10:30 so it means that I have less than 7 hours of sleep each day (usually 6, but sometimes even only 5). Till my experiment with getting up early - now I truly regret that I didn't do it my whole life - I was full of prejudices about my sleep need. For instance I thought that I have to sleep 7 hours, that 6 hours is an absolute must for my proper functioning, and that after only 4 hours I become paranoid.

Lately - and it was really amazing - I slept one time over 7 hours, I was really tired and yes - that was my best result - I went to bed at 9:30 pm. Next day I was very dizzy and tired, I could hardly concentrate and had to take additional nap in the afternoon... I ascribed it to a stormy weather, but next day when I slept only 5,5 hours I felt much better and although I was a bit tired in the afternoon (the weather was similar and also level of the activity) - I didn't need a nap. Maybe, I say maybe - because I have to broaden my experience - I was simply wrong when I thought about my sleep pattern??

I can easily recognize when I didn't have enough sleep - my coordination is impaired. And this happens when I do sleep only 5 hours three days in a row, but one or two times in week is OK.

[Sleeping Dude]

Glad to see so many people obsessed with the idea of early rising

This habit is easy to get, I myself acquired it dozens of time Seriously though, I've found that the most productive way to acquire it is to use as many "receipies", tricks and approaches you may find, all at the same time.

I ended up collecting most practical from those tricks that I've learned and put them here: How to Wake Up Early. I have more unpublished tricks than published still, so it's a work in progress.

I don't wake up at the same time every day, I try to regulate the amount of time I sleep, not the wake up time itself. When I go to bed by 11pm I wake up at 5-30am. If I got later, say 1am, I wake up at 7-7:30am.

[Tuumble]

I'm just starting a spell of 4:15am starts, 5 days a week for 8 weeks.

It plays havoc for the running in my Duathlon training but at least it means I get extra miles in cycling between my two job locations.

Curiously for me I find I'm more awake, certainly so far, because it ensures I go to bed earlier.

The downside is I'm paranoid about not waking up so despite the loud alarm on the clock radio I do tend to wake up from time to time. I'm sure that will improve once I get used to it.

[jbsmith]

I find mornings when I do wakeup at 5 AM (4:30 today - the birds are starting earlier and earlier outside my bedroom window), I get amazing things done before 8AM.

But I've always been more productive in the morning than any other time of the day - so getting up earlier definitely makes sense for me.

Others I've known have NEVER been productive in the morning, but instead find their peak creative and efficiency time in the afternoon or even later at night.

Not sure you can generalize - but it would be interesting to run a survey.

Jeff

[llong]

I try to get up in the 3s, but sometimes I don't get up until 5am (I never use an alarm).

The main thing is to be efficient and productive, no matter what time you wake. I've met people who pride themselves on being early risers, only to squander the extra time. Bragging rights, methinks.

[moltar]

My first day at 5am

I used to wake up at 6am for several month, but then for no reason I just quit. But it was good while it lasted. So now I am trying to get back on track and even 1h earlier.