30 Days of 5AM

I've just completed my 30 day challenge to get up early. I originally aimed for 5:30AM, but ended up going for 5AM for about 3 weeks of the month. I won't pretend that I ended up with a perfect record. Getting home at 1:00AM on a Friday night doesn't lend itself to getting up 4 hours later for no reason other than a challenge. However, even that morning, I did get up at 7:00, trying to at least keep with the spirit of the challenge.

It's proven to be an interesting experiment. I have discovered that I was getting too much sleep. I never would have believed it if I didn't have a month's worth of experience to prove it to me. After all, every productivity expert, health teacher, talking head on TV talks about how Americans don't get enough sleep, etc. And, if you're one of those people trying to get by on 3 hours a night, you probably ARE getting too little sleep. However, I'd been going to bed at 10:00 and sleeping until 6-7AM on the weekdays and 8-9AM on the weekends. Over the course of this month, I've found that when I get right around 6.5-7 hours, I'm most alert, spend FAR less time yawning through the day.

On top of just plain getting more hours per day, putting them in the morning has tended to let me more productively use the time. I'm less likely to waste the time doing things like spacing out to TV like I would staying up until midnight. Those first hours of the day are more quiet, more productive and my brain just seems to work better then than it does.

I know just how that sounds. You're "more productive at night". You stay up all hours, etc. I know because I WAS you. In college, I stayed until they closed the computer lab every night. I didn't get going until at least 10AM, etc. I was the most anti-morning person you'd meet. Thing is, I was full of crap. You might not be, but have you thought about giving it 30 days to make sure?

I'll be keeping with it, primarily by aiming for that 6.5-7hrs/night mark adjusting for circumstances. I'm happy with the time and energy it's given me to do thing things I want (the activity on this site in August as one of those things).