Nope, I won’t try and wake up at 6am anymore— here’s why.

How my chase for more time in my day created more internal reflection than hours.

I preface this by introducing what I already know about myself. I love sleep. I’m known as that person that is the hardest to wake up, or some may say, even impossible to wake up. I’m known as that person that can fall asleep in any moving vehicle. I’m known as that person whose sleep routine just can’t be described.

On October 28, 2018, I wrote myself a little motivational note to read in the morning. I do this often because I try and capture my mindset of drive into a sentence of words. But when I woke up to my drowning alarm, my gaze only traveled as far as my phone’s lock screen. I have done that every day since.

With a quick Google search of “Medium 5am,” articles from the year alone populate the page. They swear by the beauty, creativity, and peace that comes with the early mornings.

“In the early morning, my canvas is still blank.”

Another is more motivational and convinced that change is at your fingertips.

If you could give yourself two hours, every morning, solely dedicated to learning, thinking, planning, meditating, praying, and writing in your journal, your life would change.

Another frames the benefits of mornings around how the extra hours give you a headstart in the daily race.

If you get up at 5:30AM every day to work on projects, you’re already ahead of everyone else who sleeps until 7 or 8AM.

Then of course, we have the public figures spreading the message on Youtube, Twitter, publications, everywhere.

I made early mornings a goal. But why?

1. I wanted to have more hours in my day. On the surface, people look at your commitments to gauge your busyness level. For context, I’m a university student with a part-time job, two extra-curriculars, and a functioning social life. However, there is more I want to be doing because I thrive on progression for my multitude of interests. The one barrier I face on a daily basis is time. All I need is more time.
2. Discipline = freedom. I don’t remember where I heard it but I wrote it down on the piece of paper on the wall behind my laptop in my line of sight. I want freedom. But that comes from discipline. And at the time, I thought that the way to achieve it was through early mornings.
3. I oversleep. The later I sleep, the later I wake up. Sounds intuitive but it seemed like an exponential trend to me. I would sleep at 2am and wake up at 11:30am. That’s a lot especially for a school night. (Don’t worry, I had class at 12pm this term. Yes, I did make it.)

So why can’t I do it?

1. I enjoy my late nights. The appeal of an early morning wasn’t enough for me to give up my love for 1am writing sessions and tea. It wasn’t enough for me to end roommate movie nights at 10pm rather than 12am. But I tried to.
2. The most stressful moments in my life have been from realizing that I don’t have enough time. By working late into the night, I have the guarantee of more hours without shifting my pre-made plans for the next day. Yes, I would be more tired but I would rather be tired than stressed any day.
3. I don’t think it’s for me right now. Even when I did wake up at 5am with my alarm, I convinced myself that I didn’t need to, that sleep was crucial to my happiness or satisfaction at the minimum. Maybe it will be when I’m looking for more hours to put into my side hustle in addition to my full-time job or when I create my own daily schedule. At the moment, even with the late nights, it’s going just fine and dandy. The quest for change has been postponed — not abandoned.

Am I just resistant to change?

Maybe especially when it’s something that would require a lifestyle shift in the way I structure my day, the times I engage with the people in my life, and the times I reserve for quietness.

The next step I take will be to establish routines.

I identify as someone who is most productive at night but I’m willing to bet that it’s only because over the past few years, I have been most inspired at these times. If my routines shift these moments of inspiration to the early mornings, I’m sure waking up at 5am could become an easier concept to grasp .

I created a list of priorities for myself this term. It includes all the things we strive for in a balanced life from exercise to eating healthy to budgeting to academic achievement. A differentiator from similar lists from my past was a new focus on the little things that allowed me to relax yet feel productive at the same time. Reading. Journaling by hand. Making breakfast.

This is something that has been on my mind throughout university. And as I’m nearing the end, I’m looking for all the things I could be doing to make the most of it. That includes experimenting with routines and habits in hopes of refining it for the next phase of my life.

oh, the sunrise through New York state