Waking up 2 hours earlier for a month
As many of my friends know, I am a huge fan of 30 day challenges. Introduced to a wider public by Matt Cutts in his TED talk, the idea is to do something new or challenging every day for 30 days. Why? It could become a new experience, you can achieve something tangible (a new skill, for example) or develop a new habit for life. He talks about how solidifying a habit takes around 30 days. I figure, what do I have to lose?
I have practiced different 30 day challenges for about a year now (albeit not every month). These included: running every day, meditating, doing yoga, doing a kettlebell workout and learning to play on a guitar. Not every challenge was successful, but each taught me something I did not know about myself before going through it.
After reading this article, I decided that my October challenge would be to wake up every day 2 hours earlier than usually (5:30am in my case). I posted it on Facebook and inspired a few of my friends to follow do the same.
The beginning was pretty difficult. Here’s what happened on day 3:
But as the month progressed, waking up early became something that felt natural.
How did it go?
It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. In short, as long as I get my 7 — 8 hours of sleep / night, it doesn’t really matter what time I get up.
But a few things were different:
- Before the challenge, I’d usually stay up until midnight. Not in October — around 10pm I was totally knackered and ready for bed (how boring!).
- I spent my mornings on doing things I’d normally do in the evening (such as reading, responding to emails, learning, exercising etc.) As a result, my productivity / efficiency went up. It’s much easier to focus when your mind is fresh.
- Another benefit of getting up early — my mornings were much calmer and I was able to have much better breakfasts.
- I tried early morning running but did not enjoy it. I still prefer afternoon / evening runs.
- My social life was impacted to some extent. It was more difficult / impossible to go out or to have guests after 10pm.
My friends also gave it a go…
Here’s what my Anastasia said:
I did really well for the first 10 days but then had a bad flu and that messed the sleeping patterns a little. After getting better, I tried to wake up earlier again but it wasn’t as consistent. The biggest challenge I found is going to bed early. Definitely loved the quiet mornings for reading, power walking (proper running didn’t work for me neither) and working on my site. Also kept being the first customer in coffee shops that open not earlier than 6:30–7am! The feeling of being ahead/awake while everyone else is sleeping is great. Will continue this month but stick to 6am.
And Eugene:
I have to do this every day (5–30am/6am wake up) for my commute / meetings — your comments are pretty much spot on (having lived in Barcelona waking up at 9:30am every day!). The going to bed at 10pm is only at the beginning, you will start to wake up naturally at about 6am, even if you go to bed at midnight/1am after a month or two due to hacking your circadian rhythm
Am I going to continue?
Yes and no. I will be getting up early if there is something important to focus on. Mornings are much better for that than evenings. But I’m not going to be as religious about it as I was in October — I’d also like to be able stay up for a few days a week.
Overall, it was an interesting experiment and I’d encourage you to try it, too.
P.S. Looks like I hacked my body into early morning starts. One week into November and I keep waking up on my own at 5am — 6am. Oops ☺
