» Becoming an Early Riser >> The Retrospector

Becoming an Early Riser

Posted June 22nd, 2006
Categories: Personal, Misc., Time Management

early_riser Recently, I stumbled onto a couple of articles that really caught my curiosity. Steve Pavlina’s How to Become an Early Riser and How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off really made me read almost every word in each.

“Can I do that?” “I can do that.” *yawn* Hmmm. “Maybe I’ll try that tomorrow.”

I can totally relate to what he’s talking about there in both articles. So the last 2-3 weeks I’ve decided to give myself an honest test as to whether or not I can actually follow through with becoming a morning person.

Applying to my own schedule

A rule of thumb that I’ve known for a long time is that it only takes a few weeks to really kick a habit or make a new one. I don’t know where I picked up that piece of information, but it’s always held pretty true for me. I figured if I can get through a couple solid weeks of waking up really early on a schedule like Steve pointed out, I shouldn’t have any trouble sticking with it for the long run.

So every morning, between 5:00am and 6:00am, I’m up and at ‘em like releasing a coiled spring. For 3 weeks (not including a weekend out of town) I’ve been hopping out of bed and mosying down to the basement for some time on the computer, and the occasional workout on the home gym.

It’s actually working out much better and easier than I thought it would. I’ve been pretty skeptical about being able to switch from my good ol’ high-school and college-day schedule that’s been embedded in my subconscious somewhere for years. (I’m very much a night person and can stay up really late on a whim without any trouble.)

Looking forward

I’ve actually managed to see a few sunrises in the mornings. This is very exciting to me. You laugh, but that’s still such a rarity in my life that I actually still stop to look at it every morning when I catch it out my east windows from the kitchen.

My outlook on life has been lifted a little knowing that something so trivial can make such a big difference for me. I’ve discovered that I’m actually much more productive during the early hours than I was late at night. It’s hard to explain entirely, but I’ve always thought of my most productive times to be in the evening. The last few weeks I’ve managed to get quite a move-on in the mornings to be able to accomplish things before my day even starts that I used to just push off until the weekends.

Conclusion

I don’t think I can say it’s a life-altering experience or anything quite that significant. But this has been a great little experiment in trying out something that may work out for me much better in the end. I’ll have to look back on this again in a few months and we’ll see if I’m still an early riser or not. I’m certainly interested in comparing my views on what I was able to accomplish during the “night-time” days vs. during the “early riser” days.

Anyone else out there try doing this to see if it made a real difference for them? What effects did you find after changing your schedule in a major way?