The magic of waking up at 6 am.
Waking up early is something we all know is supposed to be good, but there’s rarely anyone around, who does it. And even if someone does — it’s probably because their job requires them to show up early. But it’s not the same. What I want to talk about is waking up at 6 am even if you can sleep for much longer, than that.
I decided to give it a try about a year ago. It seemed like the thing, that a lot of successful people do. There’s a whole bunch of content about all the hotshot CEOs waking up early, ‘5 am-club’, etc. This appeared to be a cool thing to do in terms of self-development and improving the overall quality of life.
And now, from my own experience, I have discovered that it can bring a lot of good to you and help you start a great day. To be honest, my “waking up early” struggle is far from being a success story, although it ain’t over yet ☺. But we’ll get to that later…
Why bother?
Personally, for me, it started as a productivity hack. There was a time about a year ago when I just felt anxious every day. The whole life seemed a boring routine, I was late to work almost all the time (we didn’t have a strict schedule so I had an extra reason to sleep more). So, in other words, everything felt a bit off and I wanted to bring a little bit more structure and meaning to my otherwise boring days. The first thing that came to mind was to start waking up early. By then, I’ve noticed that on rare occasions when I didn’t sleep through the whole morning- I felt much better than usual. But to start doing this — I had to overcome my laziness, which was massive in the morning. I’m not a morning person, as you have probably figured out at this point. But I gained a huge inspiration from Matt D'Avella, a minimalist filmmaker, who has an awesome YouTube channel. He has a video about waking up at 6 am, which was a huge inspiration for me and I also got a couple of good tips from it. That’s how I started my routine…
All the perks.
Honestly, when you wake up at 6 am, especially during the first couple of minutes, it doesn’t feel like a good thing at all. And the weird thing is — it doesn’t get much easier over time (At least not for me). But if you put all of your willpower into getting through this first 10–15 minutes — everything is about to change. Personally, for me, it was a shower and a cup of coffee to fully wake up. And then I was in this amazing state of mind. My head wasn’t cluttered with a bunch of random thoughts since the day had just started. There’s no one around on the streets and online. This provides you a calm environment, a peaceful mind, and makes you just super-productive.
The day hasn’t even started, and I was fully awake and had plenty of time before I even begin to prepare for work. And the best thing is, that I never felt the urge to procrastinate. My brain was fully charged with a ‘get sh*t done’ mindset. I came to realize that it was because I won the struggle with sleep. When you wake up as planned — you take charge of your day from the first second, and that’s empowering. On the other hand — it becomes clear why I felt off for the last couple of weeks. Imagine this: you wake up late and start rushing into work. You take a quick shower and storm out of the house. The day has just begun, and your very first thoughts are “ah man, I’m late for work again, I barely had any time to prepare and on top of it — since I’ve shown up late, I have to stay late”. Now, do you think it’s possible to have a productive and meaningful day if it starts with thoughts like this? Definitely, no.
But when my day started at 6 — I didn’t only have time to properly prepare before work. I also could spare some time for some personal stuff too.
I always enjoyed reading books, although I can never make time to do it. One book can take me 4–8 months to finish. But with all the time in the morning, I could always spend 30–40 minutes to read a book. I was also struggling with a work-life balance. Back then — I had a day job and a side-hustle, that required at least 3 hours of my time every day. It was quite challenging to do it every evening. When you’re home from work — you’re tired throughout the day, you lack focus and most of the time, you just want to relax and watch a TV-show, or grab a beer with a bunch of friends. Although when I started waking up early — I discovered that in the morning I got such a massive focus and productivity boost, that I was able to finish the same amount of work I did in the evenings in an hour or two if I get to it in the morning. On top of it, not only my mornings have become better. When you not in a rush from the first second of your day — You take time to prepare for the job, you come in on time and on your own terms, you’re fully aware. So with that mindset, the quality of my day job increased as well.
Overall it felt like in the movie “Limitless” (It’s about a guy, who discovered pills, that can boost your brain to work on 100% and make you a genius for 24 hours). It seemed like I was a machine with a perfect focus, a clear mind, and a determined vision of what I need to do next.
So if you’re thinking of trying it — I would say “go for it”.
The downfall.
As I said, my story is far away from being a success yet. Also, you may have noticed that I use the past tense while describing my experience. Even though I have been consistent for a couple of months, I have slipped at some point and my attempts were going on and off since then. And even though I’m still struggling to make the habit stick — I can make some conclusions that should help you if you decide to try it as well. So the very first thing is that you have to struggle for the first 10–15 minutes after you get up. And that struggle probably won’t disappear over time. The best thing to do is to build a morning routine, that you need to go through. A shower and a cup of coffee did it for me, but you can get creative and figure out your way. Some people like to take walks first thing in the morning, others do a morning exercise. Another cool thing I heard is that every evening, you need to make a list of what you aim to do over the next day. It gives you an actual plan to wake up early for. It didn’t seem to have much effect on me, but it’s still a good thing to do.
It will be very hard for the first week or so, but eventually, you’ll get into a routine and it will feel more natural. Also, you’ll start going to sleep earlier and it’ll get easier to wake up having slept for 7–8 hours. One more thing: I wouldn’t recommend to skip it on weekends. If you do — you’ll have to readjust every Monday and won’t be able to sleep well for the first 2–3 days of the week. And it’ll be super-easy to slip away if you haven’t got used to it yet. On the other hand, if you wake up early on weekends- you’ll have a lot more time to devote to yourself.
And probably the most important advice I can give is this: don’t start taking things for granted no matter what! Even though it doesn’t get that much easier over time. You still build up a routine and get used to it. At some point, it starts to seem easy and natural. You’ll feel like you got it covered and if you skipped it a couple of times — you will get back on track in no time. That was my downfall. I became too reckless. There will always be late nights and lazy mornings, and if you have one — don’t think, that you can just restart the next morning, because there’s a good chance, that you’ll be saying the same thing tomorrow. And before you know it — it’s gone.
If we look into making it stick — Another great advice comes from Matt D'Avella again. He has this great thing, called “The two-day rule”. It’s a great strategy for making new habits stick in the long run. It basically comes down to this: Whether you’re trying to wake up early, read more or go to the gym consistently — There will always be some late nights or lazy days or any kind of emergencies. You can skip from time to time and it’s natural. But the point of the “two days”-the rule is that you can never skip something more than two days (or two times) in a row. If you stick to that rule you will be able to create consistent habits with a low chance of failure.
Another good advice would be to have a purpose for it. I’m thinking that I was able to do it because I was solving a problem. I wasn’t in my best shape and was trying to find a way out, and I saw the results, but now, other than waking up late from time to time — I generally feel good and on some mornings I can’t figure out “why the heck am I waking up so early”☺. It helps if you do it with intention, rather then waking up just for the sake of waking up.
The conclusion.
Waking up at 6 am can be very challenging, but if you go through with it it can make your day so much better and can bring value to your life. It’s safe to say that it isn’t for everyone. Although when struggling with a boring routine — It’s a great way to become a better version of yourself. So if you’re even asking yourself if you should try it — then you probably have a reason to and I’d say, you should go for it. And I hope you can benefit from this and bring more value to your life.
