The Importance of Waking Up Early

A couple of months ago I had hypothesized that waking up early would put me at an edge by boosting my daily productivity, improving my mood, and giving me a bit more satisfaction. Today, I gained some more confidence in that theory.

The past few days have been difficult for me, as I've found it a bit tough to fulfill my "duty" that I put forth for myself. Some days I didn't have motivation and just didn't want to work. I would get dismayed and at times frustrated by delays in my schedule and the difficulty I had in completing my assigned workload for the day.

During these days, I also wasn't waking up as early as I used to. Rather than waking up at 7/8 am, I woke up at 8:30/9:30. Though this wake-up time isn't too disappointing compared to the 10AM it had been at some point during my past summers, it posed some problems. My morning exercise would be difficult due to greater heat in the late morning, but mostly because of the glaring sun. Furthermore, by the time I would settle down after my exercise and get ready to work, it was sometimes 10/11 AM in the morning.

When I wake up early, I typically have 1-2 hours worth of work finished by 10/11AM on a productive day (given I'm feeling happy and ready to work). However, waking up late delays my schedule overall and by 5pm (typically the time I head out to take a break) it's rare that I would have regained this missed time, even if I had worked without interruption. This "lost time" frustrated me because on a day that I had woken up early, I would have had some more free time during the evening to relax or work without self-imposed pressure. (The pressure is mild and stems from fear of the dissatisfaction of leaving my "duty" of the day unfulfilled.)

When I woke up early today to attend a meeting that began at 7am, I felt happy as I begun my morning exercise around 8:20am, as I already had 3 sessions of "work" under my belt (though not all forms of work are uniformly taxing upon my mental capacity, and meetings aren't a particularly strenuous form of work, a consideration that is ignored by my current record-keeping habits). At the same time during the day, I have more "work" done (again, using work in quotations, as hours spent may not be the most optimal standard of comparison) than I would have before.

I guess I'll try to keep waking up early and see where that takes me. On a slightly related note, one concluding observation I'd like to make is that my views on "how good a person is" have shifted over the past couple of months. I no longer feel that this should be dictated by how much they work, as I now feel that while work is a duty, it is also a privilege at times. Someone who is captivated by a programming project they are working on to the point that they get engrossed in it for the entire day is not inherently "better" than someone who, discouraged by the difficulty in their day's tasks, only manages to work half the time while nonetheless exhibiting commendable persistence. This reminds me of a quote by Jordan Peterson, "Interests have you."