Background

I had been seeing videos on YouTube about highly successful people waking up at 4:00 am or 4:30 am or even earlier. About ten days ago I discovered that my neighbour wakes up at 4:00 am every day. That got me thinking - this is a real example in front of me. This can’t be some random stuff from the Internet. I had to dig deeper into this. So I decided to try out waking up before sunrise. What follows is my log for the first few days of this attempt.

Before I started

I tried to imagine what I would do, if I managed to wake up very early. First I thought I’d try to get ahead on office work, particularly the tedious parts. I quickly did a thought experiment and realized this would be quite bad. The whole point of getting up extra early is to not start your day like you would otherwise. So I thought I’d try to be flexible about what I do. As long as I didn’t do anything that needed to be done - I had the whole day to tend to those things.

Day 1

At 1:30 pm

I woke up at 5:00am today, and I am still awake. I never thought this would be possible for me.

At 3 pm

Well, I just woke up from a 40-minute nap which my wife forced me to take. I guess I was looking like a zombie earlier. I don’t really know if I am any different now.

At 8:30 pm

It was an interesting day. I survived, but was thinking quite slowly most of the time. I also felt less hungry. Luckily I can go to bed in the next hour …

Day 2

At 6 am

I have been up for a little more than an hour. I just did a few burpees, which I have found to be a great way to start feeling awake. Like yesterday, I didn’t rush anything and allowed my drowsiness to slowly wear off.

At 1:30 pm

Today I was feeling less energetic in the morning. Then the sun came out and I walked about two miles and that got me much closer to being normal. Right now I contemplating taking a nap …

At 8 pm

I did nap for an hour just like yesterday. It took that and a coffee and a trip to two playgrounds with my son to get me somewhere close to normal.

Day 3

Last evening I managed to work a wee little bit before going to bed. The previous evening I was not capable of doing that. Today has been better than the last two days. I think I am gradually getting to know the do’s and don’ts of waking up early. I do notice that on all three days my breathing is slightly different, and my hunger is less than usual. My apetite is intact - I ate the same amount of food as I usually do. It is only the ‘feed me’ message which isn’t flashing through my mind. Perhaps my mind doesn’t have enough power to do that!

At 2 pm

The last two days I have been napping at this time. Today I feel like I might be able to survive without a nap. However I don’t want to simply collapse later in the afternoon. So I might just take a precautionary nap.

At 9:30 pm

Today the afternoon and evening felt almost normal. Even now I feel slightly drowsy but not very weak. I am going to bed nevertheless.

Day 4

At 6:30 am

I didn’t plan to wake up today, I didn’t even set my alarm. However sometime around 5:17 am I felt fresh and awake. So I got up as usual.

At 2:30 pm

I haven’t been working much today. I had a long video call with my parents back in India. There was also some house-related work to do. I think I am going to skip my nap today, because there’s no time.

At 9:30 pm

I couldn’t avoid my nap after all. I am, however, able to do a little bit of work now. Probably the first day I can do this.

Fast forward to today

It has been more than 7 days since I started, and I think I like this! It doesn’t seem very difficult to do, and keeps my mind in a much more pleasant state. My body also feels lighter and my sleep is definitely better now. All good things for a programmer, as far as I can see.