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4 a.m. Is the Most Productive Hour

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141–150 of 229 posts

Re: 4 a.m. Is the Most Productive Hour

#141
post #15

This was obviously written by a "morning person." Like most engineers and other creatives, 4 AM is when I'm just starting to get my deep sleep (which peaks at 6-7 AM). 12-2 AM is the most productive time of the day for me.

As a normally decidedly non-morning person, getting up really early (2-4am) works surprisingly well for me. Allows for a really slow, but stress-free morning, which leads to a more productive rest of the day. The hardest part (for me) is realizing that yes, I have done enough and am tired, and should not power through an evening-low and stay up until after midnight. YMMV of course, but getting up really early might n…

i am a decidedly non-morning person.

i wake up at 4 am everyday because i need to get into the office by 5, and lots of things needs to be done by 7.

by noon my productivity falls off a cliff and I am a zombie by 6 pm but the social life begins at the time when friends and family get off work. you can choose to cut that out of your life... but that's a huge sacrifice.

when the weekend comes around, i'm in bed until noon, and then by sunday i'm back to ready to hit the sack at 2am again, except that work starts in 3 hours.

every week this cycle of absolute torture goes around, and has been my life for the last 5 years.

but what this article is not about is the time you wake up, but the quality, quiet time you put aside for important things, before work starts. for me, that would be 2 to 4 am before i go to work, but obviously that's not happening. so just because you wake up at 4 doesn't obviously mean anything on its own, the important thing is waking up at 4 when your workday begins at 7.

Re: 4 a.m. Is the Most Productive Hour

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well getting drunk with friends in the afternoon doesn't seem like it's the answer to life either. Wow, the GP didn't say anything about getting drunk, so you managed to turn his comment into "hanging out with friends isn't the answer to life either". I beg to differ, it's a big part of the answer.

You guys are going to be really surprised by this, but I swear it's true: the answer to life is different for each person

Deep Thought told me it was 42.

Re: 4 a.m. Is the Most Productive Hour

#143
post #9

This was obviously written by a "morning person." Like most engineers and other creatives, 4 AM is when I'm just starting to get my deep sleep (which peaks at 6-7 AM). 12-2 AM is the most productive time of the day for me.

> Like most engineers and other creatives Free yourself of culturally-assigned norms ("engineers and creative people work best at midnight, with lots of coffee") and consider a wider breadth of experience. The most productive and effective person I know, a computer engineer, typically starts working before I'm even awake. The premise of the article is that 4 a.m. is both outside most of society's normal waking period…

Is "before" really meaningful enough to bother differentiating? You work from 5am to whatever. I work from 9am to whenever. It's not a big deal.

Guess I could say, "While that farmer calls it quits, I am working late into the night getting ahead! Mwahahaha."

Re: 4 a.m. Is the Most Productive Hour

#144
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like most engineers and other creatives Free yourself of culturally-assigned norms ("engineers and creative people work best at midnight, with lots of coffee") and consider a wider breadth of experience. The most productive and effective person I know, a computer engineer, typically starts working before I'm even awake. The premise of the article is that 4 a.m. is both outside most of society's normal waking period…

Wait, you're literally arguing that the "culturally-assigned norm" is working late and sleeping late, instead of vice-versa, Benjamin Franklin's "early to rise, makes a [person] wise" from America's agricultural roots that birthed the normed 9 AM start time for the salaryman for centuries?! In high school, I had to wake up at 6 AM every day; you can imagine I was tired as hell -- and it's because of my biological chr…

I've read that some folks may be more sensitive than others to cues like blue light. This would mean staring at a computer ruins your sleep (or pushes it back). Eating and sleep cycles are also closely related, folks like us may not even feel hungry until late in the day. Lots of generalizations in this thread about what's good for everyone. As the only expert here on myself, I wish they would can it.

Re: 4 a.m. Is the Most Productive Hour

#145

I was really hoping for more anecdotes on night owls. 2am-4am is definitely the most productive time for me and I regularly stay up that late, deep in the programming zone. Of course, I shouldn't really have expected the WSJ to highlight night owls. We've turned sleep schedules into a morality play, where waking up at 4am is somehow impressive and virtuous while waking up at 10/11am is slothful (even if you spent all…

We're hackers though, you're one of us. From pg himself: "I used to program from dinner till about 3 am every day, because at night no one could interrupt me. Then I'd sleep till about 11 am, and come in and work until dinner on what I called 'business stuff.'" http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

I did a similar thing for a while, when working on my startup. Actually, I free-wheeled it. I stopped trying to go to sleep, and just slept when I needed to. I'd typically crash between 4am and 8am, sleep for about 4 hours, get some business work done, take a 3 hour nap, and then get into my night routine.

It was fantastic for when I had solitary work to get done. Not so great for social life. I could go out, but that would be like taking half a day off.

Re: 4 a.m. Is the Most Productive Hour

#146
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some years ago I started my day at 4 a.m. to exercise. While it worked, this kept me from having any social life outside from talking to coworkers. Getting a drink with friends in the afternoon is impossible if you want to keep this schedule, so I stopped. Being productive isn't everything in life. I'm only 30 but I doubt I will ever look back wishing I worked harder alone in my room instead of being with my friends.

Well getting drunk with friends in the afternoon doesn't seem like it's the answer to life either. I'm 31 and wake up at 5am during the week. Get to the gym before getting into the office at 7:30. Definitely have enough time to get drinks with friends here or there. I'm not staying out all night partying by any means, but there is certainly a way to make it work. “Looking back over a life of hard work … my only regre…

> Top 5 Regrets of the Dying: (2) I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. (4) I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Re: 4 a.m. Is the Most Productive Hour

#147

Here I thought I'd be getting some validation for being a night owl. 4 AM is my most productive hour. It's just that I haven't gone to bed yet then. What's this "up before the sun rises" stuff? It's productive because the day is just coming to a close.

It seems like the common thread between early risers and night owls is that they both find their most productive time during a period when people don't normally socialize, so that they can avoid meetings and have some 'maker time'.

They don't seem all that different on the face of it, it's just a shame that society considers one productive and the other less so. Probably because night owl hours coincide with those of people who party all night and sleep in? Nobody gets up early to party all morning.

Re: 4 a.m. Is the Most Productive Hour

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well getting drunk with friends in the afternoon doesn't seem like it's the answer to life either. I'm 31 and wake up at 5am during the week. Get to the gym before getting into the office at 7:30. Definitely have enough time to get drinks with friends here or there. I'm not staying out all night partying by any means, but there is certainly a way to make it work. “Looking back over a life of hard work … my only regre…

> Top 5 Regrets of the Dying: (2) I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. (4) I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

I suppose that people on their death bed are pretty much biased, hardly less than average population. Human memory is quite imperfect and selective.
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