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What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

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Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

#111

Post by gji »

purplethinking wrote: post #59
dbingham wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could never do this. Because even with really good sleep hygene and good early bedtime habits, the earliest I ever wake up is 6:30 am. And those are rare days. More often bedtime will slip to 10 pm or later and I will awake naturally between 8:30 am and 9:30 am. I'm just not a morning person, no matter what I do. And I'm a 9 hour+ sleeper, so I need those sleep hours.

> And I'm a 9 hour+ sleeper, so I need those sleep hours. Most people need at least 8-8.5 hours (as in 99.999%). He does too, just doesn't realize it.

Source for this? I personally need 9+ hours as well but am constantly told I sleep for too long.

Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

#112

Post by hexo »

Darkphibre wrote: post #73
hexo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unemployable just because of this. I cannot "work" in the morning or when my employer thinks I have to.

Have you considered telecommuting? There's got to be a time-zone that may provide optimal alignment with your sleep patterns.

I've considered it, didn't try it yet. I'm really curious if it would work

Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

#113

Post by mi100hael »

_tulpa wrote: post #77
mi100hael wrote: post #53

For anyone interested in changing their sleep habits and becoming a regular early riser, I found this guy's blog to be quite helpful: https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-e...

This is more or less devoid of any useful information... When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up Is what everyone already knows. The article implies that you somehow just do this and conveniently ignores how useless that advice is for breaking or replacing habits. Especially ones where you’re not going to be alert enough to even remember that you’re supposed to be…

> Is what everyone already knows.

Is it, though? I know plenty of people who set 7 different alarms or intentionally set their alarm half an hour early so they can snooze it 12 times.

Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

#114

Post by telchar »

war1025 wrote: post #92
FPGAhacker wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do ok with 7. I’d sleep longer but my back starts to hurt if I’m in bed too long. I get up at 5am to avoid traffic.

I switched to a futon-style very firm mattress several years ago. Now any time we go out of town my back feels miserable in the morning. I honestly don't know why people subject themselves to the torture that is the modern box-spring mattress. I think people would have much less back issues if they spent the two weeks it takes to sleep on a firm surface. Its all about learning to actually distribute your weight acros…

That's great if you sleep on your back but side-sleepers aren't going to be happy on a hard mattress, the shoulder becomes a single point of contact with the bed. I'm not convinced that people accustomed to sleeping in one orientation can easily change to the other. Although I would be curious if anyone has anecdotes about that.

Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

#115

Post by jen729w »

hexo wrote: post #23
ilamont wrote: post #18

I can't read TFA, but wanted to note that there's an interesting statistic in the book Why We Sleep : Something like 30% of the population are hard-wired to be "night owls" and 20% early risers. The author hypothesized that this may be an evolutionary survival mechanism that allowed bands of humans to always have people who were awake or more likely to wake quickly if threatened after dark or in the early morning. Fo…

I'm unemployable just because of this. I cannot "work" in the morning or when my employer thinks I have to.

Okay so hear me out here. You can change. It’s not hard.

I am the owliest of owls. All my life, I’ve been up till 2am and struggled to get out of bed, snooze the alarm, last minute, dash through the shower, hurry to work, no time to think, sit down guiltily at 9:01am. I hated that morning rush but whatever, “that’s just who I am”.

Now, I’m 42, so maybe age makes this easier. But my girlfriend is an early riser, and she sometimes gets up at 5am. FIVE A.M. What? Mental.

Except when you do it a bunch of days in a row, and you see the benefits. You know who else is up at 5am? Nobody, because they’re not idiots. So it’s an amazing time of day. It’s calm, it’s peaceful. Nobody bothers you.

The best part by far is right about now. It’s 9:30am here in Australia and I’ve been up for 3.5 hours already (only did 6am this morning). It feels like midday, yet I have the whole day left. It’s amazing.

The trade-off? You have to go to bed early, of course. But when you do this regularly, your body just sorts that out for you. You will be tired at 9pm. Just you try not to be, buddy. No amount of telling yourself that you’re an owl will change that. And, help yourself. Put the screen away, read a book, you know all of this.

Also, help yourself in the morning. My advice: don’t be a hero. Don’t try and get up and run a marathon. Just get up and put the kettle on. Slouch downstairs. Rub your eyes. It’s okay to be sleepy, it’s 5am and probably dark [0]. Have a cup of tea and a slice of toast. Read HN or Twitter or the paper or a book or whatever. DON’T BE A HERO.

Now, it’s 5:45am, maybe 6am. Seriously, don’t rush. But now it’s 6am and you are thoroughly awake and you are ready to go.

Enjoy the day. Just try not to be too smug about it, us morning people can be a bit like that. :-)

[0]: Added bonus. You get to see sunrise!

Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

#116

Post by imh »

I've done this for years and would totally recommend it. I didn't know it was a growing "movement!"

I use it to foster an attitude of work-life balance. When you wake up in the morning in order to go to work, work is the focus. When you wake up and hours later go to work, it's just that thing that sucks up a lot of the middle of your day. I stay way saner and less burnt out due to this habit.

Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

#117

Post by rconti »

jolmg wrote: post #84
rconti wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just finished the book, and am putting a lot more focus on my sleep. One thing it made me realize is, I don't think it's possible for people to know if they're night owls or not, until they're routinely getting 8 hours of sleep a night. Of course if you're not getting enough sleep you'll find it hard to get up in the morning and thus claim you're a "night owl" and "can't function in the morning".

Well, it's not just about it being hard to get up in the morning. It's also about the tendency to stay up late when everyone else is tired, isn't it? Though, I get your point that probably many claim to be born "night owls" when it's probably just the constant light from the monitor and internet addictions that keep them wide awake.

Sure, I suppose it could manifest itself in any number of ways. I've ALWAYS considered myself a night owl for both reasons; difficulty of waking AND desire to stay up late.

No matter how much blue light I get, I fall asleep just fine at night when I go to bed (assuming I don't have too much caffeine late in the day).

That said, I will easily/happily stay up until 2am. I just don't like to go to bed. Call it getting a second wind, or desire to avoid "ending my day" and having to go right to work first thing in the AM, or whatever. I might, in fact, be a night owl, I'm just realizing I don't know myself well enough to say for sure.

Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

#118

Post by dacur »

the_common_man wrote: post #14
donarb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time what I do is go to outline.com. Paste the link into the box and read the article just fine.

What is outline.com?

it's a free service that allows you to bypass some paywalls like nytimes, wapo, and wsj. it strips out everything but the text.

Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

#119

Post by quailmaster »

war1025 wrote: post #92
FPGAhacker wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do ok with 7. I’d sleep longer but my back starts to hurt if I’m in bed too long. I get up at 5am to avoid traffic.

I switched to a futon-style very firm mattress several years ago. Now any time we go out of town my back feels miserable in the morning. I honestly don't know why people subject themselves to the torture that is the modern box-spring mattress. I think people would have much less back issues if they spent the two weeks it takes to sleep on a firm surface. Its all about learning to actually distribute your weight acros…

At 5'11", I fluctuate between 115 and 120 lbs and cannot comfortably sleep or sit on any hard surface. It feels like my bones are touching stone directly, and sometimes causes parts of my body to fall asleep. It also doesn't help that I sleep on my side.

Fairly certain I'm an outlier as well, but a soft mattress seems to give my body the contour and padding I lack naturally.

Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning

#120

Post by kraig »

gentran wrote: post #89
emiranda wrote: post #25

I've been waking up at 5am for the past 5 months so I can head to the gym (my first telecom meeting starts at 7am). Because no one is ever going to bother me between 5am and 7am, I've been able to consistently got to the gym at least 3x per week (trying to bump it up to 5x per week for the new year). I started doing this because it was very difficult for me to consistently go to the gym after work. Things come up, I…

I've barely adjusted waking up at 6 daily, and consistently going to sleep around the same time has been near impossible for one reason or another. What is your secret

What reasons? It takes some discipline but I get to bed by 10pm pretty regularly because I wake up at 6am and at the gym daily at 7:20. If I am not asleep by 10:30pm my morning suffers, so I make sure I stop myself to get the sleep I need. In general that means starting to wind down after 9pm (usually 9:30) and then doing some light reading.
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