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Who the heck gets productive within 1-2 hours of waking up? Sure, those hours are great for ingesting what has happened since the last cycle but not really for creating new value. Edit: I just realized I wrote this the wrong way. What I meant was that I can't imagine people being productive during the first 1-2 hours after waking up.
I'm one of those unlucky types that have the hardest time waking up and getting going in the morning. Mentally I'm at 50% or less. Is there anyone else like this who's found techniques or other methods of overcoming the slow start?
* Get up at the same time every day, even if you've had a late night
* Wind down by avoiding electronics an hour before bedtime
* Put a loud alarm clock on top of the fridge
* Get a big drink of water as soon as you wake up
* Turn on all the lights (or go outside, but that obviously won't work at 4am at most latitudes)
* Have a morning routine that you can do on autopilot while your mind fully awakens. For me that's cereal and a shower.
Wow, remind me not to hire you for a job then. As an employer I am paying you to put my work ahead of yours. I am paying you to be productive so that with the collective production of the employees, the company can outmaneuver the competition. This lackadaisical approach and work-ethic means that, of course the mile high task list will always be there. It'll never ever get done!
It's a good indicator of your management style that you won't even publically forward your opinion without a throwaway. Nobody wants to work for a coward.
I dunno. There's advantages to having a boss that's a huge pushover...
Boss: "We need this done by the end of the week!"
Employee: "That's just not possible. These sorts of things take research and most importantly, time."
Boss: "Oh. I see. Two weeks OK?"
Employee: "At least a month. Maybe two."
Boss: "But that's too long!"
Employee: "Nine women can't make a baby in a month!"
Boss: "Oh alright. You've got until the end of the quarter."
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…
Waking before 8-9am seriously affects the very quality of sleep. 8-9am takes a little attention to my sleeping and continued use of an alarm clock, but I can get a decent enough sleep. At 6-7am wakings, it is doable with a great deal of work. I then continually run the risk of oversleeping sporadically (I often don't hear alarm clocks early in the morning). Sometimes I'm just wide awake after midnight even with continued waking. Outside of taking sleeping pills, I'm not sure how to combat that.
I worked exactly one job that started at 4:45am and had to quit due to lateness. I physically couldn't do it. Half the time the alarm wouldn't wake me. I can do this occasionally for a couple days at a time, but it is rough. I'm much better working overnight than early mornings. I used to get told I'd grow out of it, but I'm 38. I don't think I will.
Wow, remind me not to hire you for a job then. As an employer I am paying you to put my work ahead of yours. I am paying you to be productive so that with the collective production of the employees, the company can outmaneuver the competition. This lackadaisical approach and work-ethic means that, of course the mile high task list will always be there. It'll never ever get done!
I've worked at a lot of IT companies, doing developer, sys admin, dev ops .. I've run the spectrum from health insurance to credit card processors -- very little of the work I've ever done is fulling or contributes to society in any significant way (except maybe the University I worked for briefly).
My personal work matters way more than any of the crap I get paid for. That being said, I write good code. My stuff has solid test cases, good design and readable code. I learn from code reviews and try to give good feedback. I generate good work and get it done in a reasonable amount of time. But I don't do over time. I don't work over 40 hours a week. I will not work on the weekends. If you work at a hospital, I can see how being on-call could be important. Any other job, and it's just money you're losing.
Just become my employer doesn't come first, doesn't make me a bad employee. If anything it makes me a better person because I have a life.
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.
To each their own. Most people have highly adaptable bodies and can train themselves to be a "morning person." If a person were to stay up until 2AM, there's no way they'd want to wake up at 4AM. They would therefore see themselves as a productive night owl.
I disagree. If it were that simple (with some work, obviously), more would easily be able to train themselves to be "night people" to work overnight shifts. And my experience working nights disagreed. Some folks just cannot handle the sleep and waking times of the shift, others get to a point that they have trouble being productive. A few find it unsafe to drive home afterwards.
I think we are flexible and adaptable to a point, but there is a limit before you find health and sleep suffers a bit too much. For most, nights would push the envelope, but the early mornings do it for a few of us.
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.
I work best between midnight - 4am. Unfortunately I'm stuck in the corporate world where I'm expected to work 8-5. Late sleepers aren't any less productive than early raisers, but the bias prevents business from shifting the work clock around to cater to our different sleep patterns:
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/28/11306124/chronotype-night-owl-d...
Only tangentially related, while I don't like having to wake up at 4, being out and about in town at 4 a.m. is a pretty enjoyable experience, especially on say a Sunday morning. I love driving through foggy streets as dawn is just starting to break, and the only other people around are gas station attendants and the occasional extra-early rising farmer.
But not enough to get me to wake at those times, as I wouldn't enjoy it in the same way.
Who the heck gets productive within 1-2 hours of waking up? Sure, those hours are great for ingesting what has happened since the last cycle but not really for creating new value. Edit: I just realized I wrote this the wrong way. What I meant was that I can't imagine people being productive during the first 1-2 hours after waking up.
It depends how quickly you get through the morning routine doesn't it? For example: If you work from home, you have no commute, you don't need to get dressed, etc. Roll out of bed, slug down some soylent, do some jumping jacks to get the body warmed up, and start catching up on yesterday. With that minimal morning routine, you could easily be in the zone within 1-2 hours.
Interesting article! The Rishi's and Yogi's in India always woke up at 4 in the morning. In the Hindu Yogic philosophy this time period is also called the Brahma Muhurta. If anyone is interested, you can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmamuhurtha and http://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/537/what-is-the-...