Dawn or Dusk — Considering the Advantages of Early Morning
November 12th, 2008 | Posted in blog 7 Comments »
Dawn -- The day is just beginning!
Ever since I moved to Eagle Mountain, I’ve been carpooling with a colleague who picks me up at 5:30 a.m. This means I wake up at 4:45 a.m. to start getting ready. We roll in to work at 6:30 a.m. — long before the secretary comes in to turn on the lights.
In the early morning, I enjoy watching the sun rise slowly over the mountains. It gradually changes the dark scenery outside to gray and then blue. I’ve never been a morning person, so the daily experience of watching dawn break is somewhat new for me.
However, last Friday my carpooling buddy was out of town, so I had to drive in alone. Why wake up at five in the morning, I thought? Instead I woke up late and drove in late, getting to work at around 9 a.m., long after the sun had already peered over the ridge. The entire landscape was already light, alive, and bustling.
Dusk -- What! The day is already gone?
Throughout the day I felt alert and productive, but around 5 p.m., the sun dipped behind the mountains. The sky turned gray, and only grew darker as I watched the time pass. It felt depressing to know that the day was ending before I could enjoy the daylight outside.
These two experiences caused me to reflect on whether it’s better to be a morning or night person. My father-in-law, a doctor, tells me no one is locked into being a morning or night person. Your preference is merely the result of your sleeping habits. If you’re a night owl and want to become a morning person, you could.
Fewer distractions occur in the early morning. TV has fewer shows (and is less likely to even be on). Fewer events take place that might be distracting. Crime is less common. It’s quieter, and you get to watch the sun rise while everyone else sleeps.
On the other hand, night has its advantages. You don’t have a time limit for your activities — you work until you finish, whether that’s 11 p.m. or 2 a.m. The kids are either asleep or resigned to their rooms (whereas in the morning they’re welcome to come out anytime). At night I tend to be more alert and loosened up.
When I lived in Florida, I knew a lady who woke up every morning at 3:30 a.m. She worked for the post office, so I assumed she had an early route, but not really. At 3:30 a.m., she went to a local gym and worked out (she’d made a special deal with the owner to let her in at that hour). After that she sorted mail, at 9 a.m. delivered her route, and by 7 in the evenings she went to sleep.
I find that extremely early schedule a little unworkable — she didn’t have a family. Still, she was the cheery, alert type, always full of energy, perhaps because of her morning routine.
Overall, there seems to be an overwhelming case for getting up early. Yet it is so difficult. It’s hard to walk up those stairs to bed, turn off the computer, the lights, the TV, to say good night to loved ones, tucking in children. In a way, I feel like I’m going home before the game is over, leaving during the third quarter while the score is tied. I want to enjoy every last minute, stay up and squeeze every ounce of life out of my day. As a result, I sometimes stay up until my mind goes numb and my body absolutely compels me to sleep. This of course makes it painful to wake up the next morning.
Regardless of my decision, I’ll be carpooling in the early morning hour until April of next year, so for now I’m trying out the early bird routine.
Are you a morning or night person, and does it matter?
————
Photos from Flickr (Dawn, Dusk)
Sponsors
Tags: efficiency, morning, night, productivity, sleep, Technical Writing
If you liked this post, keep updated with new content: Subscribe to I'd Rather Be Writing.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Mark Baker (5)
DiSc (3)
Jen (3)
Neal (3)
Richard Hamilton (3)
Ellis Pratt (2)
Jenny (2)
Sarah Maddox (2)
Sarah O'Keefe (2)
Stefan Kleineiken... (2)
Early morning person. I get up before 5 am on weekdays and I’m on the road by around 6:30 am. This gives me time to have a second cup of coffee, walk the dog, and scrape the windows on my wife’s car and warm her vehicle up if need be. My Better Half — who nearly always runs late — appreciates it. Traffic is not as murderous at 6:30 as it is at 7. I get just enough of a jump on things that I feel ahead of the game. On weekends I sleep in a bit. The left-out feeling doesn’t matter as much.
I am a night person. Over the years I have tried, unsuccessfully, to turn myself into a lark, but have failed.
My last unsuccessful attempt ended two years ago after, for two years, I woke up at 5 a.m. to attend classes for a language I’d always wanted to learn. I learnt the language, but slipped back to being a night-person once the diploma was done with. So, for a little over two years, I was perennially drowsy throughout the day, “woke up” only after 3 in the afternoon, and remained alert till late into the night, beyond midnight.
Which makes me think – we’re inherently owls or larks; we can’t change.
Does it matter? To me, not really. I still get my bread-butter-work done sufficiently well, I still meet my friends and catch movies in theatres, I still find time to do volunteer activities, I still have energy left to have arguements at home. Nope, it doesn’t really matter.
I’m usually a “split”…my downtimes are mid-afternoon and way early morning (like 2-6 am).
Early mornings….. I start work in the city just before 7am most days, so by the time I’ve got up, showered, eaten, fed the chickens and checked the cows, dogs, ducks etc I find anything later than a 5am alarm call leaves me panicking! One of the great things about living in Auckland is that you can live a rural lifestyle and still only be 45 mins from the city…
Downside: I tend to fall asleep watching early evening TV on the sofa with my daughter…
thnks
Morning person. I get up with the sun these days (I work from home exclusively now), check email, usual breakfast stuff and on deck for work by 8am. Downside – falling asleep in front of TV, as Dunken mentioned. My husband, on the other hand, is a night owl and always has been. He found it really hard to fit the normal 8:00-4:00 hours of teaching, and now he’s out of that game he gets up when his body tells him to – typically mid morning. He’s firing about the time I’m falling asleep on the sofa, and he goes to bed late – often well past 2:00am. If nothing else we get ‘me’ time each day, which is pretty essential when you’re with each other 24 hours a day.
I used to be a night owl myself but now have reversed that pattern and get most of my productive work done early in the morning.