Last month I attempted to start waking up at 3 in the morning every day. Two days later I decided 5am was more reasonable, and I have stuck with this routine for a month now (less a day or two). The results have been great and I am quite happy to keep going indefinitely. I’m writing this update to give some insight into my experiences with waking up early so that you can decide if it’s worth a shot.

Absolute #1 Advantage: Work is Getting Done!

By far the largest advantage of switching to this schedule has been the increased productivity. I gain more hours each day to get my absolute best and most creative work done when my energy is at its highest. This has resulted in tremendous work gains, and as an extra surprise it has made it possible to focus on dull commitments later in the day due to having already used up my “excess” energy.

#2 Advantage: Breakfast is a Reality

Waking up at 5 I rarely feel rushed, and I always find time to eat a good breakfast. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” is something I believe firmly now, instead of just accepting the fact but not reacting on it. The energy boost I gain allows me to work longer than before and I can actually feel more energetic. I still drink more coffee than I should, but now I do so mostly for the enjoyment and habit than for actually being tired. This means lowering my caffiene intake might be a goal for the future!

#3 Advantage: No Appointment is Too Early!

The idea of having to be somewhere at 8 or even earlier used to fill me with dread at spending the entire day groggy and tired. Now few sane people are up before me, so I have gained a great deal of flexiblity in my business schedule. Being able to meet with a client at 8 in the morning and know I’m prepared and at my highest energy is a great feeling.

Are Late Nights Out Possible?

Measuring the impact of a late night on the schedule proved to be difficult. I wake-up hours before any conceivable appointment, so sleeping in a few hours isn’t difficult. Considering the high productivity cost that sleep deprivation has, it’s very easy to justify doing this. The next night is trickier since I have to go to bed at my regular 9-9:30pm time and hope I fall asleep quickly. Having a physically tiring day is awesome for allowing this, and as always caffiene shouldn’t be drunk too late in the day.

Things get problematic if I stay up until 2 in the morning or longer. At this point I can either sleep in and re-adapt to the 5am routine over two days, or I can force myself to wake up at a semi-reasonable hour and accept that I won’t get much done that day. The former is preferable since less waking time is lost to being ineffective.

What About Sleeping In an Hour?

Regardless of wake-up time, anytime you sleep in you run the risks of making it tougher to wake-up at your normal time - unless you have a busy day and are physically exhausted enough to go to bed at the usual time. I have found this to be no different physically for 5am wake-ups, but it is very challenging mentally. Before all this started, I would never voluntarily wake-up before I felt ready too, so the only way I could miss out on sleep was an early morning appointment. Now I’m in a position of choosing to force myself out of bed. This is something that I will do if I have gotten close to at least 7 hours of sleep, since trying to fall asleep at my usual time is more trouble than its worth if I sleep in.

How Hard Was It to Pull Off?

The short answer is: not very. The second day wasn’t pleasant, but otherwise all it took was wanting to do this badly enough to force myself (a night owl) out of bed at 5. The rewards in return are great and well worth putting yourself through a bit of a challenge at the start.

One reader suggested taking a nap in the day in order to be able to pull a later night without ruining the schedule. This is something that I will need to experiment with as well.

A comment from helpful reader Siddiq on my Barriers to Entrepreneurship post points out Effectuation - a very interesting site studying entrepreneurship. And on that interesting site is an interesting article titled “What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial?“.

The article aims to analyze the thought process of the entrepreneur and distinguish this unique breed from a regular manager. It is based around the concept of “Effectual Reasoning” which is defined to be the inverse of “Casual Reasoning”. The main distinguishing factor is that instead of the casusal reasoning approach of “thinking of the best way to solve a problem given a set of means”, effectual reasoning “thinks of goals that can be acheived given a set of means”.

“All entrepreneurs begin with three categories of means: (1) Who they are – their traits, tastes and abilities; (2) What they know – their education, training, expertise, and experience; and, (3) Whom they know – their social and professional networks. Using these means, the entrepreneurs begin to imagine and implement possible effects that can be created with them. Most often, they start very small with the means that are closest at hand, and move almost directly into action without elaborate planning.” Saras D. Sarasvathy, University of Washington

I can identify with this personally, and the stories of other entrepreneurs come to mind too when I read this description. In my case I began with my programming abilities which I started developing as a hobby back in the 7th grade. This coding obsession placed me at first in the software industry with CustomBar, but as time went on I found greater successes in applying the solid software development principles I had learned and practiced to web programming. As I went through successful and unsuccessful ventures, I learned the value of utilizing my social network (Tilted Pixel’s customers are almost all referals), the importance of experimentation (”ready, fire, aim”), and found myself applying everything I had learned in my previous experiences for greater and greater success.

The article highlights some other very interesting points:

• Rather than formal market research, entrepreneurs are far more likely to just Do It - selling the product/idea on a small scale, analyzing the results, and then figuring out what works. I find this principle of “ready, fire, aim” highly effective and it has been preached to me multiple times by successful entrepreneurs.
• The building of strategic partnerships at the onset is important for obtaining support, commitment, and entering the market with little capital.
• Far from being unexpected, surprises are an integral part of the landscape. Successful entrepreneurs leverage these surprises rather than attempting to avoid them.
• Predictable markets can be a bad things for entrepreneurs, as someone else can always predict them better.
• Effectual reasoning enables failures to occur sooner and for the costs to be spread-out in a way that avoids devastation (see strategic partnerships). This is illustrated in the article with the story of U-Haul.

The full 9 page article is available in PDF and perfect for taking along to read on a subway or coffee break.

I am happy to say that after a day of designing, tweaking, and BBQing sausages, this blog no longer uses the default WordPress installation theme. This means that my Say No to Website Templates article is sadly no longer so ironic. Feel free to comment about what you like/dislike and of course any bugs that may have creeped in!

Thanks to a crazy influx of visitors from several social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit, traffic has surged this month. This is nice because it means that readers are finding the material useful, and it shows strong potential for this blog to be sustainable in the long-run (defined as directly and indirectly generating sufficient income to offset the opportunity cost of the 14 hours a week it takes to upkeep).