Photo by The dancing kids

I have always thought that I am NOT a morning person. Just 4 months ago, I was still used to waking up at around noon time on weekends and find it a challenge waking up on time for work on weekdays. The idea of people getting up at 5am was really ridiculous to me. To me, staying up late till 12 am, sometimes 1am, is not uncommon. In fact, I considered myself more effective and alert to work from 11 pm onwards when there’s little disturbance. To people around me, I am a night person, not a morning person.

In general, such labeling and lifestyle wasn’t much of an issue for me; and I never really considered the notion of ‘converting’ to a morning person.

Coincidently, 4 months ago, I came across Steve Pavlina’s article on How to Become An Early Riser. Intrigued, but not expecting too much out of it, I decided to try it out.

Amazingly, it’s been 4 months since I tried out Steve’s tips and I never really got back to my night person lifestyle. Nowadays, I go around professing to be a morning person. Well, I must admit I have been ‘converted’.

Even though it’s just 4 short months, the differences this change in lifestyle has made are subtle yet amazing. I can already see tangible results and positive differences this has done for my life. It’s great just imagining how these results will further benefit me once compounded over time.

As such, with this intention in mind, I like to share these benefits for your consideration.

BENEFIT #1 - HAVE MORE TIME

You want more time? Be an early riser!

We all have 24 hours a day, and there’s no way we’re going to cheat Mother Nature on this. What I’m talking about here is having more effective time, to do the things that you’ve always wanted to do, but never seem to get the time to do. In this regard, one way to have more time is to sleep more effectively (or less).

Before I became an early riser, I was sleeping an average of 8 to 12 hours a day. I really maxed the 12 hours sleep duration especially on weekends and when I stayed up late into night. My mentality was that if I slept late, then sleeping in the next day will help me to recover the rest that I’d lost.

The consequence is that I usually wake up between 11 am and noon on weekends. By then almost half the weekend’s day was already gone. I didn’t really noticed any significance back then, but on hindsight, it was really a lot of time lost and wasted because I had the wrong mentality about good sleeping habits.

Nowadays, by 11 am on a weekend, I would have done my morning jog, ate breakfast with my wife, read the papers, lazed a bit, read my books, played some games and still have a good half day ahead of me. It’s an amazing feeling like I have already covered a lot and yet there’s still a quite a bit of time ahead to do other things that I want to do.

Other than the perceived increased in time because I start the day earlier, there is actually real tangible increase in usable time. Now, I only need to do a good 7 hours of sleep to be effective the next day. Compared to an 8 to 12 hours of sleep, which is an additional 1 to 5 hours of sleep per day. On the average, I have additional 16 to 20 hours in a week because I’m not sleeping in. That’s almost one full day recovered by not sleeping in!

Compound that into a year and that’s an average of 972 hours or 40.5 days recovered because I am sleeping more effectively! Even I am amazed as I am writing this.

Well, there is certainly a limit to how much time we can save from sleep. Follow me to benefit 2 below for more explanation.

BENEFIT #2 - MENTAL ALERTNESS AND SENSE OF WELL-BEING

Talking about well-being, I have to make a disclaimer about number of sleep hours that we need; we cannot cheap Nature’s Law in this regards.

When I first started on this sleep routine, I was over ambitious and ended up with only 5 to 6 hours of sleep on most days. Understandably, after a week, I was struggling to stay focus and awake everyday. I was downing coffee like drinking water. After two weeks, I realized that something was amiss. I was really losing focus and getting irritated easily.

My wife did a little research on the Internet, which pointed out that getting less than 6 hours of sleep daily for 2 weeks is equal to effects of sleep deprivation for 48hours. I was shocked! Without realizing it, I was suffering from sleep deprivation.

Another research indicated 7 hours as the optimal number of hours of sleep, which is what I quickly adjusted to and till date, is still doing now. True enough, my experiences for the last couple of weeks confirms that about 7 hours of sleep does result in optimal performance the next day.

Effective sleeping results in a sense of well-being and mental focus during the day. The benefit is that I am more effective and concentrate better at work. I get things done in less time simply because of better concentration level. I feel happier at work, and some people are already commenting on my positive change in personality.

When I tended to sleep in, it’s usual to feel lethargy and tired on days when I sleep in too much. I thought that sleeping more to recover some rest may help me feel better the next day; yet ironically, sleeping too much actually did more harm than good.

As much as I like to sleep less or more, there is Nature’s balance that we must respect and adhere to.

I don’t know how many hours of sleep will be optimal for you, but I believe it will vary from person to person. Maybe you can do with lesser hours of sleep; try it out, and keep track of your daily mental state and performances for a couple of weeks to decide. Once decided, stick with it.

BENEFIT #3 - EASIER TO EXERCISE AND KEEP FIT

I have always been a firmed believer in the benefits of keeping fit physically; and for the past 7 years, I make deliberate efforts to exercise at least 5 times a week.

Before I became an early riser, I used to exercise at the gym or go for a jog in the evening after work. However, working out in the evening has three inherent challenges, which results in me missing some of my scheduled workouts. As such, it is common for me to be exercising on average, only 3 times a week, instead of my intended 5 times a week.

Firstly, due to urgency at work, sometimes I need to work overtime at the last minute’s notice. That already takes away my opportunity to workout in the evening.

Secondly, on days that I don’t have to work overtime, I may be very tired by the end of the day that I just don’t feel like going for a workout. Even if I managed to drag myself to the gym, the quality of the workout is usually not that great. Inherently, the schedule of working out in the evening already implies an uphill battle for me in my effort to keep fit.

Lastly, I try to make it a point to have dinner with my wife everyday, which is a good opportunity to catch up and chat about the day. However, if there is the time pressure to finish off the dinner quickly to go to the gym, then the quality of the conversation sometimes suffers.

Nowadays, exercising is the first thing we do upon waking up. We either go for a morning run, or the gym for weights training twice a week. With this routine, it’s natural and easy to hit the objective of exercising 5 times a week; in fact, I can exercise all 7 days a week if I want to, but I just allow myself some slack to rest my body on 2 days.

BENEFIT #4 - SLOWER PACE OF LIFE

This benefit is really subtle and took me a while to realize. You can say it’s also a side-benefit of having more time (benefit #1).

Starting early means that I get important things like exercising done first, and having more free time in the day for other things; when others may be just starting their day.

Getting things done early and having more time allows me to slow down my pace of life. Slowing down really brings about a very subtle yet powerful change in my perception about things and people around me. I’m starting to see things that I would usually miss; the finer things in life, quality conversation with people. In general, I find myself a happier person.

Nowadays, I have breakfast and dinner with my wife everyday, and we have better mealtime conversations as there is less time pressure to move on to the next activity. Compared to previously, there’s this constant time pressure to just finish the breakfast to go to work, or the dinner to go to the gym. I think words alone cannot fully express the quantum leap this simple change does for our relationship.

I have more time for myself, to reflect, to meditate, to write. It’s important that we have time with ourselves, but it’s hard when you’re constantly struggling to finish your to-dos and your mind is just not relaxed. A slower pace of life allows me to be in touch with my spiritual being and gaining an inner peace, which ironically makes me more effective and get things done more quickly.

BENEFIT #5 - BETTER QUALITY OF SLEEP

I used to be suffering from insomnia, and was under medication with sleeping pills.

Part of the reason could be because I’m was constantly working late into the night, and bringing thoughts about my work into bed. As such, my ability to fall asleep easily was disrupted. Naturally, I resorted to sleeping pills as the remedy; but sleeping pills usually meant a poorer quality of sleep and my performance the following day suffers.

With Steve’s advice, I kept to waking up at the same time each time, no matter I was feeling refreshed or not. In the first few weeks, it was indeed a struggle, as I was really tired during the day.

However, after some time, your body just sort of tuned itself into the rhythm, and you will naturally know when it’s the time to sleep.

For me, it took me about 2 weeks to fully get into the rhythm; nowadays, my bio-clock starts kicking in at about 1030pm every night. I’ll totally bong-out within 10 minutes of getting into bed and I wake up feeling refreshed at 0530am, after a good 7 hours of sleep.

My insomnia problem is cured without medication or therapy.

GOOD SLEEPING HABITS TO SUCCESS

After my first hand experience on the benefits of being an early riser, I cannot emphasis enough the importance of it.

Even within this short duration of 4 months, I can already see the profound positive impact it has on my life. The changes to my perceptions, the quality of relationship I have with my wife, my physical fitness, and productivity all adds up and influence each other due to this simple change in lifestyle. Writing this article allows me to look back and clearly see the difference in the ‘before’ and ‘after’ states; using the word ‘amazing’ to describe the differences will not be an overstatement.

I can already foresee the compounding impact it’s going to bring me in 1, 5 and 10 years down the road. The amount of increased productivity is hugely underestimated and overlooked by most people. It’s like a great catalyst and booster to a successful life!

My friend, check out Steve’s article, try it out and share your experiences with me. I like to hear from more different perspective on your experiences. You can find the article here, How to Become An Early Riser

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