Early Rising For Increased Productivity
By Sam Stieler
One of the best secrets of being ultra-productive is working at times when you won't face any other distractions. Often, this means doing your work when there is literally nothing else to do, and no one else around or awake to disturb you. For some people, this means being an ultra-night owl. These people like to go through their whole day and then start working some time around 10 or 11pm during the week. It's not uncommon for these people to start at midnight and work productively until four in the morning. If you work this way and you get a ton during these hours, than obviously you should stick with it. If not, if you have a hard way finding a good time during the day to work, it's worth it to think about doing your work first thing in the morning. And not when you drag yourself out of the bed around eight or nine in the morning, I mean specifically waking up around 5am to get your work done before the rest of the world wakes up.
Overall I find mornings a lot better for getting work done for a couple of reasons. There are a lot of similarities between working super late and super early. For example, both are times when not a lot of other people are awake so they tend to be a lot quieter and calmer, with fewer distractions. However, if you sit down to do your work late at night you're contending with the fact that you've already gone through your entire day and are looking to radically shift gears. This works for some people, but I generally find that I am extremely tired by the end of the day, even if I haven't gotten much done. When ten, eleven or midnight comes along, the last thing on my mind is work. While you can naturally hit a second wind late at night, I find that night-owls tend to result to stimulants to stay awake and productive during those hours. I don't mean that night owls start taking amphetamines, but it's not uncommon for those people to resort to large quantities of energy drinks, coffee or herbal teas like Yerba Matte. While some people are fine with these, I generally prefer working without stimulation.
I also find it much harder to build new habits late at night, something you generally need to do if you want to make a productivity leap. When it comes down to it, people really have a pretty small reserve of will power, which is required for creating new habits and breaking old lazy habits. This will power tends to be strongest first thing in the morning. After a whole day of people, emails, text messages, mini fires, and other faux emergencies, it's unlikely that you're going to have much mental and emotional strength left at the end of the day to push forward through your habits and objections to get work done that you weren't getting done before.
By waking up early you get the best of both worlds. You ensure that you are working when there are a minimum of distractions, and you ensure that you have a full tank of motivation and will-power to direct towards building new productive habits. Try it out, and you'll find the combination unbeatable.
About the Author:
Sam has been writing articles for over 4 years. Come read some of his most recent articles, including one on buying shoe shine kits and another about red shoe polish. |