Gyms are closed. Restaurants/bars are closed. Almost everyone I know is working remotely, due to their physical office being closed. This may not be the norm for the foreseeable future, but it’s what we’ve got to deal with for now.

Despite all the chaos, one thing has stayed consistent for me: sleep. My bed hasn’t moved, and while my energy levels fluctuate, the activity (or inactivity) of sleeping stays the same. So building off my last article on my COVID lifestyle, I’m going to explain how I’ve changed my routine around sleep to be happier and more productive. Tl;dr:

I’m getting up earlier (6am). I think it’s a good thing to do.
Exercise, increased productivity, and more down-time are the benefits.
How to do it? Watch this video — get up at the same time, phone away from bed, water.

Get up earlier.

“I’m a night owl” is what I used to tell my parents in high school when I’d sleep around 1am or 2am. “You can’t change your internal clock” is what I told myself throughout college when waking up at 11am was acceptable if I didn’t have class, so long as I was productive between the hours of 11pm and 3am to make up for it.

Now, I wholeheartedly disagree with both of those statements. I haven’t read up on it, but my assumption is that millions of years of operating on ‘sun = waking hours, night = sleeping hours’ system had a dent in how humans operate, biologically. You can argue that you’re nocturnal, but I’m going to expect you to prove that you have both heightened hearing and smell.

This all comes back to routine. I’ve come to accept that waking up with the sun (6am) and going to sleep at a reasonable hour (for me, 10pm) has a great impact on routine. Some reasons why:

Exercise. Running improves quality of sleep and can boost performance. Midday fatigue is a problem. Coffee can be the solution.
‘Flow state’. My routine prior to this was waking up around 8am, breakfast, and then starting work around 9am. It takes an hour to get into a ‘flow’, and then I have maybe 1.5 hours until I’m thinking about lunch. By getting up earlier, I can be into work by 730am and get a solid 3 hours of work done before being interrupted by lunch. Not to mention, co-workers are likely offline for the first 1.5 hours, so I can get proper work done.
Ending earlier. In my old routine, I would get anxiety around 6pm. This is because everyone is starting to shift to dinner/evening mode, but I still had a ton of things to do. This puts me in a difficult scenario: I have to make tradeoffs between my social life / relaxation so I can feel more accomplished. Waking up earlier combats this; by 6pm, I’ve already been working for 10-11 hours, so I can feel more at ease to take a break.

Okay fine. So how do I start?

This YouTube video was incredibly helpful. I read it somewhere (Nat Eliason’s blog, I think) and the results were immediate. Main points:

Have your phone away from your bed, so you need to leave your bed to stop your alarm.
Leave a full glass of water beside it, and drink it when you get up.
Close all blinds in your room (blackout if possible).
KEY: Get up at the same time everyday, i.e. 6am. Go to sleep when you’re tired. Eventually, your body will adjust to the new routine.
KEY: Have a motivator to get up. I.e. for me, it’s to get a run in before the day starts. Have an accountability buddy!

What about weekends?

I haven’t followed my own advice, as I got up around 10am / 11am yesterday and today (Sunday). There are consequences to that. I have similar anxiety on weekends because I’m being ‘unproductive’, so I try to sporadically add work periods to get ahead.

This is hard when I get up at 11am. Factor in brunch, and it’s probably 12pm before my day gets started. I’m lethargic, and don’t have a clear plan for what I’m going to do. I soon get bored and procrastinate, which leaves me feeling even more unproductive. Case and point? It’s 6:41pm on a Sunday and I’m writing this post instead of doing work.

However, if I got up at 6am, that wouldn’t be the case. I don’t think weekends should be treated like the weekday; do work if you feel like it, do something else if you don’t. So for me, maybe that’s working from 7-10am and then going on a hike. Maybe I do another hour before dinner (5-6pm), and I’m still in bed by 10pm. I’d imagine I’d feel more rested, plus my routine doesn’t change for Monday.

Cool. Now what?

Send me a message on whether you’re going to try this, if you’re already doing this, and/or if you have a strong dislike for this article. I’ll aim to update this post in a few weeks with my results.