Testing Your Optimal Awake State

I’m trying my best to not turn this into personal journal, since this really holds no value to anybody else who stumbles upon this, but the 6am wake-up I’m aiming for was easy today.

This was ironic in a way, because I went to bed with a somewhat negative and deflated feeling.

I left my actual journal downstairs and couldn’t even be bothered to write in it before bed, as I usually do. I feared I would just unleash more negativity, so I really just wanted to put the day to bed (kinda literally).

I guess when my alarm went off this morning, I was simply motivated to not repeat yesterday.

Of course, I can’t predict what will happen throughout the day, nor how I will feel, but I felt pretty certain that getting my day started early would set a good tone for the rest of the day.

So far, I’m feeling good about it.

I’m writing this post at 8:39am as I type these words, exactly one full hour earlier than yesterday! Makes sense, considering I woke up 1 hour later than I did today.

*Pats self on back*

OK, I promise to shift away from personal-journal mode now.

It has been said that we all have different times of the day where we are in our most focused, optimal state.

Some of us function better in the morning, some of us function better at night. This isn’t a new concept.

But how many of us actually know if we’re better morning people or evening people? It’s easy for one to say they’re not a morning person if they haven’t ever bothered getting out of bed before 7am.

And what the hell makes someone a “morning person” anyways?

I don’t think anyone likes being woken up from a deep slumber. Is enjoying this struggle the pre-requisite to being a morning person?

I would think that you can’t draw a conclusion about when you function at your best until you’ve been awake for at least an hour or two, and tried it more than one day.

In other words, we don’t give mornings a fair chance!

Evening people are presumably awake for many hours before they are doing their best work, morning people are not.

Evening people have likely worked more in the evening than they have in the morning.

So here’s what I think would be helpful in determining one’s optimal working hours:

  1. Spend two weeks working for 2 hours in the morning*
  2. Spend two weeks working for 2 hours in the evening

*give yourself at least an hour to wake up

Since most of us have day jobs, I’m not talking about the kind of work we do every day. I’m talking about “hustle” work. The work we squeeze in during the hours we are tempted to be doing something else (sleeping, netflix and chill, staring at our phones on the couch, etc.).

By giving each time of day its fair share, we can truly prove if we are indeed morning or evening persons.

I’ll do the same and report back.

 

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