The idea that waking up at 5:00 AM makes you more successful is nonsense

Yes hi, it was me who just wrote about the 5 AM club. All people who wake up while the world is still sleeping, thus effectively have incredibly empty hours ahead of them in which they tackle mountains of work, shake out a six-pack, and have written seven handwritten cards. Waking up early seems to be what successful people have in common. Anna Wintour, Michelle Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey… For all of them, the snooze button is non-existent.

I tried it, but it wasn't meant for me. Firstly, I have a dearly beloved who, due to his work, doesn't sleep before one o'clock at night, which minimizes our hours side by side to a meager four hours, and I also wake him up with my prestigious morning project.

I didn't need much to label my new life as ‘not successful’, so god, how happy was I when I read that the gospel of the 5 AM-ers is also a bit nonsense.

If it works for you, it works for you. And you have people who thrive very well with a morning routine, just as you have night owls. According to sleep expert Neil Stanley, 25% of us are morning people, 25% are night owls, and 50% of us are the ‘ordinary’ type. That group prefers to wake up around 8:00 AM. Twentysomethings preferably at 8:47 and thirty-somethings at 8:19. That is genetically determined.

You can do violence to your sleep system by waking up with the help of alarms and bells and wet washcloths, but the chance is high that your body is awake but your mind is still very far away. So whether that improves your productivity is questionable.

So of course there are many successful people who have already put in half a workday by 8:00 AM, but there are of course just as many successful types who simply turn over again at half past seven.

Like Noah from The Affair, who tried to attribute his promiscuous behavior to his genius. Because all great artists had multiple women, for them one simply wasn't enough. ‘Oh yes, and how do you explain the baker who cheats? And that man on the forklift?’ his psychiatrist had asked him. Because cheating, that occurred in all layers or was that an exclusivity that only the great minds tasted?

It's about the same with being successful. That's something that multiple people achieve. One by waking up early, the other by staying up late. You just have to choose what suits you best.