What a week to get up at 6 o'clock with you do
This is one for the not-so-early birds and for the people who think: why on earth would you get up at six o'clock when you only start working at half past nine? I'm not really a late riser, but still, I wanted to know what getting up even earlier would do to me.
I got the idea in the evening. Around ten, the movie I started at eight was over, it was dark outside, I started to feel a bit dull and I filled my last hour of being awake with a talk show where I was annoyed by a specific guest. And suddenly I thought: why don't I just go to bed? Why am I keeping myself busy here when I could also sleep and get up earlier tomorrow? After ten in the evening, I hardly do anything, especially since the curfew, which is not the case in the morning. If I get up earlier, I get a thousand more things done. I saw that quite a few successful figures have this habit too. So I did it.
The first alarm on Monday at six, I would have liked to throw out the window. Who on earth gets up at six? My boyfriend mumbled that I was not quite right in the head while I rolled out of bed. I had made preparations, so my headphones were hanging on the handlebars of my bike and there was a nice bottle of water ready. So far, a feeling of really knowing what you're doing. I started with a half-hour meditation and then half an hour of cycling with a Rocycle playlist in my ears. Then showering with music, having breakfast, a cup of coffee, reading the newspaper, and then it was only a quarter to eight. Goodness. I could have done a thousand things before my workday officially started. Instead, I just started my workday by making a to-do list and typed out two whole articles before the rest came to life. Just for your imagination: sometimes it takes me a whole day to do this because a thousand and one things come up in between and I make a to-do list at the end of the day to see what I have done again. The reverse world, yes. On Monday afternoon, I was out of energy around four o'clock, but on Tuesday it went better and on Wednesday I was unstoppable.
I made a workweek of getting up at six full and I'm just going to keep it up for a while. It's not a must, because if I make it late, I allow myself to get up later, but so far I haven't made it late because I need to be home by nine. On the weekend, I sleep in until eight and sometimes even nine, which suddenly feels ridiculously late considering I normally get up at six. It's all pure time gain. This morning I even toyed with the idea of setting the alarm for five. Didn't do it though, it has to stay fun.
And this is why you also want to get up at six (or earlier) for a week:
1. Morning people eat healthier. Which sounds logical, because you have time to make breakfast. And if you start the day by eating healthily, you are more likely to maintain this. Say Finnish scientists, which sounds plausible.
2. What do you actually do in the evening after ten? Little. But if you get up earlier, you just start the day, which allows you to get more done.
3. You have time to develop healthy habits, like exercising and meditating. Time you always thought you didn't have.
4. By getting up early, you can work at times when others are not yet working, and therefore you are not disturbed. Which works extremely productively.
5. You start the day with a higher IQ. Research shows that your intelligence quotient drops by ten whole points by checking your email, scrolling through social media, and sending messages. So getting up early even makes you smarter.
Tomorrow morning, 06:00. Are you in?
Image: elisehoogerdijk
