Getting up early

I’ve never been one of those people who get up early. My body clock has gradually shifted around over the years, depending on my work schedule, but rarely has it had me getting up before 9am. At times, I would be waking up around 11am to midday every day.

But lately, I find that I’m much more alert and productive in the mornings. If I arrive a work later than everyone else, I find it hard to get work done because there are lots of interruptions. I’m also finding it very hard to work in the late afternoons as my office gets a lot of late afternoon sun and really heats up. All I feel like doing is sleeping.

It seems like the best course of action would be to get up earlier and go to work earlier, so that I can get some good productive time in before lots of other people arrive. These thoughs have been buzzing around in my brain for the past couple of weeks, but I was still getting up around 8:30am.

This week, I am changing that. LifeHack has a 5-day early riser challenge, starting today. I’ve committed to getting up by 7am every day this week. I was tempted to aim for 6am, but with only two weeks to go before daylight savings ends, it’s pitch black at 6am and I’ve always hated getting up in the dark. Sunrise is only at 7:30am at the moment, so half an hour before sunrise is the best I can do.

Today was the first day of the challenge, and I really didn’t want to wake up when the alarm first went off at 6:30am. My morning routine is to lie in bed for about half an hour before I actually get up, checking my email, twitter & yammer feeds, google reader, and just thinking about the things I have to do that day. I managed to (groggily) do all that, and jumped out of bed at 7:02am.

Now, all I have to do is keep it up for just another 4 days.