Early Riser

I was planning to write a blog post about getting up early in the near future, but Johnny Decimal went and beat me to it, so that spurred me to write it sooner.

For the last four months or so we’ve made a point of waking up at 5am. Prior to that I’d found myself getting up later and later. Some days I was essentially going straight from bed to desk (by way of the shower), having breakfast as I read through morning emails. It wasn’t good or sustainable. The drift started during the lockdown phase of the pandemic; initially I’d kept to my 6:10am “going to the office” routine, but eventually it started to give way to the stress of the situation. 5 minutes here, 20 there… before I knew it I effectively had no alarm or routine.

I can’t remember what spurred the idea to enforce this new 5am alarm. We did it for a week last year, as my partner wanted to film a video for her YouTube channel, but it didn’t become a habit. I think I remembered us both feeling good about it at the time and thought it might be an antidote to how rubbish I was feeling about my current lack of routine. I once joked with my partner that my 2 underlying motivators are smugness and spite - and getting up early feels like it falls into the former.

So here we are, after the dust has had a chance to settle. How has it been? Honestly, pretty good. Some mornings are a struggle still, and a couple of times I’ve slapped my alarm off at 5am, then looked at my watch a moment later and it’s 6:30… but getting out of bed at 5 is not a hard and fast rule (yet?). The goal is to have more time before work, and I’m still achieving that.

So what do I do with this “extra” time? Mostly it’s a mental health “firebreak”; dedicated time before work to de-stress and otherwise get into a good place mentally. Unlike Johnny, I don’t start work any earlier. I’ve done the “start hours before the rest of the team thing so I can get work done” thing in the past, and it worked wonderfully when I was in an office, but I found it hasn’t worked so well when working from home. Your mileage may vary, of course. If I do want to do anything productive, I catch up on things like laundry, dishes, or other household tasks I’ve invariably been putting off. Lately I’ve even taken to playing 45-60 minutes of World of Warcraft (Pandaria Remix) before work. Not so much a “productive” thing but it’s meant I’m starting the work day in a good mood. Dragon Riding around Jade Forest is such a great way to unwind.