This past week, as I was traveling, I had two days when I woke up before sunrise.
The first day was so that I could visit the Angkor Wat before sunrise in order to watch the sun rise from behind the temple. It is one of the most beautiful sights. This viewing of the sunrise was followed by a breakfast and another eight hours of cycling through forests to visit other temples in the city. By 10am that day, I had got so much done already that it felt like it was six in the evening.
The second day was today, when my flight landed back in Dubai at around 4:30 in the morning. Again, it was still a while to sunrise when I had made it through immigration and customs and back home. Rather than go to sleep (as I had already slept for over six hours on the flight), I decided to get my day started. And yet again, by ten in the morning, I had gotten so much done that it felt like it was sometime in the evening.
I have come across people recommending waking up before the Sun to start the day as early as possible in order to get more done, and I had always reasoned with myself that sleeping early and waking up early is the same as sleeping late and waking up late as what matters is the total number of hours that we are awake.
However, my experience from these two days has been that we are much more inclined to make progress on important things when our day has not yet been weighed down by all the things that come our way.
I'm now going to do an experiment to see if I can have the same experience over a longer period of time or if that will become the new normal and I'll regress back to the mean. So, I plan to wake up at 5am for the rest of the month and spend the first three hours of my day on the most important tasks for the day, before moving on with the rest of my day.
The first day was so that I could visit the Angkor Wat before sunrise in order to watch the sun rise from behind the temple. It is one of the most beautiful sights. This viewing of the sunrise was followed by a breakfast and another eight hours of cycling through forests to visit other temples in the city. By 10am that day, I had got so much done already that it felt like it was six in the evening.
The second day was today, when my flight landed back in Dubai at around 4:30 in the morning. Again, it was still a while to sunrise when I had made it through immigration and customs and back home. Rather than go to sleep (as I had already slept for over six hours on the flight), I decided to get my day started. And yet again, by ten in the morning, I had gotten so much done that it felt like it was sometime in the evening.
I have come across people recommending waking up before the Sun to start the day as early as possible in order to get more done, and I had always reasoned with myself that sleeping early and waking up early is the same as sleeping late and waking up late as what matters is the total number of hours that we are awake.
However, my experience from these two days has been that we are much more inclined to make progress on important things when our day has not yet been weighed down by all the things that come our way.
I'm now going to do an experiment to see if I can have the same experience over a longer period of time or if that will become the new normal and I'll regress back to the mean. So, I plan to wake up at 5am for the rest of the month and spend the first three hours of my day on the most important tasks for the day, before moving on with the rest of my day.
CONVERSATION