The magic of 5 a.m.
A lot of people are concerned when they hear I wake up at 5 a.m. but it’s not really as dire as it might sound.
If you’ve spent any time on Medium (or YouTube for that matter), you’ve probably seen at least one article (if not two or five or ten) telling you about the benefits of waking up at 5 a.m. I can bet that the article you’ve read was written by a dude/bro. And they not only told you that you should wake up at 5 a.m., they might have even thrown in their pitch for intermittent fasting or for adding butter or ghee to your coffee. And if you’re extra lucky, you might have read an article that told you to wake up at 5 a.m., fast until lunch, add butter/ghee to your coffee, AND drink some post-workout protein concoction.
This is not one of those articles.
For some odd reason, people (co-workers mostly) seem very concerned when they hear that I wake up at 5. I can’t decide if they just don’t expect someone like me to wake up that early or if they’re genuinely concerned about my wellbeing and/or workload. Yes, I wake up at 5 a.m. but my 5 a.m. routine isn’t as structured or inspiring (miserable? joyless?) as the 5 a.m. routines of the bros.
So in case you want an alternative perspective on the 5 a.m. wake-up, here’s my take.
How it started
I didn’t always wake up at 5 a.m. … though I am naturally a morning person. Except for a period in college and grad school when I’d stay up pretty late into the morning working on “graphics” and websites (usually trying to figure out how to make something I saw elsewhere online work on my page) or attempt to finish a paper before class the next day, my body tends to wake-up early. I seem to get most of my energy in the mornings and do my best work then.
But I only started waking up at 5 a.m. about four years ago. I was in a new role at Google. It was my first “official” management role … on a new product team … all while trying to build a new research team from scratch. The amount of tasks and learning I needed to do seemed insurmountable. And while work was eating up a lot of my personal time, I still wanted time to workout in the mornings. I’m one of those people who if I don’t get a workout in first thing in the morning, the chances of me getting it done in the afternoon or evening is very, very low. And as a new manager, I was trying to come to terms with being on a manager schedule (attending lots of meetings with little heads-down time). There were days when I just couldn’t figure out any other way for me to take time for my health + wellbeing while still trying to squeeze in some heads-down time without waking up at 5 a.m. This was in 2018 — pre-pandemic Bay Area when meetings started at 10 am PST (I miss those days!) … so waking up at 5 a.m. meant I had five solid hours to take care of myself and get some non-meeting work done.
Why I’ve kept it going (and what do I do with all that time?)
The 5 a.m. wake-up initially started off as something I did once or twice a week when I felt especially overwhelmed. It eventually became a daily habit, even though I didn’t intend for it to be that way. I even continued to wake up at 5 a.m. during the pandemic when we were all working from home (I know!). It became a habit and not something I had to work too hard at (especially if I went to bed early). Have I woken up at 5 a.m. every single morning for the past four years? No. Some days my alarm goes off at 5 and I’ll sleep in because I’m tired. And on weekends/days off, I don’t set an alarm and just wake up naturally. For instance, I “slept in” till 8 a.m. this past Saturday but woke up naturally at 4:45 a.m. this morning (even though I had the day off).
And even though I don’t really need to wake up at 5 a.m. anymore, I still do it because it’s a habit that I love/crave … mostly because it just gives me so much freedom.
You might be wondering what I do with that extra time, it’s usually some combination of (in roughly this order):
- Feed and spend time with my cats. I bet you’ve never seen “petting cats” as part of a 5 a.m. routine breakdown, have you? It’s actually one of my favorite parts of waking up so early — getting to spend some time with my cats when they most crave human attention.
- Play Two Dots. This is part of my routine that I wish wasn’t part of my routine … although I like to think the puzzles are good for my brain. I should probably set a timer / time-block this part of my mornings.
- Listen to podcasts. I do this throughout the morning as I’m multi-tasking (except when I’m working out). I have a couple of news podcasts I listen to almost everyday but I’ll also listen to other podcasts (sometimes business/leadership/work related, sometimes just fun podcasts that relate to my interests outside of work). As an aside, I think it is critical for UX researchers to actually know what’s happening in the broader world. Not only should you know what’s happening in your product/domain/industry, you should understand the macro and micro geopolitical events taking place in the world (e.g. the news) and understand what’s happening in pop culture (e.g. trends).
- Test myself with Cue. I do this almost every morning that I’m heading to the office, think I’m going to see people that day, after returning from travel / seeing people whom I’ve deemed not as Covid compliant as me, and/or when my allergies/asthma are acting up and I’m trying to figure if I’m going to die or if I just need to use my inhaler(s) more.
- Check my work email / chat / calendar. I sometimes get sucked into work tasks / email / chat for a lot longer than I intend to — sometimes it’s productive and a good use of time. Sometimes, I’m not so sure. Again, this is another thing that I probably should time-block.
- Workout. My ideal workout is an hour of Peloton and/or a combination of a short run and Peloton strength classes, followed by 5–10 minutes of stretching. One thing that habit formation/fitness folks seem to omit when they tell you that you have 24 hours in a day so of course you can make time to workout … is the actual time it takes to get ready to workout. My hour workout is really at least 90 minutes of time (get ready, eat a snack, get on the Peloton, workout, get off the Peloton, stretch, track the workout in my journal). And that’s not counting the time it takes when something goes wrong — like this morning when my Bluetooth headphones wouldn’t connect to the Peloton. So, if you feel like you don’t have time to workout, I’m here to validate you — yes, it does take a lot longer to get it done than the actual time to workout. I wish every morning included a workout, some mornings I get sucked into work and skip the workout. I’m aiming to do better with what’s left of 2022.
- Make and eat breakfast. I really love this part of my ritual. There’s something really decadent, indulgent, and relaxing about having time to make my own breakfast after I’ve worked out.
- Journal in my Self Journal. As I’m eating my breakfast, I’ll also plan out my day and reflect in my Self Journal. I’ve been using Self Journals for at least 5–6 years now. I like the daily gratitude practice, along with habit tracking.
- Think and stare out the window. I suppose this is kind of meditative but I do spend a lot of time (usually when I’m eating breakfast or drinking my tea) just staring out my front window. It’s nice to have a chance to watch the world go by, watch my neighborhood wake up, and/or watch the sun rise. I’m an introvert and crave time to think by myself — this is my one time in the day when I’m guaranteed that opportunity.
There was a time when my 5 a.m. mornings also included meditating. I’ve sadly grown out of the habit but I’m hoping to insert it back into my morning ritual. I tend to have a very active/busy mind so while meditating can be hard for me, I do find that it gets easier the more often I do it (and I always feel more at peace and ready to take on the day).
The downsides of waking up at 5
There are a few downsides to waking up at 5:
- I get pretty tired in the afternoons (usually around 3 p.m.). But then I usually have a second wind of energy around 6 or 7 p.m. I’m not really sure why I get a second wind of energy but I do.
- If I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep for an hour or two, then my day is pretty wrecked (and then I’m too tired to workout in the morning). There isn’t a lot of wiggle room with sleep when you wake up at 5.
- I’m usually asleep around 9 p.m. I don’t drink and don’t have a lifestyle where I’m out and about late into the night so this isn’t a big deal for me most days. But if I happen to go out to dinner or have a work event where I’m out till 10 or 11 p.m. … it kind of ruins my next morning because regardless of what time I set my alarm, my body will most likely still wake up around 5 a.m. (even if I didn’t get enough sleep).
Should you wake-up at 5?
A few weeks ago, I was doing pre-interviews with research participants we were going to visit in-person in Helsinki. Our first calls were at 7 a.m. PST so on those days, I woke up at 4:30 a.m. just so I could have time for a workout. For about a split second, I started wondering if I should push back my wakeup time to 4:30 a.m. you know because I felt like such a badass having completed my workout every morning before 7 a.m. But honestly, those days were pretty miserable. I was dead tired in the afternoon (way more than I am when I wake-up at 5 a.m.). And I felt like I needed to get to bed by 7 p.m. every night (I did not). So as soon as those interviews were over, I went back to my 5 a.m. wakeup time and cherished the extra 30 minutes of sleep I got.
So should you wake-up at 5?
I don’t know … are you a morning person? If so, then maybe you can try waking up at 5 a.m. and see if you like it? If you’re not a morning person, don’t wake up at 5! There’s no need to torture yourself just to impress somebody or fulfill some odd need to be productive all the time (I blame Americans’ adherence to the protestant work ethic).
But if you do decide to wake-up at 5, don’t feel like you need to fill all that time with productivity.
It’s OK to be playful … and it’s OK to stare out the window and watch the world go by, too.
