I want to be more productive, I want to succeed, I want to win at stuff. If I wake up earlier, are these things more likely to happen? Gandhi would wake up at 4 am, Tim Cook would wake up at 3:45 AM, and even Napoleon would wake up at 4 am before eating his croissants! Maybe this waking up early thing is meant to make you taller? That’s totally not the main reason I am doing this… 5’10” is average! 

For 30 days, I decided to wake up at 4 AM, no matter what.

The Motivation (Day 0-3)

Here we go. I set my alarm from 4-4:30 AM (using the sleep cycle app), prepared my clothes for the next morning, and went to bed early.

Here we go. The first morning was ROUGH. Boy, was I underestimating this.  

Who wakes up at 4 am? It felt absolutely insane. I felt like I was about to go to the airport, or I was getting flashbacks to when I was on the swim team in high school, and it was just before morning practice. Jeeze, me in a speedo (or actually a Jammer) was not a pretty sight. 

Squinting, I looked out my window to pitch darkness and then back to my warm, warm bed. I love beds. Pretty pretty beds. Without realizing it, I took a step back towards it! No, Zach! Bad! My main problem before this experiment was that I really wanted to wake up early, but it was so hard. Especially when I don’t have a job or any commitments, it would be so easy just to sleep another hour or two, and this is only a 30-day experiment!

As I looked longingly at my bed, Marcus Aurelius saved me, “So you were born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants, the spiders, and the bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?” If ants can get to work, I must be able to! Ants don’t stand a chance against me!

I tried to remember my reasoning for doing this: what does nature demand of me? If I wake up an hour earlier, I get another hour of productive time. If I go to bed an hour later, I get another hour of TV or video games. My purpose here definitely isn’t to play TV and video games. I know it because afterward, I don’t feel energized or excited. I feel drained.

Many highly successful people attribute their success to the early mornings. To them, this time of silence and quiet allows them to focus on the things that are truly important to them:

• The Rock, who wakes up at 4 AM and immediately works out, calls this time his “anchor” for a successful morning. Working out consistently changed his life.
• Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel prize-winning neurologist who discovered neural growth factor (NGF), would wake up at 5 am and immediately get to work. Funnily, she was researching the brain and knew the brain was in tip-top shape shortly after waking so that’s when she knew she would do her best work.
• Maya Angelou found the best time to write in the morning,“Lift up your eyes upon this day breaking for you,” and she found that the best time to write was at 5 AM when it was quiet, and the world was still, and her poems changed the world.

Silence. Real silence. That sounds like something I needed. After 8 AM, distractions come fast and hard, whether it’s texts or emails from family members or work or people in the house waking up. 

But, before 6 AM, there are very few people awake. That “busy” work of emails and texts isn’t there to take me away from the “real” work; the work that I know has a much greater impact on my life. The stuff that I think is my “nature,” my purpose. Like trying this experiment! Or working out. Or recording YouTube videos. Or mentoring students.

The second most exciting thing about waking up early was the idea that this morning would set the tone for the rest of the day. Navy Seal Admiral McRaven, who oversaw the operation of Seal Team Six, attributes much of his success to waking up early and simply accomplishing something, even as simple as making his bed early in the morning, “If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another.”

However, before accomplishing tasks in the morning, I actually had to wake up…

The Struggle (Days 3-10)

Days 3-10 were bad. I was on the edge of giving up every single day and actually did on day 7. No matter the insane motivation. Marcus Aurelius wasn’t there to save me. I was so tired. The initial excitement faded. And I was worried that being tired was hurting what I was accomplishing during the day.

Also, it was hard to be a normal member of society. People usually sit down for dinner at 7. On this schedule, I ate at 5. People go out on the weekends and stay up until like 1 or 2 am. I wasn’t doing any of this because it would ruin my sleep schedule. It was only 30 days, but I felt a small pang of FOMO.

Around day 9, however, I read two books, the Miracle Morning and The 5 am Club. In it, they emphasized having a morning routine that jump-starts your day. Given my knowledge and research on circadian rhythms, I was dumbfounded that I hadn’t thought of simple things to make this easier for me sooner!

If I exercise in the morning, it will jump-start my cortisol release and wake me up, setting up an easier bedtime for me. If I expose myself to bright light to signal to the receptors in my retina that it’s “morning time,” my rhythm will shift earlier.

Also, instead of frontloading work, maybe it would be a good time for more “me” activities, like meditation, journaling, and reading. When I went directly to work, it felt like I was doing something hard, waking up early, only to get hit with more hard things, like writing. Journaling, meditation, and reading, however, make me feel good.

Day 10 I tried this new plan and added a tasty breakfast, a shower followed by nice clothes, and the reward at the start of my “work” day, around 5:30, with a coffee. 

This changed everything.

The Breakthrough

Day 11, 12, and 13, I still felt the sleepiness, but I knew my activities for the morning.

Then, on day 14, for the first time, I woke up feeling energized! Excited! I popped out of bed at 4:15, excited to get to my morning activities! I was doing great work in the morning, the ret of the day, and I simply felt good!

The next 16 days were smooth sailing!

I started to notice those insane benefits:

• More time: transplanting two hours at night from 8-10 pm to the morning, from 4-6 am (because I normally would wake up at six and go to bed at 10), created an extra 14 hours every week to do exciting things. Now, 1 hour was spent on this morning routine, but the other hour was some of the best work I had ever done. And, because I had set the tone for doing good work so early, I worked better as the day went on.
• Solitude: some days, as soon as 8 AM hit, life happened. Work emails flew in, family members needed help with something, or I had personal life maintenance things to attend to. When I woke up at 6 AM, it felt like I was rushing to finish things before I knew I had to prepare for normal life. When I woke up at 4 AM, though, I knew I had 4 hours. More than enough time to hit flow, do good work and get my normal daily things in order.
• Personal Toughness: During this trial, I started doing ice baths and hot saunas for longer than ever before. I was lifting heavier weights at the gym and began to trust myself more. I gained confidence in myself and my abilities.

Summary

4 AM might be a bit too early for me to hit normal sleep and be a part of society. I really like it, though. And do I even want to be a part of society? Sometimes I want to be a recluse and live with the squirrels. Or maybe I go on spurts of this for a month or two when I want to get good work done? But I know the importance of waking up and going to bed at the same time every day. Hmm. For now, I will make my wake-up range 4:30 am – 5:00 am instead of 4:00 am – 4:30 am.

But, overall, do you have to wake up this early to be successful? To create Twitter? To be a political leader? To write A Farewell to Arms? To win a Nobel prize? I don’t think so. I know many people who do much better work late at night. But, if you wake up earlier, will it help you accomplish more? Maybe. I don’t know. For me, it built mental toughness, gave me an extra 2 hours a day to do stuff, and gave me this amazing alone time in the morning to work on what matters to me. I’m going to keep doing it. 

The world is quiet in the morning. My phone doesn’t buzz. Which means my head doesn’t buzz. The only noise is the chirping of birds or the shuffling of squirrels. It’s just me, my thoughts, and the animals. There is space. The day ahead seems to be filled with infinite possibility and not with pings. I think I like a pingless world.