Productivity Tip #2

I recently realized that I’m actually two very different people. I’m one person at night, and another when the alarm clock goes off. My night-self, let us call him Mr. Gogo, is tired, but his brain is functioning pretty well. My night self makes all kinds of plans for the next day. And then, my morning- self, Mr. Gozen, screws everything up. So, my second productivity tip is:

Tip #2 - Kill Mr. Gozen

I don’t mean to promote violence or anything, it’s just that Gozen is an asshole. He has only one thing on his mind - going back to sleep. That just plain sucks. I want to do things, and he ruins everything. So I’ve decided to terminate him.

For the past week, my alarm clock has been going off at the ungodly hour of 5:58 am. I get up and start looking for the damn clock, usually thinking of nothing else but going back to sleep. By the time I find it, I’m pretty much awake, and Gozen is dying. You see, much like the Wicked Witch of the West (WWW) melts in water, my morning self melts in wakefulness. And I must say that life is much better without him.

Every morning, I do the dishes while I finish waking up, ignoring the last feeble screams of Gozen, then stretch and exercise, drink something warm, and head off to the computer to work for an hour on one of my hobby projects (I promise to reveal what they are soon). Then I wake the wife with a kiss, and on I go to work. It’s great.

Now, most of you are probably worried that getting up in the morning will be bad because you’ll lose sleep. Well, nothing can be further from the truth. While I do sleep less, I don’t lose any sleep. If the left hand side of the equation is waking up early, than the right hand side must be to go to sleep early. Well, no, No, NO! That’s were the beauty of this whole habit is - my evening self has some ability for cognitive action. And when he gets tired, he says - off to sleep, because being tired after a long day means that that’s what you need to do. On the other hand, being tired after 6-8 hours of sleep means you are not thinking properly, Gozen has taken control.

The beauty of the system is that everything balances up. If you don’t get enough sleep, you’ll go to sleep earlier. But you will never oversleep anymore - you’ll get exactly the amount of sleep that your body needs.

I find I’m more productive in the morning, even though I work pretty well at 2-3 am as well. It’s just that I have plenty of peace and quite to do what I want.