My First Post on IH is About Waking Up @ 5 AM 🤷🏽♂️
Nearly a month ago I began a mental reset. This reset put me in position to be more creative and have not only more ideas but better ideas. I used to be annoyed by the internet advice to start your day early to become successful but I now understand the reasoning.
For the last 3 and a half weeks I wake up at 5 am (or earlier), head to my office down the hall (so that I do not wake the wife and baby) and get dressed for the gym. I then grab some coffee and head out the door. On the way to the gym I listen to an audiobook or the Indie Hackers podcast to feed my mind and when I arrive to the gym I continue listening until I have walked a mile and a half. Once I am done, I switch over to music and do about 30 minutes of resistance/weight training. When my workout is done, I get in the sauna and read a book about building a tech business for about 10-15 minutes. I head home and have about 30 minutes before my work day to shower and get ready to logon.
While I don't usually get time to work on my side project during the hours of 5-8 am, keeping this routine has provided the proper space to breed creativity and motivation. Without this built into my day, I would not have the discipline to work on my product from 9 pm - 12 am once the baby is sleep. Initially I thought I would be incredibly tired from this routine but it has been the exact opposite, I am energized and ready to conquer each day.
What? You wake up at 5AM and go to sleep at 12AM?
Yeah my days are a bit long at the moment. I have 4 non negotiable tasks to do a day at the moment and these all fill the day completely. Workout/Read 5-8 am, Day Job 8 am-5pm, Family Time ~5-9 pm, Side Project ~ 9 pm -12 am. It is a sacrifice I am willing to make in order to buy some of my time back at some point. As I get more efficient in my routine maybe i will find ways to get to sleep by 11.
BTW, Appshine looks super dope! Once i am complete developing my product I will definitely consider the service. $500 for a product makeover is definitely worth it.
Welcome to the 5am Club!!
Right now is grind time. This is all for delayed gratification. Keep up the great ethic!
Great post. As a new dad, I needed this insights. My schedule isn’t as straightforward since I work professionally based on another time zone. I hope to implement more structure to feel better about my day.
Awesome! My advice is to try and start small and slowly start to work your way up. For instance before this schedule i had a habit of walking everyday after work. I wanted to do more but just that little time to myself everyday was energizing
great post!
Thank you!
I hate waking up early especially with kids, but when i do that early it just feels like there is a calmness.. Mostly because nobody is up that early yet so feels like the world and everything in it is on pause at least until 7am.
Exactly i find myself hating when the sun comes out because it means the most peaceful part of the day is over
How do you get over a deep energy around 7PM? 😅 I tried this too and I shifted to wake up at 7:15AM, do same routine as you described above. I would then finish working at around 5/6PM & finish some of the things from 9-11PM. For me having less that 8 hours of sleep long term drains energy & I will need some recovery days with 10h sleep…
😅 super accurate. I do have one cheat code, my son is only 10 months old so I am fresh off sleepless nights where i was lucky to get 4-5 hours of sleep so my body has adapted to that anyway. Also typically because weekends are a little less draining due to not having the work (8-5pm) portion of the day I can spend more time with family or working on the project and just relax mentally a bit. Those days are refreshers for me and help a ton with combating against mental and physical drain. But yeah the afternoons after work can be a bit rough lol, so long as the weather is good, I’ve found that a 20-30 minute walk with the baby around the neighborhood really boosts my energy late in the afternoon.
New Goal Added!
Awesome! Rooting for you!
I always feel better if I wake up early but unlikely it's not possible often. The reason is that my husband is IT guy, he works at nights all his life and wakes up at 12 am. If I will wake up at 8 am - I should go sleep at 11 pm approximately. But in this mode we are not in touch with him even for drinking tea together. Now we can see the movie till 1-2 am
I can totally relate! I used to work overnights and weekends with oncall and it really made having a normal schedule difficult. Family would often modify their schedules to be able to hang out with me
Try to increase the sleep hour brother. This will make you weaker you slowly.
I also wake up at 5 but I go to bed at 11pm.
And I also meditate for 2 hours a day which is equivalent to sleeping.
This is similar sleeping for 7-8 hours.
This is great advice! I will start small and at least try to get to sleep by 11. That extra hour of sleep will likely go a long way!
This is inspiring and If it works for you thats great! I am working on implementing a routine into my life too. Thanks for this!!
Thanks! Yeah routines can have a huge impact on life, for sure.
I have also seen the benefits of having a good routine. I am still working on improving mine but so far it has been great. However, I do have a few questions if you don't mind, how long did you have to do this before it become more like an habit? Also how are you able to properly time-box each activity?
After about two weeks it became more habit like and “easier”. For me, the key to staying consistent and time boxing was not skipping weekends. On weekends I wake up at the same time still and unless there’s major things going on I just work on my project mostly during the time of my usual work hours during the week. With a baby it can be difficult and sometimes things may shift a little bit but also i think having the baby as a factor actually pushes me to do whatever it takes to make time for what i want.
That is a long day! I've had my most productive period earlier this year when I stuck to a routine of sleeping 8:30pm-5am and then going to the gym as soon as I wake up! Keep it up! I just came back from holiday and jet lag has rendered me a night owl for the last few weeks. The lack of sleep breeds a special type of bizarre creativity that fills my notepad up with wacky ideas!
Lol the bizarre creativity sometimes breeds the best ideas! I recently read a book that talked about how as humans we often stop ourselves from coming up with good ideas because our conscious mind gets in the way. The unconscious mind has the best ideas because it doesn’t consider as many road blocks or reasons why it can’t work, this allows for unlimited creativity and outside of the box ideas! I’ve learned to embrace the silliness that sleep deprivation can sometimes bring.
Thanks for sharing Matt, we have to do what we have to do sometimes! Hopefully you get the reward for that spent time in the future!
Thank you! It all pays off in one way or another as long as we stay consistent!
Thank you for sharing your routine.
Impressive that you can manage with only 5 hours of sleep!
Are you able to focus while working on your side-project between 9pm-12am?
Absolutely, it is the part of the day that I look forward to the most as I am thinking about it all day while doing my other tasks. Maybe I am working off pure excitement and motivation, but right now I feel good on only 5 hours! I'm sure if I was occasionally drinking or eating poorly I would not be able to function. My diet is definitely probably an important factor lol.
Cool! By the way, what are you working on?
Thanks for asking! I am working on a productivity and file management tool for music producers.
Thanks for sharing Matt, the biggest struggle for me is to stay consistent
That was a huge struggle for me originally, I have tried this routine in the past and failed many times before. It is a combination of things that make me more successful at it this time, diet, mindset, purpose, discipline, etc. I also gamefied it a bit by using the Notion habit tracker template. It feels good to check off that I have done everything on the list every day.
The routine is awesome, irrespective of the situation Matt, remember to hydrate always.
Thank you for the reminder! As I respond to this I am making sure to drink at least 8 ounces of water.
Thanks for sharing Matt. I'm definitely more of a night owl than an early bird. I've tried a few times to do the early start thing, but I really struggle with it. I think a routine is the key factor, one that sets dedicated times to all the important aspects of physical and mental well-being. Family, exercise, a lunchtime walk, a book, work etc.
Being super granular works for me - I've even started to set dedicated time aside for social media etc, that way I'm not tempted to drift off and lose an hour on TikTok in the middle of my work day 😀
Absolutely, the habit of routine is definitely most important lol i am still trying to learn the best time to fit social media into my routine. I was tempted to remove it altogether to stay focused but also am torn between building my audience ahead of launch
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Nice! You can do it! The good thing about habits is after awhile they become natural