Last three years, one of my new year resolution is to start waking up early. And on each of the occasion, it only lasted few days. I have tried multiple times to wake up early in my life but each time I have failed miserably. I used to take pride in night outs — working the whole night hacking away stuff. Since, last three years I have become self-aware that staying up late in night and waking up late in the morning is not effective. It end up costing you more. So, in this blog I am writing 5 reasons I should wake up early. These are the reasons that resonates with me.
- It make you proactive rather than reactive: When you wake up late, I feel you are always in the catch up mode. You will get late to the meetings or feel unprepared for an important meeting or you go with the day as it comes without any plan. When you wake up early, you get time to plan your day well in advance and be proactive. I believe waking up early gives you time to think and you can strategise how to tackle problems that you will face during the day. Victor Frankl in the book Man in Search of Meaning said, Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. I believe waking up early give us the power to choose our response.
- Work on your learning goal: I am a strong believer in continuous learning. I try to find at least an hour every day to learn something and hone my skills. From my experience, I found that when I try to work on my personal learning during night I usually end up working on things that do not require much brain power like watching videos. This is usually because I am tired so I choose an easy way to acquire knowledge. At-times, this gives me a false sense of learning.
- Use time effectively: Night gives me a false sense of security that I have a lot of time to work. Usually in the morning, you will not have more than 2 hours to work on your stuff so you have to efficiently use your time. It is not about numbers of hours you put at work but quality of those hours that matter.
- Come home early: When you start your day late at office you end it late as well. This means you have less time to spend with your loved ones. Working late in office does not mean that you are working more or getting done more. It usually means you are inefficient and wasting your time.
- Spend time with nature: I love to go for long walks but most of the week days I end up in my bed. I can go for morning walk and spend time with nature.
These are my reasons. I am going to sleep now so that I can wake up tomorrow morning.
Shekhar Gulati 