Getting up early is one of the most famous pieces of advice from productivity gurus, who nowadays seem to multiply effortlessly on the Internet. The popularity of these techniques for improving productivity and health—as many of them promise—has skyrocketed. But is getting up at 5 a.m. really such a clever idea?
Getting up early can have benefits, with one of the most important being having time for yourself during those hours. Enjoying time without feeling compelled to check email can help many people focus and avoid anxiety.
Getting up early can also help people maintain some healthy habits. For example, exercising regularly or preparing a varied and nutritious breakfast.
Setting an early wake-up time can also help people get more regular sleep. The quality of your sleep depends on many factors. How many hours you sleep is another matter entirely. Still, experts also point out the importance of maintaining a regular sleep schedule.
Getting up early has advantages. So, case closed? Or should you listen to the gurus and start waking up at 5:00 a.m.? Not necessarily. There are essential factors to consider. For example, getting up early can have its drawbacks.
If you want to wake up earlier, you have to go to bed earlier so you don’t lose hours of sleep. This also means that you have dinner earlier, stop using your devices earlier, etc. In other words, if you want more time in the morning, you have to sacrifice it in the afternoon. As such, there are many implications.
These schedule changes can affect your social life, for example. Enjoying those hours for yourself can be beneficial. Still, if it comes at the expense of time with your friends and family, you may lose health and well-being.
In addition, depending on where you live and the time of year, you may lose hours of sunlight, which isn’t only good for regulating circadian rhythms. Sunlight is also necessary for our bodies to synthesize vitamin D.
All Bodies Are Unique
The problem is that you can't just evaluate the pros and cons and choose what works for you. Why? Because of chronotypes. Each person has a specific chronotype, a biological clock with unique characteristics.
It’s not a dual classification between people who tend to get up early and those who can work better in the evenings, but rather a spectrum. There are also extreme cases of people with unusual schedules within this spectrum.
Independent of external factors, genetics strongly influence your internal clock. Changing it, therefore, is a battle against your body and can cause more problems than benefits, both from a productivity and a health perspective.
Still, some strategies can make it easier for those who want to get up early. For example, a study published in 2022 in Nature Communications suggests three essential factors: sleep, exercise, and breakfast.
In other words, according to the researchers, if you want to get up earlier, you should make sure to get the hours of sleep your body needs, exercise regularly, and eat a nutritious breakfast rich in complex carbohydrates but low in sugar.
Sleep science is complex, and it’s rarely possible to get advice that will work for the entire population. The amount of sleep you need and the time of day when you can make the most of your waking hours depend on factors beyond genetics.
For example, your work schedule, daily tasks, social life, and so on may influence your circadian rhythms. Russell Foster, director of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, told The Guardian that not everyone can afford to make such changes to their daily rhythms.
So, you could say that you're not going to make more money if you wake up earlier, but if you have more economic resources, you can dedicate more time in your life to experimenting with these changes.
Image | Miriam Alonso
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