February
14
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Productivity Prescription: Ring the Alarm
I am not a morning person. If I could, I would sleep, or at least lay in bed, till at least 10 every morning. But in order to be the most productive, I can’t do that.
Like I said, I hate getting up early, but unfortunately I cannot. I have found that no matter how many hours I put in, I always get more done when I wake up early. This is the case for several reasons, besides the fact that in traditional office environments it’s expected of you. Some other reasons are as follows, even if you work for yourself:
- Most professionals work traditional hours, so if you need to get something done that requires help from other people, it will seriously hurt if you’re not up early;
- Because most people start work early, if you start working later and put in the same number of hours, you will miss out on some social time, because often times people go out after work to unwind;
- Getting up early means that you’re ready earlier which means that you can take advantage of opportunities as they come up.
So setting a wake up time is super important. I used to be one of those people who set my alarm for like 2 hours before I needed to get up and then hit the snooze button 17 times. The reason I did that is because I knew I wouldn’t want to get out of bed, so I was giving myself time to get out of bed. And it took me years, like 15 years, to figure out that this really isn’t smart. So please try not to do that. Not only does it annoy anyone that you’re living with and disturb their sleep, but when you finally do get out of bed, you’re still groggy. And to make it worse, you have just wasted so much time that you could have had uninterrupted sleep and actually getting rest.
After 15 years of morning grogginess and bitterness at not being rested, I finally realized that I am doing this wrong. Now, I just set my alarm for about 10 minutes before I need to be up, which gives me a little bit of leeway in getting out the door on time, but I get much more rest and I wake up happier and ready to go.
I never imagined that I would get out of bed actually feeling rested, but just that one change in setting my alarm made such a big difference.
workingtoworld 