5AM Morning Routines Don't Impress Me.

I see it all the time—it being this notion that early mornings are the key to success. 

You know what I mean? 

I mean… The narrative that five o'clock in the morning is a magical hour that yields utmost productivity can be found in all the corners of nearly every online space. 

It's written across the foreheads of fitness gurus. 

The self-improvement industry plasters it within the headlines of numerous articles. 

Academia insists that research rests for no one — therefore, students and professors alike should not sleep past their early-as-ever alarms either. 

The list goes on and on and on and on…

Except I cannot for the life of me figure out why that is, despite being no stranger to the grind of rising and shining as early as possible myself. 

What is that about?

And will the sentiment ever go away?

Back in my barista days, my alarm clock would ring, ring, ring at five in the morning most days. Prior to becoming a working woman, I attended a high school three hours away from where I lived, prompting me to awaken no later than 4AM every weekday. 

Now that I'm lucky to work from home, a lot of what I do is on my own terms. No one else sets my hours for me. As a result, I've had the option to venture outside of what I've been told I should do in favor of trying things I naturally gravitate towards instead —one of those things being the hour at which I awaken.

There's this sort of unrelenting anxiety surrounding by-the-minute schedules. I know Bill Gates breaks his days down into five-minute increments, but I surely cannot relate. 

When I existed as someone who woke up to the tone of a 5AM jingle, I was miserable. I deplored the uneasy sensation that would arise in the depths of my stomach upon hearing the sound of my phone as it informed me it was time to bolt out of bed for the next sixteen hours.

You see, I manage my time the best when I forget about time altogether.

Trying to emulate a life that others say I should lead—read: waking up early as heck in the morning—makes me dizzy. I'm less productive when I set my alarm for a pre-sunrise time of the day. 

Rather, I am at my most productive when I wake up in the early hours of the afternoon, working well into the morning and falling asleep around 7AM on average.

It's not a strict bedtime, but after getting out of bed in the afternoons for so long, I tend to wake up and go to sleep around the same time everyday—give or take an hour. 

And surprisingly, my distaste for waking up early in the morning has nothing to do with how many hours of sleep I allow myself the way I thought it did. When I was still buying into the idea that I must wake up at the crack of dawn in order to be a successful person, I tried going to bed earlier… 

And earlier… 

And earlier… 

All in an attempt to rid myself of the constant exhaustion I'd feel after waking up early as heck. 

But it never worked. 

From experience, I have come to learn that I'm simply better suited for a night owl routine. 

My creativity is sky-high and my vitality levels are through the roof when the rest of the world is sound asleep. 

I may not be an early bird, but I still get the worm. 

Do you subscribe to a lifestyle of early mornings? 

If so, is it because you want to or because you feel like you have to? 

I'm curious to know where you stand on the matter!

☽