21 Damn Early Days
Wake up at 4:30 am? For 21 days? Voluntarily?!
Does this sound like the type of thing that a self-avowed night owl like myself would do? Probably not, yet I did it nonetheless!
I received an email from a really neat group here in Vancouver, Chasing Sunrise, that’s best known for getting up pre-dawn to hike up a mountain and witness the sun come up from the summit. However, they ALSO have Damn Early Days (DED), which doesn’t require you to leave your house (unless you choose to) but you still need to get up at an ungodly hour. For 21 days. (non-consecutive, DED is weekdays only).
When I got the first email about DED, I was intrigued. Getting up in the mornings isn’t my forte, but then again, with my new extended commute and NaNoWriMo on the horizon, I thought it might be an interesting challenge. Get up extra early and be productive before leaving for work. After only a few weeks in my new place, I already knew that getting home at 6:30ish, and then making and eating dinner, certainly didn’t make for a terribly productive evening for me, sure a little TV and crafting, but that was about it. So, I decided to give it a go.
Guys. Getting up at 4:30 am is HARD.
I know that I need between 6 and 7hours of sleep, so reversing that and realizing I needed to be in bed and falling asleep for 9:30 pm AT THE LATEST was a whole new experience, that is very early for me. Prior to DED, I thought going to bed at 10 pm was early. I’d also read an article that said that setting an alarm for an odd time would help you get up, so I set that alarm for 4:32 am. On top of that, I knew the standard iPhone ringtones just weren’t going to cut it for this experiment, so I made the alarm ‘YOLO’ by The Lonely Island. Let me tell you, when those first two beats rang out, I was AWAKE.
Because I was working on my NaNo novel my early morning productivity was working on that. I’d get out of bed, make a cup of tea and then sit down to write. The first two weeks of DED were pretty good. I was fairly successful most days and was able to bang out 1,000+ words a day. The other thing I learned during DED is that I write WAY better with an outline. I’ve tried NaNo yearly and have never been a ‘winner’, including this year. When I got to the end of what I’d outlined, my writing productivity dried up.
Despite my writing faltering, I was still getting up early. Instead of staring at a blank page trying to force out words, I did some other chores: re-organizing my library, cleaning my kitchen, folding laundry, reading. I was still being productive, but not in the way I’d hoped.
After DED ended I went back to a more ‘regular’ waking schedule, mainly because I got sick and needed more sleep. It wasn’t just my brain, but my body that needed a bit of a break. However, DED really made me realize that I (and probably a lot of you as well) don’t make the most of my waking hours. All the time wasted getting stuck in YouTube loops (as entertaining as they may be), scrolling through social media, etc isn’t helping me do the kind of things I want to do with my life. With the new year fast approaching and the inevitable desire to map out what I want my 2018 to look like, I think it may be time to look back into early morning productivity.
But not at 4:30 am. That’s ridiculous. 5:30, that seems much saner to me now. Perspective folks, it comes from strange places sometimes.
Anyone else out there try DED? Or generally get up at ungodly hours just to get things done?