This year I made it a goal to start waking up early, and I've actually been doing it pretty consistently. The reasoning was mostly simple math, but I've found other benefits too. ## Staying Up Late This is how I've lived most of my life. I would go to bed around 1:30 or even 2AM on weekdays, and 3AM on weekends. The two big reasons for this: ### "Taking" Time Back As we live in a capitalistic hellscape, I found that staying up almost felt like an act of rebellion. Taking back time I was owed having to be a cog in someone else's machine - even if I wasn't getting enough sleep as a result. ### Quiet Hours I'm both busy and easily distracted during the day. I'll hang out in my Guilded for too long, or read through one of my various feeds. I also take care of my mom, so that takes time too. After 11PM I felt like things began to quiet down. I could feel my brain get a little less overwhelmed thanks to the lull in activity, online and off. But. I'm also getting old. So I can't stay up as late as I used to. I start to doze off around 12:30AM and wake up a few hours later. It occurred to me that at this point I should go to bed earlier and get more hours out of my morning than try to fight to stay awake. It's been going pretty successfully so far. I now go to bed around 10:30 and wake up around 5:30. I've found that I've kept all the same benefits, but with less drawbacks. I'm getting a good night's sleep[^1] more consistently. And I also have the same level of quiet because everyone's still in bed. I'm lucky enough to work from home, so I don't really "clock in" until 9AM - technically later than that, as I don't have my first meeting until 10AM. As a result I have plenty of free time - more than I did when I was staying up. I can use the time to play videogames, work out, watch a movie, etc. It's been pretty refreshing getting to just roll out of bed and devour [[Like a Dragon - Infinite Wealth (2024)|Infinite Wealth]] for a few hours. [^1]: I wake up more refreshed on 7 hours than 8. i'm built different, sorry