Mornings Sorted, Well, Sort Of

If you have been reading this blog since it started (and thank you if you have), then you would be well aware of my issue with mornings. Sometimes I think if I met a genie, it might be one of my three wishes to become a morning person. But alas, I just do love those lie-ins and I am not the most, um, pleasant person in the morning.

Last June a great friend of mine who lives in California met me in New York for a trip. We shared a room each night and after a few days she revealed that she finally believed that I wasn't a morning person. She was also nice enough to shower first each day and give me those precious 15 minutes of extra sleep. (All the more impressive that she had the eastbound jetlag that should make it more difficult to rise in the morning.)

To be honest, I had just given up on mornings entirely. But then I realized there is one circumstance when I can rise early: when I have a lot of work to do.

Work has been very busy for me lately, which isn't actually a bad thing, as I've been given the opportunity to so some interesting things. But faced with the very real possibility of needing to stay late at the office most nights I decided that I'd prefer to rise right after the Hub in the early morning and just get going with my day.

There are certain interesting aspects to this new routine. Like the fact that commuting early and getting in before most colleagues actually allows my grumpiness to melt away faster since I don't need to talk to too many people and the commute is actually less stressful. I am also a surprisingly productive worker between the hours of 8 a.m. - 12 p.m. -- I can get more done in those four hours than I can get done during an equal amount of time in the afternoon.

The caveat is that I still can't rise early to do something fun at home -- sleep always wins -- so when I am getting up early it's got to be about inescapable work.

But what's most curious to me is the fact that better use of my mornings has been something I've wanted to change so badly about myself for a long time. And progress has been painfully slow. But when I really needed to change, it wasn't hard in the slightest: I just did it. Perhaps there's a lesson in that?

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