Complex Numbers

Alarming Trend

Sometimes, the random number generator points me to the same topic as the day before. Such is the clumpy nature of randomness.

Pretty sure this is the last article along these lines in my queue, so after today, we're probably done for a while.

    Waking up at 5 a.m. every day could improve your life—here’s how to make it work for you  

"Could" is absolutely the key word in the headline.

I will note that this article is from Fortune magazine, so I'm pretty sure what they really mean is "Waking up at 5 a.m. every day would improve your boss's bottom line."

Seize the day, we’re told.

We're told a lot of things, many of them contradictory. "Seize the day," or carpe diem in its maybe-original formulation, is meant to be an exhortation to live in the present moment with little to no thought of consequences or the future. Basically the opposite of "force yourself to get up at 5 am so you can worship at the altar of Holy Productivity."

The early morning wakeup has even become a TikTok trend...

I really should have stopped reading there. Once they mention that short-attention-span data-mining cancer of an app, I can be sure that nothing else in the article applies to me.

Not that I didn't already know that from the "wake up at 5" bullshit.

...coined the “five-to-nine before the nine-to-five,” where video montages illustrate a slow morning aesthetic of self-affirmations, workouts, and maybe even a head start into planning for the work day.

This is like the training montages in movies, which make it look like you can go from wimp to wolf with five minutes' worth of sweat.

“The pressure to be a morning person is pretty intense,” says Samantha Snowden, a mindfulness teacher at Headspace, the popular meditation app.

Everything about that sentence is pressure. Blood pressure. Mine. Higher.

For starters, getting up earlier can improve confidence, Snowden says, because it can feel like an accomplishment.

You know what else can feel like an accomplishment? Actually accomplishing something.

And if you can use those extra morning hours to make time for yourself in a way that calms you down, it can bolster productivity and make you feel less depleted by the end of the day.

Ahhh... I knew they'd get to the P word eventually.

You know what calms me down? Sleep.

Choosing to move up that alarm should not come at the expense of sleep.

I know I've said this before, but you're going to have the same number of waking hours every day, on average, no matter what time you get up. Unless you sacrifice sleep, as I did for many years, and I'm paying for it now—way more than I'm paying for smoking or drinking.

Prioritizing sleep means having good sleep hygiene, including waking up around the same time each day, limiting screens before bed, not consuming alcohol or caffeine in the evenings, and having a wind-down routine.

This is the first thing in that article that doesn't make me want to yeet something at the wall.

Not that I wake up at the same time each day, or get away from screens before bed, or refrain from alcohol or caffeine. I'm just saying it's decent advice, not that I follow it.

Snowden says you can spend 10 extra minutes slowing down (even walking a bit slower to the shower in the morning), not checking emails right away, and practicing a kindness message.

And there goes my blood pressure back up. Seriously. They say you can't feel it, but I definitely do.

Especially for the night owls, choosing to get up earlier won’t feel comfortable immediately.

It'll never feel entirely comfortable if you're a true night owl. Never. You can get used to it; we're pretty adaptable. But being an owl and being forced to be a lark is very similar to jet lag, only it never really goes away.

Source: me.

Now, look. I want to emphasize that I'm not knocking people who get up early, for whatever reason. You do you, as the kids say. Sometimes, we have to; I did for a long time. Some people are just naturally early risers, and that's okay, too.

What I object to is the incessant pounding in various media sources (usually ones with a pro-business agenda) that this is the One True Answer. People are different, and have different innate schedules; I'm not "lazy" because I prefer to sleep from 2am to 10am (or whatever my schedule is on any given day) instead of 9pm to 5am. I'm lazy for a lot of other reasons, but not that one. Still, I can acknowledge that more people prefer the latter, though I'd wager not so many among writers or other creative types.

I just want to stop the sleep-shaming.