Illustration taken from the fabulous article that this post is in response to:
I’m posting this here because I am so happy to see she interviewed The Body Clock author, Russell Foster!!!!!!
She asked him about his opinion of the claim that waking up by 5 am will somehow improve every nook and cranny of your life:
‘To say he is scathing about the fetishisation of the early start would be an understatement. “There’s nothing intrinsically important about getting up at 5am. It’s just the ghastly smugness of the early start. Benjamin Franklin was the one who started it all when he said, ‘Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise’ and it’s been going on ever since. It goes back to the Protestant work ethic – work is good and if you can’t or won’t work, that is, by definition, bad. Not sleeping is seen as worthy and productive.”’
Ahh I’m such a fangirl and love him so much!
Of course, my bias is that I am NOT an early riser as much as I would like to be. I have long days and going to bed early isn’t always possible, and even when it is, I tend to sleep horrifically bad. My favourite description of waking up early is, “at-home, self-imposed jet-lag.” Any time I try it, I feel like I want to crawl away and decompose by the afternoon. And then -blessed validation!- Matt Walker recently shared in a 6 part series on The Huberman Lab podcast, that one of the biggest drawbacks to schedule shifts like that is that it tanks your mood if you are not a natural early riser. (And I don’t think you should be driving a vehicle in that state either). So for me, it’s not worth it to wake up early and get a head start on the long, demanding days that I deal with.
That being said, if you love your 5am start, drop a comment and let us know what it’s doing for you!
ZenwithGwen 