This does not work for me at all. My mind is active in the evening, not so much in the morning. It's already hard enough to get up at a time that morning people still consider to be acceptable, getting up even earlier would effectively take time away, in total.

Different people have different cycles where they are alert and productive. About 2/3 of the population are "larks", most alert in the morning, go through a trough in the arternoon and return to some sort of creative/productive state in the early evening. About 1/3 are owls. They have their trough in the morning, the creative/productive phase during the day and the alert phase in the evening.

It's good to be aware of what type you are and what works for you. Conversely, recommending anyone just gets up earlier may be more harmful than helpful, depending on the person.

Then the trade-off is getting up an hour before I want to start work so that my mind can start moving.

The solution seems obvious. Work completely through the night, then collapse from exhaustion at your convenience! The trick is scoping out your projects appropriately so that you can finish them and catch up on sleep before going completely insane. :-)

Hell, if you do it right, you can watch decades of your life just slip away! amazing!

I've done this a couple of times --- thankfully not for decades. But it's remarkable how much being a code monkey is timeless. You look up and months have passed.

Did that for several years. Basically a 36 hour schedule. Was awesome. Having a family put a stop to that.

My imposter syndrome is lessened by reading this and so many other comments that feel familiar. (Unless I'm up so late because I'm not 10x? Oh no.)

Mornings are for communicating, afternoons and evenings for actually doing stuff.