I’m a “morning person.” My wife is definitely not.

For me, I enjoy getting up at 5 (actually, it takes a while to get to the “enjoy” part). I walk a couple of miles, take a shower, and often fix a number of issues before 8.

One of the most productive developers I ever knew (a former employee) was a “non-morning person.” He would amble into the office at noon. Drove HR crazy, but all attempts to get him to come in earlier, met with failure. He would often stay in past 2AM.

As his manager, I got flak for his schedule, but I put my own job in jeopardy, and did not enforce corporate policy on him. We worked together for almost 27 years. Japan loved him (so my job wasn’t actually in jeopardy). His schedule worked for them.

We tend to have a habit of projecting what works for us, onto others.

I wish more people would understand this when giving advice -- what works for one case or one person is guaranteed to have many exceptions when you try to apply it to a larger population.

I'm a relatively new parent, and I've gotten to the point to where I hate when other parents give advice. Something that worked for your kid won't necessarily work for mine, and don't treat that case like it's my fault -- instead, qualify that your advice is based on your experience and your situation, not necessarily something universal.

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735210632/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_FM...

This describes me, exactly.

I enjoyed his A Whole New Mind book.

Education runs on a "morning person" schedule from a young age, through early adulthood. After that, there's certainly more choice available in terms of life schedule, but the vast majority of people are corralled into a form of employment built on the same schedule. Even if not, all major services one interfaces with in one's life operate on that schedule.

Even if you managed against all odds to develop healthy daily habits during the 20-ish years of strict poorly suited scheduling that is the education system, applying those habits only becomes more difficult when you move into a more independent self-driven environment of providing for oneself financially. This absolutely kills any hope of developing productive habits for most people.

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Anecdata: I'd classify myself as "not a morning person", but I don't find difficult to get up early. e.g. I don't need an alarm-clock. What I find difficult is functioning after getting up.

I don't have kids but I've a pretty demanding large dog that had a strong preference for 5am walks when he first arrived, which I adapted to reasonably easily. Walking a dog isn't really a "significant accomplishment" in the commonly understood sense, and more-importantly, isn't a mentally challenging or "applied" activity. I'm completely unable to function in the mornings when it comes to doing anything even mildly complex.

Also, getting up at 5am means I'm severely less productive from 6pm onwards, which is my peak productive period when I operate on natural rhythm. I'm reasonably successful (I think) and I work a remote job from Ireland on a US tz schedule, so that's particularly tough.

Being early, however, is a superpower. If you show up to a meeting prepared or get correspondence out to your counterparties early in the morning, everything goes better. So, early rising confers a number of advantages that tend to compound. These days, I'm an increasingly early-riser.

The thing that matters is your phase relative to the rest of humanity. Getting pre-work done for the following day in an evening may also work for a late riser, but it doesn't work for me.

My job allows me to work whenever I want.

So, I wake up early and start work so that I'll be done by early afternoon. That leaves me plenty of time to get useful things done.

Because it's work, I'm kind of motivated to get up early. Had I decided to do some other activity in the morning — non-work coding, exercise, reading etc — I wouldn't get out of bed.

I don't think they're saying, "get up early tomorrow after staying up late tonight" What they mean is "get into a habit of getting enough sleep and waking up early." Yes, I get it, many people claim to be night owls. But honestly many of them just get terrible sleep and won't put the effort into developing healthy routines and instead write it off as something they can't change.

After you get in the habit of it, the time available in a day feels almost doubled.

And there's (I suppose) the benefit of working fasted which generally enhances focus.

That doesn’t invalidate it, though.

if you feel terrible waking up that early - go to bed earlier as well. you need that sleep.

I get it though, it's what works for you. So you should do that, but it's not universal advice, people that find it works just think others should go to bed earlier and follow what they do and poof! like magic everything is amazing

Also it depends on your age. I remember seeing some research on why we shouldn't be waking up teenagers in early morning. So if you had a bad time waking up early as a kid, it might not be true as an adult.