Early to Rise = More Productive Day?

I am a night owl. I love to stay up late at night reading, working on the computer, surfing the Internet. One reason is that it's quiet at my house. Everybody is in bed. And this will only make sense if you have teenagers. No one's going to call me on the phone and ask me if I can pick them up or bring them something.

I'm also more creative at night. My brain's just not working at full tilt in the morning. It's all I can do to roll out of bed, pour some coffee down my gullet, and get dressed. I do most of my best work after midnight.

But it's catching up with me lately. I'm having more and more trouble falling asleep when I finally do go to bed. It used to be that my head would hit the pillow, and ten seconds later I would be unconscious. But no more. Now I toss and turn all night until, oddly, just as I hear the first bird chirp of the morning, I fall into a deep slumber. Is the bird's chirping some type of signal to my brain? "It's okay now. You can go to sleep. Enjoy your one hour." And it's up at 6:30 a.m. to get my kids off to school.

I know the solution to my insomnia, and it's a bitter pill to swallow. The solution is to call it a night earlier, to retrain my body to fall asleep at a normal time. But it's just so hard to give up that alone time.

At any rate, I'm going to give it a go this week, and I'll report back. Zenhabits has a great article on the benefits of being an early riser. It's 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It. I think I might have a little trouble with number one: greeting the day. A little too cheery for me at that time of day. But the rest of the tips sound doable.


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