Getting up early is overrated

It seems like every productivity or entrepreneurial guru out there is preaching the same thing: Get up early if you want to be successful. 

Some even claim you need a whole 5 to 9 routine before your 9 to 5, complete with a workout at the crack of dawn. Because that’s what all the most successful entrepreneurs and founders do. Right?

Well, you know I’m not afraid to go against the hype. And I think the idea that you have to wake up at 5 a.m. and workout early in the day if you want to be productive is BS.

The real game-changer is getting a solid night’s rest—not a 6 a.m. gym session.

Sleep is better than exercise.

It might be a contrarian view, but I think that sleeping is better (and more important) than waking up early and going to the gym.

I used to get up at 6 a.m. and go to the gym to work out with my personal trainer. I’d try to get myself to bed early every night so I could wake up at 6. And I never managed to get to sleep until midnight or 1 a.m.

No matter how late I went to bed, I’d still get up at 6 a.m. to meet my trainer and get my workout in. I thought I was doing the right thing because that’s what everyone said to do.

Then one day, I said to hell with it. I wanted to find a routine that fit more with my energy and rhythms of life. So I decided to wake up later to give myself enough time to get 8 hours of sleep.

And it was a game-changer! 

Now, I go to bed whenever I get tired, often around midnight or 1 a.m. And I sleep until whenever I naturally wake up, which is usually around 8 a.m. I don’t wake up to an alarm anymore. (Though I do set an alarm for 9:30 a.m. just in case.)

Getting more sleep has given me more energy to exercise and more motivation to work when it’s time to work. I traded my 6 a.m. workout for a 10 a.m. Jiu Jitsu class, and I feel a hell of a lot better than I ever did getting up early.

Follow your rhythm of life, listening to your body and what feels good to you.

Everyone is different. While waking up later has worked for me and improved my performance, physically and mentally, it might not be the same for you. Some people have different constraints—an important early morning meeting, kids to get to school, a hard start time, etc.

But that doesn’t mean you have to get up at 5 a.m. to be successful.

After switching to sleeping and waking up when it feels natural, my wife tried it too. We both started to feel better after ditching the early morning gym sessions. We both lost weight and felt much happier.

At the end of the day, you have to decide what’s right for you. If you're going to bed at 9 so you can wake up at 6, that’s fine. Just make sure you get a solid 8 hours of quality sleep. In my opinion, if you can only do one, sleeping is better than exercising.

Changing the time I wake up and allowing myself to prioritize sleep has changed my productivity, health, and overall how I feel moving through the day. I’m never going back to a 5 a.m. wakeup time.

Don’t believe me? Look at the sleep and wake cycles of our greatest minds.

For every Tim Cook and Richard Branson getting up at 5 a.m., there’s also people like Warren Buffet and Alexis Ohanian waking up at 8 a.m.

And even when you move past billionaire CEOs, you’ll find plenty of successful people who go to bed later and wake up later.

Russian composer Tchaikovsky kept a similar schedule to mine—a sleep at midnight and up at 8 a.m. while American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald slept from 3:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., and scientist Charles Darwin slept from midnight to 7 a.m. with a nap from 3 to 4 p.m. 

Check out this chart that shows the sleeping and waking times of some of the world’s greatest minds. While they do not have a similar sleep schedule, you’ll notice that most of them sleep at least 8 hours a day.

Via Fast Company

TL;DR: You don’t have to wake up at 5 a.m. and get in an early morning workout to be successful. Instead, prioritize getting 8 hours of sleep a night, and find a schedule that works for the rhythms of your life.

To your rebel journey,