Sleep is Underrated

“I don’t need that much sleep, I can get by on as little as 4 or 5 hours each night”

That statement seems to be standard opening when an uber successful individual is interviewed about the secret to their success.

I have always wondered, “Would I be more successful if I got up earlier in the morning?”.

The past couple of weeks I have tried an experiment. The experiment was to set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. and see how much I accomplish each day if I could manage to rise early each morning. Normally I wake up at about 6:30 or 7:00 and it feels like half the day is gone by the time I finish drinking my coffee or checking my Facebook status.

I am in the final stages of finishing my book and I really wanted to be able to go on a book tour and say something to the affect of, “”I wrote between the hours of 4:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. when the sun had not yet risen and the world was asleep”. Of course I imagine that I say that with an English accent a la Downton Abbey.

Every night this week I went to bed with my alarm on my Ipad set for 4:30 a.m.

Every morning I woke up with the Ipad beside me after swiping snooze 3 or 4 times until I finally turned it off.

4:30 a.m. is really early…..I mean….it is middle of the night early.

The house is chilled and everyone else is sleeping (everyone else being Bob and the two dogs). The whole point of waking super early is to get something done, but if I accidently wake them up, then it will ruin my experiment.

I need not be too concerned, because I could not manage to drag my butt out of bed all week. In fact, last night I went to bed at 8:30 p.m. because I was so tired after an entire week of interrupted sleep. I figured, “Ah ha….I’ll bet I will wake up at 4:30 without even setting the alarm”, but no…….I slept until 6:30 this morning.

So screw that damn experiment.