You Too Can Be a 4:30 AM Guy

How I changed my life and you can too

My Marc Maron piece is controversial among you subscribers. Some hate it, some love it. Similar feedback at Chat BCC (join today!). Subscriber Clint offers a palate cleanser of sorts, though. He writes an email titled, “want to hear about your 4 AM wakeups.”

For those woefully ignorant of my circadian rhythms, I’ve made a recent change from being a late night writer to an early morning guy. Clint wonders about it and submits his own personal shift:

I recently had surgery to correct a breathing problem that affected my sleep and I'm sleeping efficiently (and without ambien) for the first time in 20 years. I've started waking up at 5:30-6 AM so I can get in a bit of coding for work or a workout before the kids wake up. I've been thinking about pushing my wakeup back to 4:30-5 AM so I can really crank out a significant piece of work in the morning, but I also want to get 7.5-8 hours of sleep and I'm not sure how early I can go to sleep. I'm interested to hear how this works for you.

I used to think early mornings were for psychos, but I really like the quiet in the morning. As I've gotten older, I am at my best mentally in the morning, too, so the mixture of quiet, uninterrupted time, and "morning" help me do my best work. And I feel good the rest of the day having solved my hardest coding problems (or written my most important document or whatever) before breakfast.

I too used to think early mornings were for psychos. Or rather, they were for a different kind of guy.

My neighbor Des would wake up at 5 AM and that all tracked to me. He was a personal trainer and overall health nut. I found him to be an impressive person, relentlessly optimistic through an Achilles tear that would have had me constantly complaining. This was someone cut from a different cloth than I was.

We have this classic idea of “morning person” vs. “night owl,” and perhaps there’s some scientific basis for it. I always assumed, given my poor sleep habits and propensity to write late into the night, that this was just how I was. I was a night owl. I’d never see the sunrise but for the times I couldn’t sleep and that was that.

I think we often do this with our flaws. It’s easier to make them part of an identity than attempt a change. It’s especially easy when we’ve had success being who we’ve been. Reform then feels not only onerous, but also career threatening.

There was this other complication too. Back when I was on the road, covering games, it literally paid to be a night owl. It was difficult to be anything but. Similar to how professional chefs tend to lead an unhealthy-if-fun life, I was up late in bars with colleagues across the country. Get to the game at 4:30 PM, be wholly present while it’s happening, experience the locker room hustle and bustle around 10:30 pm, write the article that finishes around midnight. When it publishes, there’s a pop of dopamine and you want to hang out.

Do this repeatedly and you start to age rather quickly. When I became a beat writer, Howard Beck once kindly sent me a guide on how to live the life. I can’t find his exact instructions but remember that there were warnings about the health disaster that befell colleagues. I took those concerns seriously, and adopted Beck’s strategy of eating almonds during games instead of mindlessly crushing junk food. That helped, but I still found it difficult to be of sound mind and body in that role.

Years later, I didn’t need to attend basketball games anymore, but I was still keeping my old hours. I was a night owl, my Substack was working, why change a thing? Eventually, you can age into your lifelong routine becoming a problem, though.

If I was up until 3 AM, my kids weren’t changing their 7 AM wakeup. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to fix that situation. I’d always believed I operated according to different rules and rhythms. I could make my own hours by force of will, and still tap into a clarity of thought even when punchy. But the cumulative effect of bad sleep just starts wearing on you.

So I took the plunge and tried being an early morning psycho. It felt like a LARP at first. I’m not this sort of guy, but let me fake it for a day or two and see what happens. I’ll get up, feed the dog, drink some coffee, and drive to the office down the street around 5 AM. Then, after some writing, I’ll return when the kids are waking up around 7:30.

For some of you morning people, a 4:30 AM wakeup is not a big deal. You’ve been doing it or something like it for a long time. For others, like the person I once was, it feels like an impossible challenge. And then you try it for a couple days and…you’re shocked by how easily it comes. One of the reasons “4:30 AM” can feel so intimidating is because we’re used to being up late. Get up early a couple times, go to bed early a couple times, and it all resets.

Personally, I was amazed by how natural it felt, all of a sudden. In the past, I had not been dreaming at night. Now I had clear, memorable dreams. My old mornings were bleary and miserable. Now I was fully awake to the crispness of a darkened beginning, while taking my first coffee sip. The writing came more easily, too. Finally, I had some time to myself before the kids/pets vortex that sucks you in after 7. Productivity has gone up and my health has improved. Lifting has yielded greater gains and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. The main sacrifice is an absence of watching TV after 9 pm, which, as relayed to Andrew Sharp, isn’t that much of a concession given the entertainment landscape nowadays.

Of course there are other drawbacks and potential issues. Sometimes I struggle to sleep between 8 pm and 9 pm because I can’t stop musing about Marc Maron or whatever. If a kid or pet wakes me up at night, it’s a problem. What’s nice about the 4:30 routine, though, is that “sleeping in” to compensate is made easier. Socially, the wakeup can be a strain. I’ve gone to fewer events and parties. It’s good that I’m with family more, but I sometimes worry if I’m seeing my friends enough.

There’s no guarantee that “4:30” is the unchanging optimal standard for me, or for you. It’s an arbitrary number, and we all have our sustainable ideal. On Monday, I started my drive to the office, and saw Des in his open upstairs window. “What are you doing up?” he groggily croaked. I couldn’t wait to tell him that finally I’d joined his team. I too was now an early morning guy. We were cut from the same cloth, it turns out. “It’s my new routine! I wake up at 4:30 AM and do my writing!” Des shook his head, grimacing. “4:30 is too early.”