Well, you have heard of this too. You know what I am talking about, right?
Every influencer and their mother has mentioned how waking up at 4 am has changed their lives. I follow Alex Hormozi a LOT, and he talks about this thing almost every time. The basic idea that I got from him is that you get a 4-hour block that you should use to do your own work before doing any other work. This basically means promoting your business, making content, and anything in between.
I had a lot of things on my calendar that I wanted to get done, but I couldn’t get time because of the x, y, and z things. For example, I wanted to prepare for this webinar on how to do content audits for ecommerce websites. I also wanted to prepare my talk on BrightLocal this year, and more.
And I am not even counting the things that I want to do, but they are not high on the priority list. And that’s why I haven’t started with them- for example, making a cooking YouTube channel, writing more posts on this website, designing a new work website, and more.
But because I had a few things that I wanted to complete, this is where I thought of trying this new thing because it made me feel like I would get a 4-hour personal block that I could use for anything.
I started this on 18th June btw and it lasted 4 days.
Day 1: Enthusiastic
I was very hyped about this new thing, and I told my parents, friends, and their neighbours lol. Because I had to wake up at 4 am, I figured out I had to sleep at 8 pm. Now I don’t know about you, but I have NEVER go to sleep at 8 pm. Well if you don’t count the days when I was having several panic and anxiety attacks. I go to sleep early on those days because otherwise I might die or kill someone.
So I went to sleep the day before (which was 17th July) and I couldn’t sleep for the love of chocolates. I was wide awake and sleep was nowhere to be found. My best guess is that I actually slept after 11 pm.
The alarm went off at 4 am and I woke up. I wasn’t feeling much because it was the first day and I felt super nice. I washed my face and made a cup of Chai for myself and got to my table. All of this took me an hour so I actually started working at 5am. I opened my laptop and started outlining the rough draft for the webinar. I like to have points that I will talk about. Well, I told myself to write a few points, but I ended up writing each and every word I was supposed to say. It was a whole 3,000-word article lol.
I worked from 5 am to 9 am and I felt very productive. I felt like I could do anything lol. So at 9 am is when I thought to prepare some lunch because I was feeling hungry. Well, my mind was very confused with this new routine so the first day I had lunch at 1 pm and I was hungry af.
This was the first sign that my body did not understand how to make this work.
So I was doing house chores, cleaning, and other things from 9 am to 3:30 pm. I think it was a long time but never mind.
Then I barely worked for 2 hours before I had to prepare dinner because I was supposed to go to sleep at 8 pm. And it was 6 pm already. So I just reheated the lunch and ate that as my dinner and went to sleep.
Day 1 was a nice start, but I quickly realized that I had to make a few tweaks the next day. Mainly around food and house chores. I should make food early and have food early in the night.
Day 2: Productive AF
The next day was great because I worked almost 9 hours. This is the best I have done so far because I never get to work 9 hours when I am living by myself.
I woke up again at 4 am and started working at 5 am. I worked from 5 am to 7:15 am and I was preparing the talking points for the BrightLocal conference. I also made some LinkedIn posts and it was good.
I went again to work at 1 pm and worked 5 hours on my client – without any breaks. I find this very productive ngl.
Then I had my dinner early at 5:30 pm and went to sleep at 8 pm.
I checked my calendar and I soon realized that this schedule might not work for me. There was this virtual meetup from the WTS community. I wanted to join but it was from 8:30 pm- 9:30 pm. I was tired enough to not join it, so I didn’t.
This call is not alone. There are a lot of calls and meetings that happen after 7 pm IST. Mainly because these meetings are from the US or Europe. And the time difference is huge.
This day ended nicely and I felt very productive, which I don’t feel often.
Day 3: It started downhill from here.
The first two days were somewhat cool. The third day is when I started working at 5:30 am (instead of 5 am). I would say this day was also a little bit productive. I made Thursday’s LinkedIn post which is the #SEONews one.
Then, I worked on writing some extra pieces of content for my LinkedIn profile. It really takes a lot of brain cells for me to come up with ideas and actually write them lol. I feel like LinkedIn is such a ‘professional’ place that sometimes I feel like walking on eggshells lol. I try to be real, but there needs to be an element of professional stuff too.
Well, I am drifting from the topic lol.
This was the day when I had to shop for something, so I did that. I took 3 hours for making lunch and then I started working on my client stuff.
I ended the day at 5:45 which is very early for someone like me lol, and then I had my dinner and went to sleep at 8 pm.
This is the day from where it went downhill lol.
Day 4: The absolute worst day ever
This was the day when I was feeling anxious, and more hungry than ever, and I had this severe headache all day long.
I woke up at 4:30 am, and then started working at 5:30 am. I was barely able to focus and even after drinking a cup of chai, I wasn’t feeling refreshed. This continued throughout the whole day. I was taking a lot of breaks between my work blocks and it was really hard to focus on anything.
This is when I realized that this routine might not be for me.
The final verdict
I really loved the 4 hour block that I was getting in the morning. It was the best thing ever. One of the reasons why I wanted to pursue this thing was because of the distractions. On my normal days, I have a ton of distractions. My phone rings every hour, my neighbors make a lot of noise, and I am someone who really gets distracted. I work for 5 minutes and then take a break of 15. This routine eliminated that because my mind wasn’t working enough to pursue distractions lol. I was only focusing on the work and this made my productivity 10x more.
I also realized that my schedule was fucked up. I was not being able to understand how to structure my day. When should I eat my lunch, when should I work, and when should I have my dinner? These really made me confused and I was spending a lot of time figuring out how to do this.
I can never make this my ultimate routine because a lot of my meetings happen after 5 pm. Be it work meetings or something else. This is mainly because of the time zone I am in.
I was also keeping track of my time more than I should. I was constantly checking time and planning when should I do the next thing. I never do this in my regular routine.
One last thing it made me realize that I can use this routine when I have to get something done urgently and I can’t waste my time. That’s when I think this would be very helpful.
I would definitely try this again in the future. But for now, I am back to my normal routine.
And if you’re wondering, it took me another 2-3 days to feel healthy again, so that’s something to know and consider.
Here’s what my calendar looked like on those 4 days:
[Don’t you dare judge my image marking up skills. I tried my best, okay?]
Should you try it?
Idk? If you love that 4 hour block, have someone to make you food, clean and do other chores then sure. AND if you don’t have meetings after your sleeping time lol.
I know there are a lot of people who can pull this routine off. I also know people who do the quite opposite. They work until 5 or 6 am and that’s when they go to sleep.
At the end, I think if you want to give it a go, then sure. Ultimately you should be doing whatever suits you best and doesn’t make you feel weird or uncomfortable.
<3