I admit it: I’m a bit of a night owl. The habit (because it IS a habit) started in college. When I was at Lipscomb we had a pretty strict curfew (12:00 AM during the week, 1:00 AM on the weekends). For me, this meant that the bulk of my study time didn’t start until after midnight because I wanted to spend all of my free time with friends or my girl-friend (and future wife).
This meant that, regularly, I wouldn’t get in to bed until 2:00 AM or later, which made early morning classes quite a chore for me. Enter my wife, Mandy, who I mentioned above.
Mandy is a morning person. It’s not that she doesn’t need much sleep (she does) but that she doesn’t like sleeping in because it takes away productive hours from the day. This isn’t much of an issue any more because we have three small boys at home who wake up between 6:30 and 7:30 AM pretty much regardless of what time they go to bed the night before.
I’ve been able to pick up some good habits from my wife (although not nearly as many as she would like me to, I’m sure) and the need to get up and get going is one of them. The problem is that I just don’t have much energy in the morning and it still takes me quite a long while to get going (or, as Mandy puts it, I like to piddle in the morning).
Two recent articles, one on the effects of morning workouts and one on personal effectiveness, are re-motivating me to take another look at my early morning habits and see if I can wring just a bit more out of life by taking advantage of all of the hours God has blessed me with.
Well, that and the fact that I’ve signed up (again!) to run a half-marathon in April and will need the early morning hours for the workouts necessary to get ready.
What about you? Are you a morning person or a night owl?