Healthy, Wealthy, and DEAD?: 5 Reasons Why Getting Up Early Might be Harmful

Editor’s note: This is a very old post from The Growing Life, my personal-development blog from 2008, recovered from the Internet Archive. It’s out of date and there’s much more to say now, but I’m keeping it here for the archive.

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.*

Benjamin Franklin

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.*

James Thurber

It is accepted dogma (perhaps even holy writ) among more than a few personal development writers that getting up early leads to increased productivity. Becoming an early riser has become something of a rite of passage for productivity gurus, and articles on how to become an early riser have been among the first written (and most popular) posts by self-help bloggers such as Steve Pavlina. There’s even an entire blog devoted to waking up early, and the blog claims that “any person who…sets serious goals in his/her life turns to rising early, sooner or later.”

Chronotype /krawn.uh.typ, krohn.uh.typ/ (n). The set of circadian factors that determine whether someone is a morning person or an evening person. Humans have been defined in terms of three major circadian types or chronotypes, using measures such as the Horne-Ostberg Morningness-Eveningness Scale, a subjective instrument which has been correlated with body temperature and other physiological factors. The three types are “morning,” “evening” and “indifferent” or “mid-range”. The first two categories each represent approximately 15% to 20% of the human population and the “indifferent” or “mid-range” category applies to the majority (60% to 70%) of humans.

Word Spy

Before I possibly offend someone, let’s get two things out of the way…

Who Should Not Read this Article

• This article is NOT for people who naturally get up before 5:30am and who have trouble staying in bed after that. If you’re a morning chronotype (i.e. a morning person), then count yourself lucky. Society is on your side.
• This article is not for people who, due to insurmountable logistical factors, have very little practical choice about getting up at some ungodly hour in the morning. I believe that anyone can succeed despite working against the better judgment of their body.

New research has found that each person has a distinct “chronotype”: a genetically programmed biological clock preference. This explains why some people like to stay up late, others are early-risers, and some sleep in on weekends.

Nova Spivack

Still reading? Cool. So before talking about why getting up early might not be ideal, I’m going to lay some groundwork by discussing…

Why Mornings Might Suck (or Why Getting Up Early Works for Some People)

• Morning is when blood sugar levels are the lowest. You’ve gone all night without food and your brain is off-kilter. Low blood sugar really affects your mood (adversely). Getting up three hours early allows you to preempt the blood sugar low and prematurely cut it off, head it off at the pass, etc.
• Levels of the stress hormone cortisol are naturally highest in the early morning and when many people wake up. Waking up before cortisol levels peak allows you to save yourself.
• For people who are not early risers (i.e. late or midrange chronotypes), the morning can present a horrible double bind. On one hand, you could get up and be tired throughout the day. On the other hand, you could stay in bed and risk being late to work. So what do you do? Hit the snooze button, of course :-). If you learn to go to bed early and train your body to wake up on time, you might avoid the double bind.

Normal variation in chronotypes encompasses sleep/wake cycles that are from about two hours earlier to about two hours later than average. Extremes outside of this range can cause a person difficulty in participating in normal work, school, and social activities. If a person’s “lark” or (more commonly) “owl” tendencies are strong and intractable to the point of disallowing normal participation in society, the person is considered to have a circadian rhythm sleep disorder.

Wikipedia

Another factor in favor of getting up early is that…

Getting Up Early Creates the Illusion of Free Time

Most people give themselves permission to do what they want when they’re up early. It really boils down to social conditioning: we give ourselves permission to focus on us when we know that our peers aren’t working. The same principle applies to the weekends: we might have tons of work to do, but we still feel comfortable sleeping in because we feel entitled to it. Also, getting up before email and voicemail start piling up allows us to work with a clear mind. And if we get up early to do job-related work, it creates the illusion that we are somehow getting ahead (work, however, is not a race and starting early is often just a temporary fix).

Despite the benefits of getting up early, there can be serious drawbacks if you are not an early-morning person. Indeed, if you are a late or mid-range chronotype there may be several…

Reasons Why Getting up Early Might be Harmful

• Getting up early could be defying your body. For many, waking up early is like kicking against the genetic pricks or swimming against the circadian tide. Tim Ferriss, author of the Four Hour Work Week, found that 1-5am “was the only time that provided consistent progress” when he was writing his bestselling book.
• Getting up early could affect the quality of your sleep. A study published in the Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research noted that quality of sleep suffered when study participants got up early. This, of course, makes sense: we’re likely to sleep better when we’re living in sync with our circadian rhythms.
• Getting up early can lead to sleep deprivation. Marc Wittmann, a psychiatrist at the University of California, showed that late chronotypes built up sleep debts during work days. For study participants, being forced to get up early did not equal going to bed early. (Takeaway: you’re likely to oblige your genes even if you are tired after getting up at 4:00am, or some other ungodly hour :-).
• Getting up early could decrease your productivity and creativity. Peak creative and productive hours can vary significantly from person to person (see point #1). If you get up early, you may be far too tired and therefore useless during times when you are most disposed to being creative and/or productive.

Early risers prefer to gather knowledge from concrete information. They reach conclusions through logic and analysis. Night owls are more imaginative and open to unconventional ideas, preferring the unknown and favoring intuitive leaps on their way to reaching conclusions. Social behavior diverges as well: Morning people are more likely to be self-controlled and exhibit “upstanding” conduct; they respect authority, are more formal, and take greater pains to make a good impression. (Earlier research also suggests that they are less likely to hold radical political opinions.) Evening people, by contrast, are “independent” and “nonconforming,” and more reluctant to listen to authority, which suggests that teachers may have several reasons to prefer those students who wake up in time for class.

Juan Francisco Díaz-Morales

• Getting up early could be affecting time with family and loved ones. If you get up at 4:30am, then you’ll have to be in bed by 8:30pm (and start getting ready for bed at 8:00pm, 7:30pm?), if you want the full eight hours. This could very well result in missed evening time with your spouse and children.

“Interesting,” you say, “but what about the Franklin vs. Thurber thing in the quotes at the top of this article?” I’m glad you asked…

*Early to Bed/Rise Not Associated with Health, Success, or Death

With reference to the Franklin vs. Thurber debate alluded to at the beginning of this article, a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found no correlation between bed habits, income, educational attainment, or mortality rate. Takeaway: early to bed and early to rise is not connected to health, wealth, or wisdom.

Final note: There are lots of points and counterpoints to this issue (what are yours? I’d love to read your comments). For example, the cited research was based on group data, which means that all findings might not pertain to you; the findings do, however, pertain to the average person in the studied population. There is, however, no average person. I should also mention that Leo Babauta and Steve Pavlina appear to be great people and their blogs have helped me immensely. They have shared experiences of what has worked for them, but they by no means claim that getting up early is unequivocally THE WAY.

Gratitude!

• To Skellie: for educating and inspiring me to write better articles.
• To Timothy Ferriss: for confirming my suspicion that people do experience peak creativity levels at insane hours :-).
• To Leo Babauta and Steve Pavlina: for getting me to think about early rising in the first place.
• To Mother Fools Coffee Shop: for providing a great writing environment.
• To Trisha Brunner: for the great photograph.

And gratitude to you for reading!

~Clay