Day 15/21: Do You Have to Wake Up At 4AM to Be Successful?

Do You Know Your Chronotype?

"A little folding of the arms and poverty will strike you like a thief in the night." Proverbs 24:33-34

This verse is one of the many reasons I made it on time for 5am high school preps. Showered and fully dressed after a night of ‘transnighting’(is this even a real word?).

Convinced by my peers (peer pressure) and teachers if I slept less, I would top the National exams. I didn’t quite top the charts, but that’s not the point.

Point is high school taught me:

EARLY MORNINGS + SLEEP DEPRIVATION (4-5hrs sleep) = PERSONAL SUCCESS.

ears later, one of my business mentors followed up with “sleep is for losers.” He was the “I only sleep for 4 hours” kind of person.

OK he was also a bit extreme. But I followed in step and adopted the early bird, ‘worm-catcher’ attitude.

It took me years to understand that while I’m definitely a morning person, I don’t quite like waking up in the wee hours to do ‘hard things'.

It’s why I prefer to schedule work meetings after 9am/ 10am preferring the quiet of mornings to meditate, write or ‘work on’ things that contribute to my personal goals rather than goals for the collective (other people).

Do You Know Your Chronotype?

I also learnt my CHRONOTYPE; that is, my internal clock that impacts what time of day I am most focused, most creative, most likely to make a mistake, most likely to be in a good or bad mood.

There are different types of chronotypes:

1. The LION - who likes to be up very early and get things done as efficiently as possible. A lion doesn’t nap very often and is most alert right around noon.
2. The BEAR - who is in bed before midnight and most productive mid-morning to early afternoon.
3. The WOLF - most alert at 7pm and will sleep-in, in the morning.
4. The DOLPHIN - a perfectionist, has trouble sleeping, tends to work through the night and crash during the day.

I am a lion primarily but could turn into a bear depending on the season.

As an entrepreneur it’s important to know your chronotype to avoid blindly falling into the blanket 4AM/ 5AM club trap that doesn’t work for everyone.

At least not for Pharrell Williams, who gets out of bed no sooner than 9am. Or Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Box CEO Aaron Levie, and Genius cofounder Tom Lehman, who all wake up 'after 10 a.'

You could argue they can afford to, but contrary to popular belief, sleeping with one eye open neither guarantees productivity nor profitability.

But the world demands a lot from us. And the pressures of bringing home that big paycheck or working towards that million dollar pay day is enough to drag yourself out of bed in the darkness - for the hard things.

Safe to also assume, the fear of poverty is real and no one is immune.

I was listening to a podcast this weekend and a Dr Mathew Walker, a neuroscientist and sleep expert was talking about how big economies are losing 2% of their GDP because people aren’t getting enough quality sleep.

Quality sleep here being 7-9 hours of sleep!! Imagine sleeping 9 hours every day of your life.

This sleep crisis translates to $411B revenue loss in the US annually. In Japan and the UK, it’s $130B and $50B respectively.

I wonder how Kenya would fare considering we are a 'walking nation'.

It may explain why the world today seems to be going crazy.

Perhaps we are all a little sleep deprived.

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