DO NOT wake up at 5am.

Waking up at 5am is not a magic method of becoming productive.

Waking up at 5am is absolutely a way for busybodies to make you feel shit about the time you woke.

Waking up at 5am can promote a burnout culture that pushes people over the edge due to an unhealthy routine and aimless wondering in the dark early in the morning.

Waking up at 5am is not for everyone.

But shit damn do I love waking up at 5am.

Nowadays I actually wake up before my alarm goes off. This is not a humble brag (although it does sound like one), this is a truth. I am so excited to start my day that I ping myself awake and get right to it. But I wake up with a plan every day. I wake up with a goal and various things that I want to achieve that day.

Waking up at 5am without a victory condition is like playing Monopoly but removing the money

To be able to wake up that early every day has taken me a long time to get right. I’ve had to change my diet, change my nighttime habits, change my sleeping habits and basically reorganize my life accordingly. This is not for everyone. Most people do not want to be in bed and sleeping by 21:00 every night and that’s absolutely fine.

The main reason that I wake up early every day is because I have taken the time to figure out what works best for me to achieve my victory condition. Let’s break this out into two parts:

What is a victory condition?

Every game has various mechanics that make gameplay possible. These mechanics control how the players win the game. In life, I like to think of victory conditions as the mechanics that you define that will lead you to successfully win your game.

Most people I know have never defined the mechanics of their own life. This means that they have never defined their own victory condition either. They have no idea what success looks like or if they’re doing the right things every day to achieve the success they have yet to define.

Waking up at 5am without a victory condition is like playing Monopoly but removing the money; You just end up going round and round the board for no real reason until someone flips the board over in frustration.

Defining a victory condition can be difficult so I suggest you start small. Wake up an hour earlier than you do now and try to achieve something in that hour. Write an article, read part of your book, go for a jog, meditate, walk your dogs or make your partner breakfast in bed. Whatever it is, set yourself a condition that determines what victory will look like. Then after you have successfully made this condition a habit, expand it a bit.

Right now my mornings are jam-packed full of things that make me happy and make my life more full. I go to the gym, walk the dogs, meditate and write. I do these things first thing in the morning because they are the things that work for me, energize me and fulfill me.

What works best for you?

Once you have defined your own victory condition you are going to have to figure out the best way to achieve victory. For some it’s waking up early, for others it’s staying up late, for you, it may be best to do things over the weekend.

If you don’t know what kind of person you are when it comes to waking up, sleep, exercise and diet then you can start experimenting. Don’t do it all at once though, humans have finite willpower. So waking up early, changing your diet and starting an exercise routine at the same time will break you.

Start with sleep and try to get to bed before 10pm, don’t set an alarm for a week and see what time you wake up. This will help you figure out how much sleep your body naturally needs. It’s likely between 7 and 8 hours per night.

Then start to eat less crap. Make yourself a salad for dinner. Then the following month start to exercise.

Over 12 months you will start to figure out what works best for you. It’s going to take you at least 12 months to work through the experiment but if you’re serious about this, you’ll work through it and then know what is best for you.

If it isn’t waking up early, that’s great! If it is, that’s great too. There is no right answer here. The only thing that matters is that you work towards your personal victory condition every day.

Fuck 5am wake up calls if they make you want to throw up. Just do what you need to do every day to be a little bit happier.