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."

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This morning I woke up in silence, smiling in the wake of a great dream I can’t remember. I woke up mid-stretch. My eyes opened and I immediately got out of bed. There was no hitting the snooze button, there was no grogginess, there was no loathing my morning routine. There was also no being ripped from slumber, mid sleep-cycle, against the better judgment of my body. There was just peaceful morning silence.

A week ago I ditched my alarm clock and after a week of alarm clock-less nights, I don’t think I’ll be looking back, at least for a very long time.

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People whose internal clocks are tuned enough that they always wake up on time, without an alarm clock, are generally on time and on the ball. I know a few.

As a heavy sleeper, the alarm clock has been an enemy throughout my life. I associate it with breaking my sleep cycles at all the wrong points and with prematurely waking others in the house.

I’ve experimented with getting up without an alarm clock for a while, but I’m committing myself to doing it this week. I’ll report back on the experience at the end of the week, and then again at the end of the month. My goal is to decrease dependence on the alarm clock without missing important events.

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