Friday, October 31, 2008

Are you a Morning Person?


Each of us has a unique time of day that serves us well and another time that does not serve us well at all. I know this because, I know for sure that I NOT a morning person. Never have been and have no intention to change that. This despite the best efforts of my family over the years.
So why is this important I hear you ask? The reason is for you to be able to perform at your optimum levels and achieve more in your day it is important to know when you are at your most alert and when you are at your least active (shall we say). By becoming aware of out best and worst times of day we can then make this time work for us. It seems to be a waste to spend your least attentive time doing your most difficult tasks. However many of us tend to do that without really thinking about it.
My challenge to you is to identify when you are at your peak performance during the day and when you have an energy slump. Once you have done this then you can begin to effectively use your time to handle difficult tasks at your most attentive time and easy stuff when you are low in energy. 
What got me thinking about this was today's 5.20am start to take my daughter and a friend to rowing practice. My husband who is a morning person gets great pleasure, I am sure, to see me roll out of bed and drive across town to then return to bed at 6.15am promptly fall back to sleep. You see he is the morning person in our home, so thinks it amusing that I groan and moan and then go back to bed. However alternately if I ask him to do something at 10pm I would get much the same response as I give him in the morning, you see I am a night owl.
There is no right or wrong as to whether you are a morning person or not, but can you retrain a night owl? Not at 42 years of age I say, you know "old dogs...."!!! However our daughter who is so so in the morning has trained herself to be a morning person through necessity and always wakes with a smile. Our 2nd child is a natural Morning person and has bounced out of bed at the crack of dawn since a young age with a beaming smile as well. However number three takes after me and it takes nothing short of a earthquake and crowbar to get him moving in the morning. Yet we all live harmoniously under the same roof, and do our best work at different times of day.
So find your best time and use it, and forgive those who's best time may be the opposite of yours.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mornings are evil, sweetie. With the exception of one TV appearance each quarter, when I have to get up before I normally go to bed, I don't do mornings at all. Any clients expecting me to organize them before 10a (and honestly, before 1p) are pushing their luck. ;-)

It tickles me when you are tweeting in *your* morning, as it's evening and nighttime in my time zone. Perhaps we need to be one another's snooze alarms?

Anonymous said...

Can you be a morning person AND a night person?

I usually have no problem getting out of bed, but on the other hand, I am still floating around at 11 o'clock at night! My doze time (I wish.....) would be about 3pm!