Getting up early does not make you a better human being

More productive possibly, but not morally superior

A few months ago, I wrote a really ranty post that I didn’t upload to Substack because I decided, on balance, that it wasn’t particularly measured and was basically me having a massive frustrated go at my poor husband. But I thought of said post when I read an article in The Times yesterday that said we’re all becoming a nation of early risers and how this is incredibly good for our health, etc etc.

The piece went on to say that if you try, you can control your genetic propensity towards morning larkdom or night owlishness and that you want to be aiming for the former.

I find myself conflicted on this. On the one hand, yes. Now that my alarm goes off daily at 6.30am (and I in turn try if I can to be in bed by 10 at the latest) I can see there are some benefits, although I also still find if I really want to concentrate on being able to write a piece, say, it’s often easier to do it late in the evening as then I 100% know I won’t be disturbed.

I no longer have any truck with lying about in bed until after about 9am at the most. HOWEVER I still consider anything before 6am still The Night, hence my rage a few months ago.

At the time, I was really knackered (never good for an even keel) - partly because I was regularly waking up at about 2am then lying there for a few hours, mind racing, before eventually dozing off and then being woken up by my alarm, which left me feeling as if I’d been run over. But also because my husband had taken it upon himself to start rising at 5am, ostensibly to get a head start on the day. Since having children I have become the world’s lightest sleeper, and even though he was extremely quiet, I would always wake up when he got up, and then lie there trying to get back to sleep, with the added stress of knowing the alarm could go off any minute. AWFUL. So generally, I was walking round like a total zombie, even grumpier than usual and basically struggling to function.

The whole thing put me in a general rage about the moral superiority lots of people - particularly men, I find, - assume about waking up early (I think lots of women wake up early to get a head start on the day too, but tend to talk about it less). For days I chuntered on about how selfish it was/why would he prefer to lose some hours of sleep AND piss off his darling wife etc. And then one morning I picked up the book that had sparked all this off and totally lost it.

It’s called The 5Am Club (subtitle: Own your morning; elevate your life), by a man called Robin Sharma, who is supposedly a ‘globally respected humanitarian.’ This book has also supposedly sold 15 million copies worldwide.

I will bet you any money that they were all bought by midlife men having some kind of small crisis. They are definitely the target market - as far as I could see the book does not mention a single female voice, or hold up a woman as any sort of example as to how to live. Instead it promises to share ‘how great geniuses, business titans and the world’s wisest people (yeah right, I thought) start their mornings to produce astonishing achievements’, as well as ‘insider-only tactics to defend (!) your gifts, talents and dreams against digital distraction and trivial diversions so you enjoy fortune, influence and a magnificent impact on the world.’ Excuse me while I’m a little bit sick in my mouth. The format is that it is a supposedly ‘enchanting - and often amusing - story about two struggling strangers who meet an eccentric tycoon who becomes their secret mentor’. I mean, gosh. It’s A Little Princess all over again right?

But no. Because this book was not, I found, charming, or enchanting, and it will not transport you to another world and leave you with a feeling of warmth and a renewed faith in the innate goodness of humanity. If you don’t believe me, turn to page 235, which contains a handy table about what your morning should look like. Remember that Mark Whalberg schedule that had everyone reeling/laughing/weeping a few years ago? It’s like that, but with no actual humanity.

At 4.45am, for example, you will rise for ‘personal care’. This includes hydrating ‘as it fuels the mitochondria of your cells to release ATP, which elevates your energy’. WTF? Do you mean ‘have a glass of water as you’ve just been asleep for about 8 hours and your body needs it’? Between 5am and 5.20am you Must Sweat. Maybe with terror from reading this awful book. 5.20am-5.40am is for scripting your ‘Pre-performance Blueprint’ - what the actual fuck is this and what does it mean - then you get to read for a bit. At 6am you get to make family connection - although again, not sure what this means, as apparently it’s supposed to elevate the tone of your morning and promote joy and calm but I can guarantee that in my house if you try and make family connection at 6am you will generally get a few grunts and possibly an elbow in the face as the duvet is pulled up tighter. The whole thing goes on through the day with work, meetings, reading etc etc.

NOWHERE in this table is anything vaguely domestic mentioned. Where is ‘empty the dishwasher and let the dog out for a wee’? Or ‘plan what you’re going to feed the kids for dinner’? Or even ‘eat’? Between 1 and 5pm you’re supposed to ‘break-fast’ and ‘family mealtime’ is between 6 and 7.30pm, but there’s no mention of who is preparing this family mealtime, or when that is being done. Presumably in super-successful man world there are slaves to do that for you and you don’t need to bother yourself with the domestic minutiae of chopping an onion or washing up - and those sorts of things can’t be in any way bonding or companionable or fun anyway.

I just thought it was so totally and appallingly full of assumptions, and lacking in any sort of compassion or humour or awareness of what a good life well-loved looks like. And more than anything else, it’s unbelievably self-centered. Between 6 and 7.30pm, for example, you’re supposed to take a nature walk with your family (ha!) but only because the positives of that are ‘social connection, adventure and community service’. Community service! Spending time with your family is community service?! Is this guy actually joking?

I was slightly reeling that my husband - an intelligent, kind, humorous man - had been taken in by it. And it is SO appallingly written to boot. Listen to this: “It’s not the old ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog’ insight,” declared the billionaire as he rubbed his chiselled abdominals absentmindedly and put on a new pair of sunglasses, the kind you’d see on a surfer in California. I mean! It’s like EL James has gone trans and taken acid, or something. It’s just SO BAD.

I am generally not that big a fan of self-help books anyway. I find that mostly they are pretty badly written, a bit ‘live, laugh, love’ (for the female ones) and a bit ‘maximise your best most successful self’ (for the male ones). I also think the genuinely wise, interesting people I’d like to learn some life tips from are usually too busy, not enough up their own arses and have enough integrity to waste their time pumping this shit out there in a cynical attempt to take cash off people. And yes I do have a few of these books on my shelves but mostly I start to read them and get bored with their awfulness and the fact that they don’t transport me to somewhere nicer or more interesting, and so I stick them back on the shelf and read a novel instead. The only self-help book I have ever read the whole way through is one called How to Not Hate Your Husband After Kids. And the reason I read it through was that it was funny and moving and useful and thoughtful - it wasn’t about the author, a journalist per se - or at least it was, but it was about all of her, warts and all, and it was about her marriage and her husband and her child and their relationship and the things that pissed her off and why some of it was her fault and how they could make them better together - and WHY IT MATTERED because she didn’t want to get divorced, she wanted to have a healthy relationship with the person she;’d chosen to spend her life with. Crucially, she wasn’t holding herself up as some sort of guru of how to do this stuff, and she had an actual sense of humour, because she is an actual human and didn’t need to invent some weird strangers and an eccentric tycoon to get her point across. I loved it and it made me laugh out loud. And I’m damn sure she wouldn’t have mooted getting up 2 hours earlier than her husband as a way of making their marriage better either - she seemed much more likely to be the sort to snuggle in a bit more, possibly have some sleepy morning sex then go and make him a cup of tea.

I actually have no problem with people who get up early. When we lived in America (in the midwest) we had lots of friends who would go to bed at about 9pm because they’d then get up at 4am to go to the gym. I will never go that far, but as previously stated, I’ve got earlier as I’ve got older. If I didn’t have to set the damn alarm I think my preferred routine would be to have a martini, see friends for dinner or watch some good telly, turn in about 10pm and read my book for a bit then wake up at about 7am. Sometimes yes, I do get up before 6.30 because I have a deadline to finish or I need to potter about for a bit before everyone wakes up or, in times gone by, I needed to get to the office for an early shift.

But the point is, getting up early to do this stuff - or, yes, to meditate or whatever might yes make you a bit healthier, but it does not make you a better person. It might mean you get more done, or you get a bit of personal time; it might also make you less fun in the evenings (my husband during this time took to going to bed at 8pm; it was like living with a pensioner) or not a person to share a bed with if the person you live with is not rising at that hour every day. I go to the gym, I’m just more likely to do it in the middle of the day or in the evening. And I pray and meditate, but I do it on a walk with the dog, or a friend over the phone.

What I don’t do is treat my life like a project that’s independent of all other beings, and when I am given advice by a man who writes as badly as this one it makes me want to do the exact opposite. I certainly don’t think going on a walk with my kids is community service. (Well, sometimes it is. )

Anyway, happily, now, my husband does occasionally get up at 5am, although not every day, and mostly I now seem to have trained myself to roll over and go back to sleep - either that or he’s got even more mouse-like. So all is well.

What about you? What time do you get up in the morning? Answers in the box below please.