Is waking at 6 am practical?

Since the last year, I have been trying to wake at 6 am consistently. My highest streak went for two weeks.
Let me tell you what changes I saw when I woke at 6 am. Read till the end for the dark side of this.

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash

My very recent attempt to make 6 am morning a habit failed. But during those two weeks, these changes I saw compared to when I woke at 9 am.
I've to go to the office around 10 am and leave around 6–7 pm. So my schedule will be accordingly.

1. I got the chance to have breakfast: which was skipped earlier. Boiled eggs/ muesli/masala oats/omelette/chana and moong sprouts, etc.
2. Got to work on my side projects/hustles: Being in front of the laptop for 9 hours drains the energy out of you, and if you want to work on your side hustles after work, that requires a tremendous amount of willpower. Doing side hustles first thing in the morning spared me from sitting in front of the screen after the office.
3. Meditate: Waking up early gave me 3 hours extra. In these 3 hours, it was easy to spare 5 minutes for sitting in peace. This morning meditation felt more mindful than evening meditation since I didn't have the pressure of many pending tasks.
4. Mindfulness: Instead of getting ready quickly and rushing for the office, I had a ton of time. I eased into brushing/bathing/toilet/breakfast/coffee etc. I could quickly drink my black coffee instead of chucking it all at once and rushing off.
5. Peace: No emails, messages or calls come at 6 am. It's purely your time, and you have peace. This felt like the most productive time to do everything I never had the time to do.
6. A lot of stress-free time in the evening: With no hustle left to do, I had a lot of time left in the evening. I enjoyed hanging out with friends, going to the gym and having an evening walk which was being missed due to lack of time or hustling.

These were the benefits I had waking up early. Everyone says the same thing. But what did go wrong? What did I miss?

Photo by Johannes Roth on Unsplash

1. A lot of Coffee: I asked Alexa (smart speaker) to set 2 alarms at 6 am and 6:30 am to ensure I woke up. My Alexa is kept in the hall and doesn't listen very well from the bedroom. So if an alarm is ringing, I have to leave the comfortable blanket on my queen size bed, go to the speaker and ask it to shut the fuck up. This made me lose my sleep making sure I woke up at 6 am.
   But here's the twist, did I sleep at 11 pm to make sure I had 7 hours of sleep?
   The answer to that is never. My sleeping time was 1–3 am. It was impossible to sleep 4 hours early.
   The result was 4–6 hours of sleep. Then to work the day, I had to rely on a lot of black coffee. This eventually eased, but the first few days were hell. I slept the whole damn day on the upcoming Sunday.
   Everyone says to ease into a new habit. Suppose you awake at 9 am, try reducing it by ten mins every day. But we humans are impatient. We want a big-bang change quickly.
2. Low motivation at work: Having already worked for 2–3 hours in the morning. It wasn't easy to put 6–7 more hours before the screen at 100% efficiency.
3. Missing late-night chats or hanging out after 11 pm: This was a bit bummer cause I was used to this, and it eventually led to the crash of the 6 am routine.

Concluding, the positives here highly outweigh the negatives. I would sure do this again. But this time, by making incremental changes.

As James Clear said in Atomic Habits :

All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision.

Cheers :)