Get up when you Wake up

As I mentioned in my previous post about New Challenges, I have started a full-time job after many years of freelancing. One of the first challenges I've been facing is better time and energy management.

When I used to freelance, I was able to work on multiple things during the day including my personal projects, client projects, accounting errands, home errands, so on... However, my current role in Investment Banking requires me to join many meetings during the day and make sure that product teams have the designs they need to proceed in agreed timelines. So, once the working hours start, I'm 100% in this full-time work.

I struggled to manage personal projects and errands during the first few weeks. I can no longer do long nights to catch up on things. At least for now, it is how it is. I ran out of energy and creativity after a long day of work and meetings. I'm hoping to adjust to this new pace in the coming days and weeks.

So, for now, what I do is,

I get up when I wake up. I know it sounds silly, however, I believe it applies to most of us, the alarm goes off or we just wake up but we waste 10, 15+ mins turning in bed if not longer, fall asleep for 5mins, wake up again, so on and on... You don't get the rest you are after nor use the time for something productive.

Instead, I just get up as soon as I wake up. I put my alarm for 5:30 am, but I guess my mental alarm works better after a few days of training and I wake up sometime between 5:00 and 5:30 am.

This gives me about 1.5 hours before kids wake up and all the meetings start. I must say I don't remember when I was so productive last time! There is something magical about that early morning with a fresh mind. I get so much done in that ~1h and I'm looking forward to expanding it to 2h+. I'll try getting up at 5 am next week, and move to 4:30 am next.

There is not much I want to do out of work without neglecting my family and personal health. I still get to spend time with my kids after work, and time with my wife after the kids go to bed, and while everybody is asleep in the early morning, I have my time to do whatever I see value at; read, write, code, design, ...

If you have any comments or questions about this article, you can write me at Twitter @oykun or email me at hello[at]oykun.com.