How I Inverted My Day
How you can turn temporarily nocturnal, keep up your productivity and health, and a FREE Notion template to help you design your ideal morning routine.
Since I was a kid, I've always enjoyed waking up early. I love beginning my day at 5 am with exercise, Yoga, and morning pages. For the last month, however, I have been training for my new job by working at PST hours. Since I live in India, this has meant working all night and sleeping in the day. You can imagine that it was a tough transition for me.
In this edition, I will explore what I've learned about sleep schedules, inverting your days, morning routines, and what all this means for productivity.
1️⃣ You can invert your days
The first thing I learned this month was that it is possible to completely invert your days and work nocturnally. What's more, if you manage this transition well, you'll also begin to like this new routine because it will be an exciting experience. I was very apprehensive of this not working out because I didn't think it would be easy to learn to work all night long and then learn to sleep during the day while also managing the meal-time transitions. It did take a couple of weeks, but my body has already adjusted to the new timings, and I feel hungry and sleepy at the right times.
2️⃣ Your productivity won't be affected
The next thing I learned was that my productivity was not affected by these new work timings. In fact, with everything being so quiet and peaceful at night, I found myself doing much more than I'd expected from myself. What I had the most trouble with, however, was sleeping during the day. While I powered through the night working with no problems, I struggled to wind down in the morning to finally fall asleep on time to wake up again in the evening. This meant a series of days where my sleep and appetite were severely disturbed. But even on such days, I continued to power through the night working and finally managed to learn to wind down for sleep in the mornings.
3️⃣ You need a routine
Finally, I learned that the way to manage such transitions in timings was to have a routine and to stick to it consistently. If you're trying to invert your days and work at night, make sure that you repeat the same routines and behaviors you would have during your normal days. For instance, what's your morning routine like? Do you exercise, or read a book, or do some Yoga? Set yourself a time for when you'll wake up, and make sure that you begin with the same routine. Similarly, how would you normally end your days? Maybe you clean your desk up or close all windows on your screen one by one to let your brain know it's time to wind down. Follow the same steps while you're ending your work in your new schedule as well.
I designed a FREE template for you to design your ideal morning routine. Feel free to use it at whatever time your day begins:
These have been my three highlights from the productivity and personal growth space this week. If you liked what you read, connect with me on Twitter and let me know. If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, subscribe to GrowPro Labs here to receive it in your inbox every Monday.
I'm on a mission to make Mondays great, and this newsletter is a part of my efforts in helping you achieve mindful productivity, personal growth, and living your Ikigai.