Waking up early - in pursuit of the heroic minute

by m

Girl Geek: M performs an experiment to wake half an hour earlier each week to see what happens when the world sleeps. There's a classical term for it: The heroic minute...

The only sounds are the whirr of my room heater, the syncopated beat of raindrops on the window and the tapping of my fingers on the computer keyboard. No one else is awake, not even the birds. Not even the Sun has risen; my room is lit by the warm glow of an antique lamp. For the next hour, everything will remain in static harmony. Eventually my mother and siblings will be waking up, and I will have to leave my cup of tea and get ready for school. But for now, everything is calm and quiet.

I began waking up early because I simply didn't have enough time to do the things I wanted to do. After thinking about my 'daily schedule' of sorts, I concluded that the only way to find more time was to sleep a bit less. I didn't particularly like the idea; I had - and still have - unreserved fondness for sleeping snug-snug-snuggly under five blankets. Nevertheless, desperate times call for desperate measures and the plot I had in mind wasn't going to turn itself into a novel on its own... so I set my alarm clock for 5.00. Nothing overly ambitious, just thirty minutes before I would normally get up. Just in case the enthusiastic motivation I currently felt was nonexistent tomorrow morning, I placed my alarm clock on the side of the room opposite my bed, thereby ensuring I wouldn't simply reach over and slam the 'snooze' button.

Five in the morning worked. I had the time I wanted, and time entirely to myself. During the first week or so of my experiment, I was sorely tempted to just ignore the digital cries of my clock and stay warm and sleepy, never to ever venture out into the harsh and cold world - but my clock has this fascinating feature wherein, should the alarm not be turned off, it will persistently get louder and louder until rousing the entire house. Of course, after deactivating the alarm, the temptation to slink back under the covers still beckoned to me alluringly. But, usually, I was able to turn my back on the bed and instead go make some tea.

Waking up early is called, in several world religions, the 'heroic minute'. The most recently deceased saint in the Catholic Church, St. Josemaria Escriva, wrote: "The heroic minute. It is the time fixed for getting up. Without hesitation: a supernatural reflection and... up! The heroic minute: here you have a mortification that strengthens your will and does no harm to your body." This, I think, is true regardless of one's spiritual beliefs, or lack thereof.

A new action will become habit, for most people, in 21 to 30 days. By the end of the month, waking up at 5 - Monday through Saturday - was no problem. If 5 is so pleasant and productive, I thought, wouldn't 4.30 be even more so? And it was! I soon realized, however, that waking up early meant having my tea and toast early, which meant that by ten or eleven I was quite peckish. Happily, there exists a multitude of ways to remedy this unexpected side effect, including my favourite: drinking more tea. I was concerned with waking up my family with the sounds of making tea and brushing teeth, but that side effect never materialized. If you live with very light sleepers, however, you might want to take some precautions against unintentionally rousing them.

4.30 was better than 5.00, so wouldn't 4 be better than 4.30? The idea of waking up at four has, for me, a sort-of mad Victorian appeal to it. A few weeks ago, then, I duly set my alarm back another half-hour, fell asleep by ten and got up six hours later. Oh, it was grand. All the time I had - for reading the BBC, doing stretches, writing stories - was simply grand. Unfortunately, by the end of the week I was regularly dozing off during maths class, physics class, and history. Six hours of sleep was obviously not enough.

It seemed odd that only a half-hour could make such a difference, but my general daytime sleepiness did go away when I returned to 4.30. (Perhaps there were also other unaccounted for variables.) For now, I have settled at 4.30, but hope to achieve soon the ultimate crazed hour of 4 AM. My friends think I'm a bit ridiculous; I think they're a bit silly for not starting their days with a jolt of Zen dawn-time calmness and extreme productivity, but to each her own. And... up!

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