Afternoons are Not so Friendly, Rise with the Sun

Mohammad Abdullah Janjua
8 min readApr 8, 2022
Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

Waking up Early

Being specific to this case, there are two sorts of people in the world, early birds and the night owls. The debate about the sleep/wake cycle of certain age groups has been in studies for quite a long and continues to hype up the case studies and facts over time. In some aspects, sleep cycles have been neglected by various people and considered irrelevant. However, relevant studies and neuro facts have proven your sleep cycle could affect the entire lifestyle, positive or negative.

Most successful personalities on earth have voted for early birds. Numerous times renowned people have been seen talking about the benefits and the positive impact of waking up early.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a person wealthy, healthy and wise— Ben Franklin

Certainly, there is no way to deny the impact of waking up early in the morning because it just compliments the natural habitat of the planet earth. But your sleeping pattern differs by age and current phase in life, however, let us understand it by the age. 24hrs a day is more than enough to progress exponentially, it just doesn’t seem like, it is due to our lack of utilization.

How Much Sleep do you Need by Age?

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You need to realize what is the best time to sleep and wake up. Studies have shown the amount of sleep a person requires varies according to age, and that categorizes the risers into different groups.

Adorable Newborn babies

15–17 hours a day

12 months old

10 hours a night time, around 4–5 hours day time naps

2 -3 years old

11 hours at night, 1-hour daytime nap

4–6 years old

10 to 13 hours of nighttime sleep

7- 13 years old

9 to 11 hours of nighttime sleep

14–18 years old

8 to 10 hours of nighttime sleep

Above 18

7–9 hours nighttime sleep ( 45 minutes day time nap) (6 -7 hours for good productivity) 45 minutes noon nap

The above shown is the basic necessary sleep time for individuals required by age, however, it differs from phase to phase and life pattern. Such as, if you are pregnant, then you must need more sleep than is required by your age. For 50 above, the quality of sleep gets degraded and the amount of sleep time could be disrupted against what is required.

Referring to the above-shown table, the data is basic to what disciplines are required behind these required sleeping times. The fact that matters the most is what is the time frame in between you completing the cycle. This table is irrelevant if you complete the cycle under a disturbing time frame of a day, such as sleeping around 6:am in the morning and waking up around 2:pm, the 8 hours of sleep is completed, however, the negligence of discipline, in this case, will give no benefit at all. So, it is important to maintain a healthy sleep cycle such as waking up early.

According to well-defined research. The human brain plays a pendulum throughout the day, it is a natural rhythm of moods one has to experience. The Global population has been majorly divided into two groups ‘Early Birds’ and ‘Night Owls’. These groups were made to identify the human swing properly.

Results show almost every human being is positive and gain more strength early in the morning because a higher amount of serotonin, and till around 11:am, the rhythm begins to change and serotonin is drained. As a result, it increases irritation, uncreativity, and negative emotional episodes.

Surprisingly, the whole positive mood charge return to its place in evening.

So I might not be wrong when I suggest you wake up early to achieve more and have a healthy break in the afternoon.

Life-Changing Scientific Benefits of Waking up Early

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There are numerous benefits of being an early bird. See, your brain is a Chrono machine that has its norms and values for its health. Therefore, the parameters by which it operates shall be taken care of as best as possible. Your brain tends to operate on a natural cycle and gets tired when it lacks rest. That is why night owls are mostly concluded depressed or suffering from anxiety, their brain is not completely operational because it lacks its diet, which is a good sleep cycle with quality sleep.

  • Willpower- Studies have concluded individuals who wake up early have robust willpower and tend to stay motivated during their daily activities. It is behind the fact that waking up early is itself a war between you and the bed, so people who have found a way to get up early automatically give birth to sensational willpower in themselves for their goals.
  • Positive vibes- Your brain operates based on your lifestyle. Waking up early forces us to sleep early, which helps generate positive thoughts and appropriate decisions for the very next day. If the sleep cycle is disturbed, most chances are your brain will interpret the next day with unpleasant ideas and predictions late at night due to lack of rest.
  • Discipline- Maintaining a healthy sleep cycle offers better routines and helps to enhance brain patterns. In the synergy of it, you fall into decent routines and tend to spend most of the day is highly active and wise. Secondly, this also helps our brain in searching for discipline in other aspects of life such as our work ethics, etc.
  • Productivity- Naturally, your brain feels more energetic in the morning. So whenever an individual wakes up early, the brain sets ideal tasks for the routines and helps to take wise decisions for the day. Moreover, you have more time to flex the body and get to work, set your task list for the day.
  • Decent habits- You are most likely to acquire decent habits such as tweaking your diet. Waking up early strengthens your immune systems and blood circulation, this change in the physical mechanism makes you crave a healthier diet and stay active. People who step up to change their sleep cycle have seen drastic changes in their socialism and family terms in a positive way. That is just because your brain forces you to fall into a better routine and acquire positive thought processes for you.

Pro Fact: Your mind should start the day without distractions and a sense of not having responsibilities. Nobody likes to have hectic responsibilities and thus when you wake up late, you have a task list ahead that has now become urgent due to a shortage of time. Either you will skip that for a day and stay unproductive, or you will rush yourself physically as well as mentally and perform those tasks inefficiently. Following up with both situations, waking up late will disrupt your productivity and performance.

The most appealing fact of waking up as early as possible (recommended 45 minutes before the sun rises) is that it will deliver a sense of relaxation to your mind, so you can start your day as calmly and as slowly as possible. By having the time to think, meditate, sit in silence and relax. Doing something just for yourself to keep you happy and positive until noon arrives that awakes the world and the time comes to perform on the tasks list.

Spiritual Benefits of Waking up Early

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The best impact of a good sleep cycle on life is enhancing spirituality. You must connect with yourself to give yourself what you want. Connection with ourselves is known as spirituality.

  1. The silent nature- It is the best time to absorb the silence. No kids shouting, No neighbor noises, no traffic, no cars, and nothing. Just you with yourself. That is the best time to become friends with your original version.
  2. A new page- Our mind is free of hectic thoughts and so it allows us to focus on new perspectives of life. That is why meditation has been associated with the early morning before sunrise.
  3. Past glitch- Your mind will be able to make you realize important things such as what have you been doing wrong till today, and what is the most important to you. This helps in increasing self-awareness and enhancing inner connection.
  4. Being sorry to yourself! You have done mistakes that have hurt you, forget about the toxic people, a question must be rose about what have you done for yourself. In the last quarter of the night, while the sun scratches the walls of the sky, my mind takes me into a self-realization loop, where I have examined myself. It has helped me to make commitments and eliminate harmful approaches from my life.
  5. A lonely connection- Why do people hate to be alone, or feel sad being a loner? Because there is no one to assist our emotions of any sort. The early morning time convinces us not to have anyone around for a time being, yet it doesn’t feel lonely, because we become our best connection at that moment.

Moreover, as in the effect of waking up early, we tend to sleep early as well. This helps us to disconnect ourselves from the materialistic world. The more we stay updated with the outer world, the more we get distracted from our inner world. Following up with this fact, early to bed helps us avoid distractions in a much stronger way. Have you ever seen somebody watching porn around 2:pm on lunch? Or at 8:pm on a dining table around dinner time? It happens when all of the socio responsibilities have gone past, or the time for them has gone. That is when distractions and negative approaches come into play. It is recommended to sleep as early as you finish your last task of the day, chilling with Netflix for a while is not bad, however, stretching it until you start craving another beer is!

Conclusion

Psychological and physiological changes in human beings occur overage, and change requires new forms of habits and routines. We mess up when we underestimate what our body and mind require at this stage of age or life. The thirst level maintaining the sleep/wake cycle is also determined by age. However, in unusual cases, you may find your body requirements unaligned with the durations I mentioned in this study. Sometimes it depends on your health conditions. But the above-mentioned durations by age group are proven to be authentic. Make sure you and your family keep up with a healthy routine to lead a healthy life.

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Mohammad Abdullah Janjua

I seek knowledge and wisdom in Books, Researches and the most valuable channel, Human Beings. Welcome to my bubble!