Early bird

Rhododendrons at Tsazu

I browse articles on entrepreneurial skills and things like ‘how small changes can improve your life considerably’ and one common advice I find is this: Early to bed and early to rise. This goes out even to people who say ‘but I am a night person’. The advice comes with this practical guide: set your alarm 30 minutes early. If you wake up at 6:30 am, then set it at 6 am.

I think this advice is important because we follow Indian Standard time which is set in Allahabad. We might be 1 hour ahead of it. At 4:30 am, it is bright already here. We may be losing around 22,000 minutes per year of day light, which translates to 365 hours or 15 days approx. Bangladesh, which is west of us is ahead of us by 30 minutes!

This advice is said to be for the busy person as well who never has enough time (and work into the night). There is hardly time to meditate or think of matters that matter eternally. I was also reading about the person who wrote the beautiful hymn ‘This is my Father’s world’, my favorite hymn on nature. He would often say to his wife as he goes out for morning walk, ‘I am going out to see my Father’s world’.

Our bodies will fight the change in body rhythm, but if we try the incremental change of setting the alarm just 30 minutes early, we can get there to enjoy the benefits of being a morning person. In entrepreneurship or in any other life’s work, that may prove to be the difference between success and failure.