Early Mornings and Late Nights

Solitude offers the best opportunity for deep work and for the thoughts to flow. Solitude is oftentimes found when everyone else is asleep. Traditionally I have used early mornings as the focal point for this sort of conversation but I have seen a recent perspective making me expand it to late nights. In both the early morning and the late night, when you are awake and active with no one else around, no distractions buzzing away at your phone, you are more easily able to enter a flow-like state where deep work is achieved. Not everyone wants to wake up early and not everyone wants to stay up late. These hours are where we can distance ourselves from our competitors while also fueling our personal dreams and desires.

There is a gentle quietness to early mornings. Everyone else is still wrapped inside their beds and we are awake, alone, in a world of our own thoughts. Given any sort of physical activity our bodies and mind are fully charged to attack the day. We are able to hone in and focus on any task we want to provide the best and most dedicated work. By starting early, we are starting each day with wins. We then channel these wins to our performance for the rest of the day. Early mornings are about dedicated and focused work. We get things done and proceed about the rest of our day.

Late nights are more somber in their attitudes. The day has strung its course and people and the world around seem to drift off into their respective dreams. Late nights seem to offer a higher sense of creativity and work done with that particular section of the brain. The night owls emerge and being their reign. Late nights are a way to wind down the day and let all of the ideas emerge that have swirled in our minds all day. We put these ideas to work at night. Late nights enable us to end the day on a win or with progress enabling us to feel successful about the day’s work. It is not about how we started the day it is about how we finished.

If the morning is about distinct and factual productivity, the nights are about seeing where the mind can flow and all that can be conquered. Flow and deep productivity are absolutely still a fixture of the late night, I personally just view the two time periods differently. The point in expanding my view of when solitude should be found and utilized was to emphasize it is a personal preference. Deep, focused work is possible and sought out on either spectrum of the clock. By living in the darkness, either in the early morning or late at night, we enable ourselves to have more productivity than those around us. This extra productivity is how we expand our ability to succeed. Love the darkness and embrace the work that comes with it.