On Monday I started working an adjusted schedule. Instead of showing up at 8 and working until 5 like most salaried people in a professional services industry, I began working 6-3. Apparently my history/habit of showing up some time between 7 and 7:30 made me a candidate for the early shift. Four days in, I’m still adjusting to the new routine, but I’ve had some time for some observations to gel.
Waking up at 5:15 sucks.
Most people would agree with this. There was a period when I woke up at 5:30 to put my butt on an elliptical two years ago because it was first-come, first-served at the fitness center with its one elliptical machine, but I had really grown accustomed to a) waking up a few minutes before 6:30, and b) not feeling that tired in the process. This is a loss of another 75 minutes, and since I don’t believe in going to bed any earlier than 10, this presents a challenge. I’ve had to figure out how to cope with the loss of at least 5 hours of sleep a week.
Getting out at 3 is totally worth it.
Quick, what was the best thing about high school? Was it the early mornings? The eccentric ochestra or vaguely masochistic band director at that early hour? Was it making sure you got there early enough to spend a grand total of ten minutes with your significant other before they had to go to class? Or eating lunch at 10:30?
No. It was about getting out around 3.
Let’s do some math real quick. It’s still nominally summer, although most of the heat seems to go be gone (thank God). If I get out at 3, I’ve got around 7 hours of daylight left. 7 unbroken hours, which I have far more options with than if I got up at 5:15 on my own, worked out, went to work, worked until 5, and then came home. Getting out at 3 is fantastic. The day is still young. Despite working an entire 8 hours worth of work, you still feel like it’s a half day and you’re sneaking out early. I could go watch a movie and pay matinee prices. I could spend more than one hour at happy hour at a bar. I could go for a ten-mile run or a twenty-mile bike ride and get done and have dinner by 5. I could take a nap and wake up completely refreshed at 5, ready to take on the evening. Those extra two hours are priceless.
It does take a toll on you.
In some ways, working 6-3 does have its costs. They are, generally, the same as when you work 8-5, only they seem to be more pronounced. When you start at 8, you could be ambitious and choose to get up at 5:30 and work out (something I did far too little of this past year). You could wake up at 5:30 intending to be ambitious and decide that it’s not worth it and go back to bed for another hour, and nobody would know. Nobody would care.
When you give yourself a scant 45 minutes to get in the door at the office, though, you have no choice. Being up at 5:15 is not optional. You rub your eyes, ignore your cat’s whining about not cuddling all night long, and grope for the shower. You will (hopefully) adjust, but in the meantime, each day of the week becomes a little more difficult to start, like a car with a slowly dying battery in the fall. The worst part is knowing that come Saturday morning you will be awake and more or less incapable of sleeping around 6am, no matter how late you were up the night before.
Generally speaking, though, I love it, and once I’m done adjusting, I suspect I’ll love it even more.
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