Waking up early

Commentary

In antiquity and the middle ages

In the ancient Greek treatise Economics, customarily attributed to Aristotle but commonly considered a work of one of his students, rising early is promoted. The Chinese proverb, "A year's plan begins in spring, and the day's plan begins in morning", emphasizes that morning is the most important time of day. It has been recorded in proverb anthologies as early as the Liang dynasty.

Anthony Fitzherbert, English judge and scholar of the Middle Ages, also promoted early rising:

Marcus Aurelius, in the beginning of the fifth book of his Meditations, advises against 'sleeping in':

In modernity

Similar ideas were later expressed by Benjamin Franklin who wrote in Poor Richard's Almanack: "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise". It is a saying that is viewed as a commonsensical proverb, which was included in "A Method of Prayer" by Mathew Henry who also listed it as a phrase "long said", and previously appears in John Clarke's Parœmiologia Anglo-Latina (1639). Franklin is also quoted as saying: "The early morning has gold in its mouth", a translation of the German proverb "Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund".

In 1855, Anna Laetitia Waring published a book entitled "'Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise', or, Early Rising: A Natural, Social, and Religious Duty" sometimes misattributed to Franklin.

Within the context of religious observances, spiritual writers, most notably Saint Josemaría Escrivá, have called this practice "the heroic minute", referring to the sacrifice which this entails.

"The early bird gets the worm" is a proverb that suggests that getting up early will lead to success during the day. Which brings to mind the immediate counterpoint: "what about the early worm, shouldn't he have stayed in bed?"

James Thurber, in his book Fables for our Time, ended the Fable of the Shrike: "Early to rise and early to bed, makes a Shrike healthy, and wealthy, and dead".

Criticisms

Such recommendations may cast individuals with different natural sleep patterns as lazy or unmotivated when it is a much different matter for a person with a longer or delayed sleep cycle to get up earlier in the morning than for a person with an advanced sleep cycle. In effect, the person accustomed to a later wake time is being asked not to wake up an hour early but 3–4 hours early, while waking up "normally" may already be an unrecognized challenge imposed by the environment.

The bias toward early morning can also adversely affect adolescents in particular. Teenagers tend to require at least 9 full hours of sleep each night, and changes to the endocrine system during puberty shift the natural wake time later in the morning. Enforcing early start times despite this can have negative effects on mood, academic performance, and social skills.

References

References

1. Winfield, Chris. (21 January 2018). "The Secrets to Waking Up Early".
2. (25 May 2007). "10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It".
3. Rubin, Gretchen. "Be Happier: Wake Up Earlier".
4. "Aristotle, Economics, Book 1, section 1345a".
5. (2012). "Zeng guang xian wen". Hang zhou : Zhe jiang gu ji chu ban she.
6. Anthony Fitzherbert, [https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A00884.0001.001/1:4?rgn=div1;view=fulltext#:~:text=That%20is%20to%20say%2C%20Erly%20rysyng%20maketh,semeth%20shuld%20be%20suffici%C4%93t%20instruction%20for%20the The boke of husbandry] (1523)
7. Aurelius, Marcus. "Meditations".
8. Henry, Matthew. (2015). "A Method of Prayer". Christian Heritage.
9. [""Early Rising: A Natural, Social, and Religious Duty""](https://archive.org/details/earlytobedandea00frangoog/page/n4/mode/2up}} {{Cite web).
10. Escrivá, Josemaría. (1939). "Number 206". The Way.
11. (September 2010). "The Bird Worm Matrix".
12. Thurber, James. (31 Mar 1983). "Fables for our time". [[HarperCollins]].
13. "Teen sleep: Why is your teen so tired?". Mayo Clinic.
14. (June 2002). "Later start times for high school students". University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development.
15. (2 February 2021). "School Start Time and Sleep". National Sleep Foundation.
16. O'Callaghan, Tiffany. (2010-07-06). "Study: teens benefit from later school start". Time.