Why waking up at 4:45am is smart? Because @petershankman said so

photo credit: doviende

I wake up at 4:45am every morning, with regularity. This wake-up time is routine except on very rare occasions when my schedule gets a bit screwed due to unexpected circumstances. The first thing I do is set up my coffee maker, pack my bag and head to the gym. If I have some time before hitting the gym, I schedule some tweets or approve comments (or I read). Some of you have asked me why I keep waking up “at Death O’Clock” Why waking up at 4:45am is smart? Because Peter Shankman said so.

I recently came across a blog post by Peter that validated my strategy. I would have not read this post had it not been for my friend Scott Stratten, who retweeted it (and I favorited it).

I have been waking up earlier and earlier as I made my own commitment in the past couple of years to maintaining a full-time social media life simultaneously and in synchronism with my academic and consulting life. I don’t want to quit either, so I cram a lot more in the day. As I read Peter’s points, I patted myself in the back “yes, yes, YES. I do ALL of these”. I felt incredibly validated

But this post is not an exercise in self-glorification. It’s a personal self-reflection on the fact that, almost no idea is new. My *brilliant idea* of waking up earlier and earlier and exercise, do my social media, read and work before anybody else is awake is not new. Peter Shankman blogged about it. And I’m sure others have too.

I love what I do, and the past year has been simply amazing to me, and I love that now I am making time to read (as I committed myself to do in 2011) – and I read more stuff exactly, as Peter says, while you all are sleeping.