Richard Drew/AP
Apple CEO Tim Cook follows a routine that starts with a 3:45 a.m. wakeup.
- Tim Cook wakes at 3:45 a.m. to get a head start on his workday, with time for exercise and email.
- I tried his schedule for a week to see if it improved my productivity.
- I loved the extra time to work, and the way it let me communicate with East Coast colleagues right at the start of their day, but it wreaked havoc with my evenings and sleep schedule.
- Here are my observations about trying to adjust to Tim Cook's early morning schedule.
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Starting the day ludicrously early seem to be a badge of honor for CEOs like Apple's Tim Cook, who famously gets out of bed at 3:45 a.m. every day.
Cook is far from the only one - Richard Branson, Jack Dorsey, and Bob Iger are just some executives who wake up hours before the rest of us.
Could keeping that kind of schedule be some sort of magic elixir that unlocks the keys to productivity and success?
I am a full-time work-from-home freelancer, so in principle, I have the flexibility to set my own hours. Typically, I get up around 6:30 a.m., and after exercising, I'm ready to start my workday around 8 a.m.
But there are never even remotely enough hours in my day. I constantly juggle endless tight deadlines, phone interviews, a daily deluge of email, and the need to record, produce, and edit a weekly podcast. I generally work until about 7 p.m., but there are days when I continue to sit in front of a monitor until bedtime.
Could something as simple as sliding my wake-up time back a few hours help me to take better control of my day? I decided to reset my alarm for a week - Monday to Friday - to see if Tim Cook's wakeup routine could make a difference.
Here's how my week of waking up like an Apple CEO went for me.