About 2 weeks ago, starting from the end of the vacation, I decided to wake up ealier than usual. I found that I do not have enough time when I can concentrate on one topic without any interruption. Since the lockdown with COVID, messengers like Slack and Skype/Zoom discussion became daily events. While these technologies definitely help us to communicate better, one shortcoming is that I get easily distracted. I even have tried to use an airplane mode at some point when I needed to concentrate, but it didn’t work quite well. At the end, I felt a bit isolated and could not keep up with all the recent updates within our group.

That’s why I started to work in the early morning. Since I work at home most of the time, waking up at 5:30 or 6:00 is already sufficient. I just need 10 mins to prepare and go to my office which is the livingroom. So, I am pretty much on my own from 6 am till 9 am. I have a breakfast meal in between, and start to do “regular works” from 9 am. From this time, I am quite availalbe for discussion with my colleagues. Therefore, it turned out to be a very nice solution. The only problem is I have to sleep early in the night, and sometimes I just cannot especially I have a large meal for dinner and drink a couple of beers and it takes a few more hours for the digestion.

Anyway, in the morning hours, I’m trying to do works that requires most of the brain activity and creativity, such as research planning/proposal, writing a paper, and theoretical formulations and derivations. By now, it’s been almost 2 weeks, and I find the result very satisfying. I mostly spent time writing a paper, and I found myself highly productive than usual. Also, I finish work quite early, near 16:00, and I have time to enjoy walking in the park and exercising. I hope I can keep this habit!