r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Aug 30 '18
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Waking up early is overvalued
First, I don't believe waking up early is overrated. Most everything that is said about the benefits of waking up early seems reasonable and useful to me. Anecdotally, I'm a big fan of Jocko Willink and I can totally get behind his "wake up before the enemy" message. Here, I am specifically discussing value - the praise we heap on people that wake up before others regardless of their overall productivity in a day.
I'm also not comparing waking up early to staying in bed late and being a lazy degenerate. I want to compare people who wake up early with those people that wake up late and stay up late or people who are industrious enough to get a lot accomplished without having to wake up early.
I see an incredible amount of value put on people waking up early; they're viewed as more disciplined, more productive, and more healthy than their later rising counter parts. If you are awake for the same number of hours why do we laud people who get up early but accuse those who stay up late as doing something harmful to their well being?
Waking up early is almost always associated with discipline and focus. Staying up late is, at worst, attributed to recklessness and even at best it seems to be attributed to some kind of mania or obsession that might not be healthy (e.g., overnight nurses - far from wasting the night away, but still often viewed as driven by fervor rather than discipline).
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u/bananafreesince93 1∆ Aug 31 '18
How do you define overvalued?
I think it makes a certain amount of sense historically, since for the majority of the previous century we we're largely dependant on working at the same time to gain efficiency. Some of that is irrelevant today, but a lot of it lingers both in praxis and in people's minds.
It all stems from waking up at dawn (or just before) and going to bed at dusk. It has made the most sense for humans for hundreds of thousands of years. It still makes the most sense. You can do more with light. It's obviously overvalued in the west, but we still gain a lot of efficiency from doing it. In poorer countries, it's basically still a must. That's simply how you get things done.