Why sleeping and waking up early are associated with how much you make

Following are 10 reasons why you should wake up at 4.30.

One, waking up early gets you better salary, better health and better job satisfaction as the two studies below demonstrate.

Study 1: “Late bedtimes and late wake up times are associated with an unfavorable activity and weight status, independent of age, [gender] …and sleep duration.”[1]

Study 2: “…both job satisfaction and salaries were higher for people who woke up earlier. People who said they woke up at 5 a.m. were bringing in an average of $46,000 a year, which was the top salary of survey participants.”

Qur’an chapter 17 verse 78 asks us to wake up early and pray fajir(morning prayers). Muslims are then advised not to go back to sleep thereafter.

Unfortunately, many of us go back.

Indeed, many of my truly successful friends wake up early and do not go back to sleep. Correlation between success and working in the morning was found by Christopher Randler, professor of biology at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany. He said, “When it comes to business success, morning people hold the important cards. My earlier research showed that they tend to get better grades in school, which get them into better colleges, which then lead to better job opportunities. Morning people also anticipate problems and try to minimize them.” He added, “They’re proactive. Many studies have linked this trait, proactivity, with better job performance, greater career success, and higher wages.”

Neil Patel, for example, runs three multi-million-dollar companies while sleeping 9.25 hours a night.

Two, the world appears to be designed for early risers. And 4.30 A.M. has been globally recognized as a favourable time to wake up. Google “wake up at 4.30“ to confirm this.

Three, interviews with successful people around the world showed that rising early in the morning was one of their secrets to success. This may be because of the fact that rising early is a keystone habit.  A keystone habit gives birth to other smaller habits as Charles Duhigg argued persuasively in his book, “The Power of Habit.”

Prophet Muhammad (May peace be upon him) asked Allah to bless the mornings of his people: “O Allah, bless my nation in their early mornings (i.e. what they do early in the morning.)” (Sunan Ibn Maja)

Four, if you start your work in the morning, you are likely to finish it. I could not complete my Ph.D. until I started going to the lab at 6 A.M. By noon (six hours later), I was done for the day.  That was when some of my colleagues would bounce into the lab to do “work” but instead, they just chatted and I gladly joined them because I had finished my work.

Five, when you wake up early when others are still sleeping, your body tells you something: that you are now a leader. You would feel it in your bones. You would be beyond anything petty. If you belonged to the club of the Easily Offended, little irritants would no longer affect you.

Six, your peers, partners and colleagues respect you when you wake up early.  They consider you an awesome person – doing the impossible.  There was a time my wife woke up earlier than me. She would pray at night and later wake me for morning prayers. I was envious of her. “You are not the leader of this house,” I told myself, “not when your wife woke up before you.”

Seven, “Muslims should have an edge in the world,” Dr. Musa A. Ibrahim once told me. “They are required to wake up early to pray and then encouraged to go out into the world and earn. Unfortunately, after prayers, they go back to sleep,” he said. I agree.

Eight, if you wake up early, that would automatically reset your circadian clock so you would sleep early. By 9.30 P.M. you would be ready to go to bed. If you sleep early, your brain would be well rested and you would see the world more clearly and react to it more calmly – making you smarter.  A 2015 study by Jacob Nota and Meredith Coles of Department of Psychology Binghamton University USA showed that people who go to bed later are more likely to be troubled by repetitive negative thoughts.

Nine, I noticed that I don’t go broke  when I wake up at 4.30 because I’m able to pray at night to Allah for my needs, go to the mosque, go for a morning walk (and generate good ideas) come back home and do some work before the world gets the chance to distract me. In an article on the benefits of waking early, entrepreneur.com stated that sleeping early keeps you healthy and “getting enough rest keeps you energized enough so that you can exercise — besides, waking up earlier gives you the time to squeeze in a workout before you get distracted. And, when you sleep-in, you tend to skip breakfast, which means when you do get hungry you’re going to crave unhealthier options.”

Ten, I once read that  “Anyone who travels early in the morning gets to his destination.” When I travel early in the morning, my vehicle does not break down. In addition, I have had a few accidents on the road, none of them in the morning.

All in all, this is about being a morning person versus being an evening person.  Therefore, the question you may be asking is whether being an evening person is bad.  No.  There are actually a few favourable things mentioned about evening people.  For example, the research by Randler cited above stated that evening people tended to be more creative.  However, his study also showed that morning people are more active, persistent, cooperative, agreeable, conscientious, and proactive.

In addition, a study by Dr. Joerg Huber of Roehampton University in London found that “Morning people tend to be healthier and happier as well as having lower body mass indexes.”  The question is, which will you rather be?  I choose to go with morning people.

So, do you want to be a leader, accomplish goals, be healthy, get enough shuteye and provide for your family? Wake up at 4.30 or at least wake up early and begin the day while others sleep.

How do you start?  By simply saying: “tomorrow, I will wake up at 4.30!” Then, set your alarm accordingly.

PS: This column is from my book, The Social Science of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).