The Myth of 6 a.m.

What some productivity “experts” haven’t awakened to

N.B. — I am not writing this in the morning.

Modern life is a collision of two forces: people and days, and more to the point — individuals and hours. This continual conflict has ruined many days for many people. This recurrent crisis cannot be solved but can be soothed by a clear-headed, hype-free look at the clash between people and the clock.

One of my strange hobbies is reading spam e-mails from self-proclaimed experts who claim they can make me rich by teaching me to be like them. The e-mails brag that these ”experts” in productivity and entrepreneurship are always “crushing it” because they “take total charge” over their days. They often attribute their super-macho productivity to waking up very early in the morning so they can start “crushing it” at 6 a.m. or earlier. Have these “crushers” really triumphed in the battle against the clock by waking up stupid early? Maybe. Let’s look at the conflict between individuals and hours without the tough-guy hype.

Let’s talk about hours in the day. People have conveniently broken the day into 24 units called “hours.” We can express the day as a line divided into 24 segments, from left to right — hour 0 to hour 24.

In terms of the day, one hour is equal to any other hour.

This block represents one hour of a person’s time spent on tasks.