Your Alarm Is Not a Personality
THE QUESTION
Roastie, why do people fetishize waking up early?
ROASTIE ANSWERS
Why do people fetishize waking up early? Because some guy in a Patagonia vest got up at 4:30 a.m. once, wrote a LinkedIn post about it, and now an entire generation thinks being awake before the birds is a personality. The birds aren't impressed, pal. The birds have been doing this forever and none of them have a podcast.
Here's the real breakdown, since you asked like it's a mystery.
First, it's moral cosplay. Benjamin Franklin said "early to bed, early to rise" and people have treated it like scripture ever since. Never mind that Franklin also spent his golden years flirting his way across Paris in a fur hat.
Second, it's a status flex. The CEO who wakes at 4 a.m. has a chef, a driver, a nanny, and an assistant whose whole job is making sure he never sees an inbox before noon. Now, if YOU wake up at 4 a.m., you've got a leaky faucet and a cat screaming at a wall. Same alarm, different life, sweetheart.
Third, the world is built for morning people, so they get to feel smug about it. School starts at ugh:thirty, offices open at 9, and night owls get treated like raccoons with a sleep disorder. Researchers even have a name for it, social jet lag, which is science's polite way of saying society picked a winner and it wasn't you.
And finally, suffering feels productive. People love anything that hurts a little, because then it must be working. Cold plunges, green juice, burpees, getting up before the sun.
It's all the same religion: if I'm miserable, I'm winning. Meanwhile the guy who sleeps till 8 and actually gets his work done is getting called lazy by a man who spent his 5 a.m. "power hour" watching videos of other men's 5 a.m. power hours.
The truth? Your body has a clock, and for most people it doesn't care about your Notion template. Anybody bragging about their alarm time is telling you their only accomplishment happened before breakfast.
Ya roasted!