How to Schedule Your Day, From What Time to Work Out to When to Have Sex
Everybody, whether they admit it or not, has at least one extremely specific, strongly held belief about how to live according to the clock. Maybe your parents drilled it into you, from a young age, that 6 a.m. is the only acceptable time of day to rise. Perhaps you have a friend who swears that sad desk salads actually taste good at 3 in the afternoon. Maybe your child insists that 7 p.m. is for a little cuddle and a bedtime story, no exceptions. With 24 hours in the day and infinitely more personal doctrines to fill them, the possibilities are endless. Here, we present an entire day and night’s worth of highly subjective wisdom—the surprisingly ideal time to take a jog, the thing you’ll never guess happens at 4 a.m., and so much more. Think of it as a schedule of how to live the perfect life, one hour at a time, each recommendation a doorway to a new-year habit you didn’t know you needed. —Jenny G. Zhang
-If you’re waking up after 7 a.m., you’re doing it wrong. I can hear your complaints now: “But what about sleeping in?” You don’t need to. “What about staying up late?” Don’t. “What about going to that party?” Sure, knock yourself out. But bail earlier than you think you should—leave precisely one hour before you know you’re going to wish you were in your bed, which is, almost certainly, a maximum of two hours after you’ve arrived. (Tomorrow morning, you won’t miss those last two drinks.) Then, set your alarm for 7.
Waking up early means you actually get to enjoy the day. You can go grocery shopping before it gets too crowded, you will likely never have to rush for work, and you might even have time to start the day off with a morning walk or some other endorphin-encouraging activity. Plus, 7 a.m. is perfectly settled between too early and too late: 6 a.m. is acceptable only if you’re going to the gym; otherwise, you’re just a masochist. And 8 a.m. feels too close to 9, which is far too close to the hour life really gets going, 10.
Oh, you’re not a morning person? Neither was I. Then I became one, and so should you. What is there to complain about? Do you hate seeing the morning sun, or having time for a real breakfast, or generally avoiding stress? I’m sure there’s lots of science saying one thing or another. But I’m gonna be real with you—I don’t care. Waking up early is great, it has never steered me wrong, I feel better when I do it, and you will too. —Nadira Goffe
-One can argue that no one should ever post on social media, because it’s a waste of time, or an unflattering form of attention-seeking, or evidence of widespread moral rot. I don’t have an answer for that, but what I can say is: If you’re going to post, then do it at 8 a.m. It’s the perfect time to tweet (I’m sorry, to X) your most contentious take, to upload that embarrassing attempt at going viral on TikTok, to anonymously share an irrepressible secret from a burner account on Reddit.
Why 8 a.m.? Because at 8 a.m., you can set it on fire, then walk away. You probably have a job or children to raise or classes to attend or some such, so after you post, then you’re off to attend to your obligation—thus preventing you from spending the next few hours obsessing over how many likes, comments, and other metrics of social-media engagement your post has accrued. (This is assuming you are a productive member of society and not a slacker who furtively or openly scrolls through the internet at work—which, if you’re reading this while at your 9-to-5, clearly does not apply.) By the time you log in again—let’s say around noon, on your lunch break—enough time will have passed that you can be pleasantly surprised by whatever responses your post has elicited: Wow, my old college roommate reacted with a fire emoji! Yes, got four whole likes! Cool, user “cumbucket69x420” called me an idiot! Congratulations, you have now gotten everything that’s good out of social media (expressing your opinions, connecting with good friends like cumbucket69x420) while avoiding everything that’s bad (it breaks your brain and turns you into a monster). —Jenny G. Zhang
-Flights are sneaky. When you think “early morning flight,” you probably think of something that takes off from the tarmac at an objectively early time. What can be difficult to remember, when you’re perusing Expedia from the comfort of your home four months away from your travel date, are all the annoying facts of air travel, like getting to the airport, going through security, and building in a buffer in case things are a shit show. Something like, say, 8 a.m. might sound like a reasonable time for a flight because 8 a.m. is a reasonable time by which to be caffeinated, dressed, and headed somewhere. But in air-travel land, 8 a.m. actually means waking up at something like 4:30 a.m., which is, really, the middle of the night. And planes these days—small and cramped, not to mention that you often have to pay to ensure that you won’t end up in the middle seat—are not ideal conditions for a nap.
Maybe you’re more of an early-morning person than I am (or even less of one). Maybe you live right around the corner from the airport, or are one of those people who feel fine sprinting to your gate as the final boarding call is announced. Adjust your exact flight-departure-time rule accordingly. Mine is very slightly flexible depending on other specific conditions of the trip—soon, I’ll be taking an 8:30 a.m. flight to a beach vacation. Yes, I’m going against my own advice, but I thought long and hard about it! For one, all the other reasonably priced options involved annoying connections. (I will pay a small premium in time and money to adhere to my rule, but not an exorbitant one.) Two: Upon arrival at my destination, I plan to immediately snooze under a palm tree. Unless you can say the same, just say no to pre–9 a.m. —Shannon Palus
-Allow me to explain. In spite of several decades of efforts on the part of the soft-drink industry, we do not generally drink soda at breakfast time. This seems like a solid rule to me: Soda is bad for us, and while we may expose our teeth to all number of sugary cereals and doughnuts and coffee in the morning, we grant dentists this one small concession. So the all-important question of when you should drink your first soda of the day—for me always a Diet Coke, but follow your heart—is really the question of the earliest possible socially acceptable time to eat lunch. The answer to that, as determined by me and also McDonald’s, is 10:30 a.m. At 10:30, or maybe 10:15 if you really can’t wait (or, OK, 10, but not a second before!), you’ve gotten through a little of your day. If you’re working, you’ve made a call, answered an email or two; you’ve gotten started. You’re over at least one of many small existential humps you will encounter throughout the day, and for that, you’ve earned a little pick-me-up. Even if you indulge in a few Diet Cokes every single day—and, after all, why shouldn’t you?—the drink should always maintain the status of treat rather than utility. If you wait until 10 or 10:30 in the morning to have your first one, it will. —Heather Schwedel
-Brunch’s delicious promise is as a twofer, an economical and efficient substitute for both breakfast and lunch. With an 11 a.m. start, you can comfortably skip your usual early morning bowl of Wheaties, knowing that good company—for brunch’s other delicious promise is as a social occasion—will distract you from the initial twinges of hunger. Your stomach rumblings, however, can be kept at bay for only so long. Then, sometime before noon, moments before your appetite pushes you to the brink of irritability, your challah French toast magically appears. Rescued at the perfect instant, you can linger with your friends at ease, free from worry until dinnertime.
Yet I constantly encounter people who insist on delaying brunch until the early or even midafternoon. At those hours, we’re no longer in the neighborhood of breakfast time, and even lunch is overdue. No amount of bottomless mimosas can sustain my good cheer for that long on an empty stomach. Sure, I could whip up something at home to tide me over. But if I’ve already eaten breakfast, then what is the point of brunch? I shouldn’t have to pregame before dropping $23 on a gravlax Benedict.
The scourge of afternoon brunches also means that it’s now near impossible to find a proper lunch on a weekend. Restaurants have entirely replaced their midday menus with quinoa pancakes and truffle hash, with no concessions made for someone seeking a time-appropriate dish. A 3 p.m. meal may be something, but isn’t brunch. Cook up your own portmanteau and leave me my objectively correct 11 a.m. brunch. —Evan Chung
-When I moved to California in 2015, one of the first things I did was sign up for the 6 a.m. class at the nearest CrossFit gym. I was new to the Pacific time zone and already felt as if I was starting the day behind friends and colleagues in other parts of the country. I figured I had no choice but to get my workouts in at the crack of dawn. It sucked. I was always tired, I hated force-feeding myself oatmeal before the sun came up, and I’d end up totally gassed by 10 a.m.
I made some halfhearted efforts to work out at night, but that sucked too. I like to enjoy my evenings and slide right into the dinner hour. And this schedule only got harder once I became a father and we had to get rolling on our toddler’s bath and bedtime routine.
Then, one day this year, while waiting on some edits and a couple of return phone calls, I got a bolt of inspiration: If nobody needed me for half an hour or more, I would sneak downstairs to the garage and knock out a workout. And if I was really efficient, then I could even fit in a quick shower to refresh myself before getting back to my desk.
I was surprised by how well it worked! But I shouldn’t have been. People—and yes, managers are people too—often expect employees to disappear for lunch in the middle of the day anyway. But if you’re the sort who eats at your desk, you don’t need more than a few minutes for your leftovers or Lunchables or protein shake. So get up. Go exercise while you can, whether that’s in your garage or at the gym closest to your workplace. Reclaim your mornings and evenings. You can even answer Slack while you’re stretching. I promise, no one will miss you. —Joel Anderson
-We are creatures of habit, my partner Elizabeth and myself. We try to have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and an evening break at the same time each day. I think it’s good for your body to have regularity. Between 1 and 1:30, in the period after we’ve just eaten, I find somewhere as quiet as possible, either indoors (in front of the television, when it’s cold) or in the garden (the wooden pagoda I built in my back garden, when the weather is good), and I chill out. I just turn off for 20, sometimes 30, minutes. I got a little rescue dog, and when the postman comes, he barks. That’s usually at 1:20 p.m., so I wake up then. I try and do that every day. —Gerald Stratford, “big veg” gardener and author of Big Veg
-… Or, to put it more precisely, 2 p.m. is the last time of the day that you really should be embarking on a new project. This applies to a work project or a home project, going to a museum, making pasta, anything that involves some kind of effort. Why? Mornings are usually eaten up by all kinds of various tasks, including caffeinating properly, showering, commuting, and also getting through enough loose-end endeavors so you’ll feel as if you can really focus on your big undertaking of the day once you do buckle in. If you start too late, then you risk ending up with a halfway-ripped-through closet at bedtime. But starting right at 2 p.m.—it’s go time, not slump time!—means that you will, in all likelihood, be able to wrap up and finish by evening, the perfect time to reward yourself with a cocktail (see: 6 p.m.) and dinner. —Susan Matthews
-I love to ride my bike around the neighborhood; you might want to take a walk, or go for a little drive, or just stand at your window and look at the street below. But whatever your approach, do it, because 3 p.m. is when all the kids get out of school, which means that it is the hour of maximum intergenerational mischief on the sidewalks of America. You want cute? Check out those wide-eyed kindergartners, reaching up to hold their parents’ hands, mittens clipped to sleeves and noses running freely. You want mischievous? Watch as a gaggle of sixth grade girls giggle behind their hands and show one another something absolutely outrageous on a phone. You want Proustian? Observe a high school boy struggle to keep his cool as an attractive classmate wanders past. Then throw all these children onto the streets at the same time, and the opportunities for madcap delights increase exponentially. And every once in a while, you’ll get to witness the human poetry of the young weirdo in the wild. I still think fondly of the day, riding up Little Falls Road, I saw a seventh grader stop in his tracks, pick up a grimy hubcap that had fallen off someone’s, like, 2013 Jetta, hold it wonderingly to the sky, and carry it all the way home. —Dan Kois
-I have to start with a concession. If you have a job that contributes something necessary to the world or benefits anyone in any way, this rule may not apply. A nurse can’t just stop working at 4 p.m., for example, nor can a cashier at a grocery store. But if you have what the disgruntled and terminally online refer to as a “fake email job”—that is, a job that requires sitting at a computer, at home, or in an open-plan office, while doing nothing of great import—you might as well stop working at 4 p.m.
At 4 p.m., your mental reserves are spent. If we’re being honest, they’ve been spent since midmorning, but they’re particularly so at 4 p.m. In the winter at 4 p.m., it’s already dark. It’s basically nighttime. You can’t work under those conditions. You can’t even “work”—meaning, browse the internet while sometimes emoji-reacting in Slack to pretend that, actually, you’re still there working on something—under those conditions.
At 4 p.m., particularly in the winter, you should be fully engaged in a postwork activity. The TV should be tuned to last night’s Watch What Happens Live. You should be chopping something for dinner. You should be folding laundry. You should be taking a shower and getting ready for whatever you’re doing later. Life is too short to pretend to do your fake job after 4 p.m. You’ve been pretending all day! Now it’s time to relax and try not to think about whether you should have chosen a different career. —Kelly Conaboy, author of The Particulars of Peter: Dance Lessons, DNA Tests, and Other Excuses to Hang Out With My Perfect Dog
-As a freelancer, I work mostly from home, and I have to admit that not every workday is productive. Sometimes I “work” all day, but really, I am doing the work of not working, so that I can eventually kick-start the productivity hack consisting of feeling guilty and scared enough to actually complete whatever task I need to do to get paid.
This is where the 5 p.m. zoomies come into play. At this point, I normally have spent hours sitting down, either actually being productive or just trying to be. Regardless of my output, 5 p.m. is when I mentally clock out. When the “work” day is over, I go crazy like a cat or dog does. I experience a burst of energy to release all my guilt from not doing enough. I run around my apartment, wiping down things I usually ignore, like my baseboards. Or I end up pranking my friends via text by sending something like “Hey, are you busy? Something so crazy happened today.” And because my friends are lovely people, usually at least one person takes the bait, texting back, “What?!,” only for me to reply with something stupid like “I keep hearing that uptown funk gonna give it to ya. Is that true?”
I can’t recommend 5 p.m. zoomies enough. We all need a ritual to officially end the workday, and running around with a duster, the frenetic energy of a crazed pet, and fingers itching to send the most ludicrous texts is at least pretty harmless. Your friends and your baseboards will thank you for it. —Sarah Hagi, Toronto-based freelance writer and co-host of the podcast Scamfluencers
-Really, you want to be drinking only one martini per night. And my grandfather had it right (though his preferred time was 5)—a martini is the perfect first cocktail, a zippy, cheerful hello to the evening, or a brusque goodbye to a tough day at the office, as the case may be. 6 p.m. is also great because martinis are decidedly pre-dinner drinks, geared as they are toward whetting the appetite, and there is nothing quite like having one at the bar before you go to your table (or walk to another restaurant), preferably with a small snack. (They also make cooking at home much more enjoyable—try it!) Drinking martinis much later than 6 is liable to put you into dicey territory—no one really needs to be having a second or, God forbid, a third martini ever, but sticking to that wisdom becomes more of a gamble the later it is. And anyway, the pleasant buzz from one should last you well into dinner but, importantly, not much past it: Drink your martini early enough, and you’ll remember it without despair when you wake up the next morning. So do yourself the favor of making your martini consumption—just one!—a 6 p.m. ritual. You won’t regret it. —S.M.
-With the caveat that there is no truly great time to break up with somebody—I once got broken up with at 12:30 p.m. on a Monday, which I would like to propose as the worst possible time to get broken up with—and it’s always going to suck, 7 p.m. is good because it is likely that the person has finished work by then. If you’re doing it in person (and come on, do it in person), then they have the whole evening to lick their wounds but don’t have to fight through the rest of an entire day. It’s also early enough that they can probably see a friend or duck into a dive bar once it’s over, and you also get to leave and order yourself a nice conciliatory takeout for dinner or whatever. Specifically, 7 p.m. on a Thursday is best for this, because everybody can frog-march themselves through a single workday to get to the weekend and wallow. You don’t really want to mess with their weekend plans by doing it Friday or Saturday, and if you break up with someone at 7 p.m. on a Sunday, you are, unfortunately, a monster. —Imogen West-Knights
-There is a good chance that 8 p.m. was your first-ever bedtime. That was the curfew put in place by my parents on most school nights to prevent me from napping through the following morning’s pre-algebra. These days, my bedtime usually hovers around midnight, but in my household, 8 retains a sense of finality. If we are hosting guests on a random Tuesday or Thursday—as in, not a weekend—then they better be coming through the door before evening morphs into night.
8 p.m. is the absolute latest one can schedule the start of a dinner party, or a board game night, or a post–happy hour soiree before things get weird. It is almost shocking how much a twilit 8:30 hits different. As soon as we cross that horrible Rubicon, the idea of entertaining anyone deeper into the clock can give me an anxiety attack. Will my sleep schedule ever recover? Am I about to be ambushed by a brutal hangover? On the other hand, 8 p.m. itself carries a certain sanctified, well-intentioned dignity. Whatever you get up to on its welcoming shores does not require an explanation. A night out that begins at 8 and trickles over into the wee hours is the spice of life. But if you all meet up at the bar at 8:45? That’s when you stare at yourself in the mirror the next morning, wondering where it all went wrong. —Luke Winkie
-Now that we are forced to admit that alcohol is bad for us, we need to wind down from a long day some other way. May I suggest: the night run. You need to do it after you’ve had time to digest dinner, but early enough so that you’re able to shower and blow-dry your hair afterward, as well as have a little post-run snack. So, 9 p.m.
I started night running one summer in college, when I had an on-campus gig and most of my friends had gone home for the break. A true 9-to-5 and no social life—what else was I supposed to do with my time? Running after the sun went down was also a strategy to beat the Northeastern heat and humidity, factors which have only grown worse in the years since. These days, I do my night runs mostly at the gym, using the Peloton app to do a quick high-intensity workout before bedtime. I think many people have the idea that you’re “supposed” to work out in the morning, or you’re somehow virtuous if you do, but … doesn’t running at night actually sound more hardcore? And it’s just practical: The 9 p.m. run allows you to sleep in in the morning and burn off any excess energy at the end of the day, rather than running first, then going to work exhausted. I do not run exclusively at night; I have friends now. When I’m training for a marathon, I do many runs during the daytime. But those runs, which interrupt everything else, are inferior. —S.P.
We polled 100 of our friends, family, and colleagues (HR was cool with it): What’s the best time to have sex? The results were illuminating. A plurality of people are horny night owls, with 9 p.m. getting the most votes (and nearly 40 percent of all respondents choosing the 9-to-11 window). Surprisingly, though, the next most popular time for hanky-panky is … 3 in the afternoon? The work-from-home revolution really has changed things! And frankly, we’re in awe at the handful of respondents who are somehow getting busy between 3 and 5 in the morning. We’re just glad you found people who share your inexplicable perversions.
-This truth initially occurred to me as someone with a kid that goes to bed around 7 and a husband who tends to fall asleep before me, but I firmly believe that the timing is perfect for everyone. If you have kids, they’re probably in bed by 10 p.m. If you’re married, your spouse is likely to be so tired from the day at this point that if you slip away, they won’t even notice. If you’re one of those twentysomethings who like to party, it STILL WORKS because 10 p.m. is far enough away from dinner that you’re probably a wee bit hungry and slipping away for a little snicky-snack is the perfect battery top-up for making it to closing time at the bar.
The key is: Treat yourself alone. The treat itself can be anything that sounds good—my go-to is a scoop of the really good ice cream that I buy and hide out in the garage freezer—though if it’s something you’ve been looking forward to all day, all the better. But the solitude part is what really sells this golden time. People are exhausting. It is impossible to stress how good it feels to have even 15 minutes when you are alone, you aren’t working, and the time is 100 percent your own. I hear some people take baths, get facials, or even exercise as forms of self-care. But in my book, having a treat when it’s dark outside, the little light above the kitchen sink casting a warm glow upon you and your morsel of joy, is the best way to relax from head to toe. —Cheyna Roth
-Many times, I have forgotten whether my friend’s birthday is today or tomorrow. I hate sending a birthday text on the wrong day and having them awkwardly reply, “It’s tomorrow!” or “Better late than never!” So, if you’re unsure whether your friend’s birthday is, for example, Tuesday or Wednesday, my trick is to send the birthday text at 11 p.m. on Tuesday. If I’m correct and it is Tuesday, I’ve slid in just under the wire and, more importantly, proved that I obviously cared so much about this birthday that I had to send this text before I peacefully slumbered at the end of my chaotic day. If it turns out the birthday is actually on Wednesday, then it looks as if I remembered on my way to bed and, despite not being a night owl, still wanted to be one of the first people to leave an “HBD!” message waiting for them whenever they check their phone, whether that’s at midnight or in the morning. This trick is even more advantageous if you have a bicoastal or otherwise long-distance friendship because you can always blame an early or late text on the time-zone difference. But I can assure you that it works fine in the same time zone as well. If you’re unsure, just have faith that the details of your slightly late/early note will be lost in the (I hope!) deluge of other birthday wishes that your friend receives. —Candice Lim
-You’ve been at the bar for an hour, maybe two; by midnight, everyone’s run through their favorite songs, they’ve had a couple of drinks, and fatigue is starting to set in. The temptation is already arising in some less-wise singers to dial up a power ballad, an anthem to bring the night to its gentle close. But you know better. What the evening needs, at this exact moment, is for some noble general to rally the troops. That’s why, when the familiar drumbeat begins—BOOM chck boom-boom chck boom chck—the entire bar or private room or den will go absolutely nuts. They didn’t know how badly they needed someone to lead them into the glory of the rest of the night until you sang “I’m standin’ in the wind/ But I never wave bye-bye.”
Must it be “Modern Love” by David Bowie? No. That is the correct song for my demographic group. Your “Modern Love” by David Bowie may be “Dancing on My Own” by Robyn, or “Love on Top” by Beyoncé, or a song I am far too old ever to have heard of. Choose the “Modern Love” by David Bowie that is right for you. And at midnight, grab the microphone, stand tall and proud, and be the hero the evening needs. —D.K.
-Have you ever watched a lady who looks kind of like your mom wash her hands over and over while murmuring ceaselessly about “baby grace”? Winced at a keyed-up hostess wearing an oversize sweater printed with a giant martini, olives cascading over her shoulder, as she screams, “I know you’re breaking your nails, pulling out those credit cards”? Witnessed a well-known fashion designer gaze with total lack of recognition at a “mock demi-leisure shent” bearing his name, then argue about the official color of that garment with another salesperson? “ ‘Blushing rose’? No, darling, it’s definitely ‘Sandusky rust’!” No? Well, pour yourself a drink and sit by me—we’re staying up late to watch QVC!
Or HSN. Or any of the five or six shopping-channel derivatives that make up the streaming app on my Roku. It doesn’t really matter, as long as we’re watching at 1 a.m. The wee hours are when these channels feature late-night sales on which the hosts get punchy, products get wacky, and the whole TV marketing enterprise starts to veer thrillingly off the rails. And to be clear, we are not here to shop! We are here to wonder at the manic, absurdist heart of capitalism as it tries to seduce and entice with its silliest gewgaws and doodads, all available for six easy flex payments of $14.99. I find it soothing, honestly, to stare into the abyss, as a little treat, right before bed—but then, of course, I used to listen to Coast to Coast AM as a teen. If that’s your vibe, feel free to join! It doesn’t have to cost you anything, except perhaps an eensy-weensy bit of your sanity. —J. Bryan Lowder
-I grew up in San Diego, surrounded by marijuana in all of its various smokable forms. But as happened to many people, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I made a wholehearted leap into weed gummies. Edibles dramatically expanded my conception of what cannabis can do when it has burrowed deep within your metabolism. The most crucial of these discoveries? Sometimes, on certain nights, weed has the power to keep you awake, in twilight consciousness, for hours on end.
I’ve learned to love this sensation, so much so that on certain languid weekend nights, I schedule an edible to reach its dulling apogee at exactly 2 in the morning so I can spend a few hours of late-night desolation getting up to all sorts of debased marijuana activities: deep-scrolling through early 2000s Conan interviews, making a quesadilla in the microwave, looking at my Twitter feed, in stone-cold silence, until daylight begins to creep through the window. Imagine having to talk to someone while on an edible. A fate worse than death! If you want to create an airtight seal within which one can be suspended in lobotomized bliss with no jolting, unwanted distractions whatsoever, I encourage you to join me in my 2 a.m. adventures in the void. —L.W.
-It might be a sinister nightmare that jolts you alert, or your body demanding to do its thing in the restroom. But if you must endure a rude awakening, there is no better time than 3 a.m. to lie in bed, unable to persuade your brain to shut it all down. Let the rest of the world sleep: You’ve got a dark room, the deep silence of the early morning, and the entirety of the internet beckoning you from your nightstand. Now is the perfect moment to learn all the tenets of ethical birding or, a personal favorite, read every Reddit post you can scrounge up about real-life encounters with mountain lions. Prefer to go analog? Grab a notepad and put all that anxious energy to work: Outline an entire vacation itinerary (much of which may need to be scrapped in the daylight). Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you do—after approximately one hour, you’ll finally drift back to sleep, getting a few good hours in before your alarm goes off. When you wake up, you’ll look back in wonder on that time you spent trapped in the netherworld, the evidence of which remains in your browser history, the knocked-over glass of water, the notepad that reads “Day 3: Hike the entire El Camino de Santiago.” —Paola de Varona
-Many nightlife newbies—and even some veterans—make the mistake of leaving the club or the rave way too early. Maybe you arrived around 11 or 12 to avoid the worst of the lines. By 2, you might be running out of steam (or whatever else was propelling you). Your feet are likely tired. Erotic prospects may have failed to materialize. 3 a.m. can be one of the most challenging times sonically and energetically. The vibe may have shifted in ways that fail to move you—darker or harder sounds, for example, as compared to the disco or house that drew you. Undoubtedly, other folks have started to pack it up and head for the exit. But resist the temptation to follow. Let them go. The tide is changing.
Let’s imagine that the club closes at 6. The hours between 4 and last call can offer a kind of dancing meditation. You can fight the current or you can float, allowing yourself to be carried away. Seasoned dancers have learned to welcome this period of recalibration; many don’t even arrive until after 3 for just this reason.
This change in mood is because good DJs don’t just curate; they pilot the ship, taking you on a narrative journey. They do this by keeping time, reading the room, playing with tension and release, and deciding when to give you what you want and when to give you what you need. Around 4 a.m. is when my favorite part of the journey takes shape: the beginning of the end. This is when the DJ starts their slow descent back to earth; it’s when they are most likely to delight you with an underappreciated deep cut or a delicious swerve in genre; and it’s also when you have (hopefully) figured out how to finally relax into your role in the larger communal project of the set. If you can allow yourself to be part of someone else’s story for the next two hours, you may find that one of life’s great pleasures is being present for a perfectly executed landing. —Charles A. McDonald, cultural anthropologist
-As a hobby, single-player gaming takes attention, reflexes, and uninterrupted focus. If you work a full-time job, you may be tempted to game in the evenings, after work lets out. That approach is dead wrong, buddy. After work you’re tired, your reaction times are slower, and there are invariably other people in your life who are awake and whom you could (arguably should) spend time with.
I used to be like you, an after-work gamer, trying to play through the latest buzzy indie release before bed or do an hour of Splatoon 3 just before dinner. Then I discovered the magical gaming hour that is 5 in the morning. While it might take a few minutes for the fogginess of sleep to clear, in the early dawn you are coming into your full sharpness, unblunted by the cares of the day. Also, most normal people are still fast asleep, so there’s nothing and nobody around to disturb your catlike focus. Good luck, Godspeed, and git gud! —Evan Urquhart
-At 6, you are in bed and the world is quiet and all that can happen to you over the course of the day has not happened yet. You still love yourself. You still believe in yourself. You still have not fucked anything up yet. Here is your time.
First things first: Do not look at your phone. Do not touch it. Your phone is not your friend. Sometimes it feels like it is, but that is a lie we are all telling ourselves. Second: Lie there perfectly still with your eyes closed. You are not sleeping nor meditating nor being lazy. You are preparing to be mentally active. Now: Think. Imagine. Press play on the creative spirit. Do not critique any thoughts you have. Just allow things to move around inside your head. This is the best chance we have for a fresh idea to form—if not bloom entirely. At 6 a.m.
If you want, keep a tiny notebook next to you. A safety net, in case you are worried you will forget an important idea. When you are done, you will be able to embrace the day—or at least enter it with a fighting chance in a decent mood. You have given yourself a gift. That beautiful early daydream moment. It is for you and no one else. —Jami Attenberg, author of 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round
