The 5AM Myth: My Productivity Didn’t Start Until I Stopped Following the Rules

7 minute read

I was never a morning person—at least not for the last 15 years.

During college, I rarely thought about sleep. But looking back now, I see how deeply it shaped the trajectory of my work, my research, and my creative energy.

We’re told that waking up early is the secret to success. I followed that rule—and it didn’t work very well for me. Here’s the real story of how I finished a PhD, building a YouTube channel, and rediscovered balance by unlearning what everyone else calls productivity.

My journey wasn’t linear—it swung from 3 AM coding sprints to quiet 5:30 AM writing sessions. The productivity world loves a one-size-fits-all formula, but the truth is messier. Here’s how I navigated between chaos and calm to finish my PhD and finally feel in control.

🌅 From Sunrise to Fluorescent Light

I grew up in a remote farming village in Bangladesh. We didn’t have electricity, so naturally, my life followed the sun—I went to bed early and woke up with the daylight.

But when I moved to Dhaka after 10th grade for school, everything changed. I started living with friends. School started late, so we stayed up even later. I’d study deep into the night, and wake up just in time to run to class. I was able to got myself admitted into Top University in my country—BUET.

🌙 The Vicious Cycle

I started college at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 2012. Since I already had a long-standing habit of staying up late and waking up late, I carried that into my college life. I didn’t realize how badly it was affecting me.

You might think I was staying up late because I was studying hard. Hell no. I was just surfing the internet, watching tutorials, and doing things that weren’t particularly impactful.

This was my daily routine:

Stay awake until 3:00 AM
Wake up around 8:50 AM
Run like crazy to catch the 9:00 AM class
Feel exhausted after class
Take a nap in the evening
Repeat

It was a vicious cycle of poor sleep and constant fatigue. I’m not sure what was wrong, but I suffered a lot because of it. I kept up this routine from 2012 to 2017—and even after college, until 2022.

🧪 My First Morning Experiment

I started my PhD in 2021. Around the same time, I also began making YouTube videos. However, I couldn’t continue for long because, in the beginning, I had so much to learn and needed to focus heavily on research. Eventually, I stopped making videos and lost hope of building an impactful YouTube channel in the high-pressure environment of a PhD program.

Then, in mid-2022, I had a thought: What if I tried waking up early so I could use the morning hours to write research papers and make YouTube content? This approach actually worked really well. I dedicated my early mornings to research and reserved three mornings a week—including weekends—for creating YouTube videos.

During that time, I produced three of my favorite video series.

🧠 Build Your Second Brain (BYSB)

This playlist focuses on how to take effective notes, store references effortlessly, and retain what you read using the “Second Brain” system.

🗃️ Obsidian for Beginners:

Obsidian is one of the main tools I use for my Second Brain. It helps you connect your notes on your local PC in plain text format—a timeless, powerful way of note-taking.

📚 Zotero for Beginners:

Zotero is my go-to open-source reference management tool, and a core part of my Second Brain workflow.

During this productive stretch, I created over 20 videos and more than 20 short reels. I also successfully completed one of the PhD projects assigned by my professor.

The downside? After three hours of deep work in the early morning, I often felt mentally drained by the time I got to the lab. Eventually, the routine faded, and I slipped back into my old habit of staying up late.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t maintain the morning routine for long. I found myself becoming more productive at night again. After getting home, spending some time with my wife, and having dinner, I would often dive back into work for a few more hours. In that rhythm, I felt I was making better progress on my research.

🌃 Late Nights That Paid Off

The final year of my PhD was the most challenging phase of my academic life. I’ve written a detailed post about it here.

In 2024, I was juggling a full-time internship, multiple PhD research projects, my dissertation, and writing over 8 manuscripts. It was a rollercoaster. Managing everything simultaneously felt overwhelming—but somehow, I made it through.

My sleep schedule flipped completely during that time. I would wake up around 7:40 AM, work my internship from 9 to 5, and return home by 6:30 PM. After a quick 1.5-hour nap, I’d get up around 8 PM, have dinner, chat with my wife, and dive into PhD work until 2 or 3 in the morning.

Oddly enough, those late nights became my most productive hours. That unconventional routine helped me complete my PhD while excelling in my internship. And the best part? I received a full-time offer from the same company before I even defended my dissertation. That moment meant everything—to me and to my family.

That season taught me something: Late nights can work when you’re fueled by purpose.

😞 The Post-PhD Slump

After finishing my PhD, I stepped into a regular 9-to-5 life. I liked the structure—being able to focus on my research work during office hours and coming home with nothing “urgent” left to do.

But something unexpected happened.

Most evenings, I’d get home around 5:30 PM, collapse onto the couch, and stay there for hours. After a short walk on the treadmill and dinner with my wife, I’d feel completely drained. I had no energy left for the things I truly cared about—blogging, making YouTube tutorials, or building the creative projects I had dreamed of for years.

It was frustrating. For so long, I had imagined that once my PhD was done, I’d finally have time for my passions. But now that the time was here… the energy wasn’t. My dream of reviving my YouTube channel started to feel like it might remain just that—a dream.

🌄 The Comeback

Recently, I started waking up early again—around 5:30 AM. I decided to give it another try just as an experiment. But what happened last week surprised me.

Here’s what I accomplished in just a few early mornings:

📝 Published 25+ blogs: Thanks to my Second Brain system, I already had a lot of writing stored. It takes me only 30–40 minutes to turn each idea into a post. Spending just two hours each morning, I was able to publish multiple blogs effortlessly. It felt incredibly rewarding to finally make time for a passion I had long neglected.
🧠 Cleared all reviewer comments for my RL controller tuning paper: This task had been sitting untouched for two months. With uninterrupted focus in the early hours, I finally made solid progress. I can’t explain how satisfying that felt.
⏰ Reached the office on time, fully energized: I now start work around 9:00 AM, feeling fresh and focused.
⚡ Still energetic after work: This was unexpected. In the past, early mornings left me mentally drained by the end of the day. But now, I feel more fulfilled and surprisingly recharged—even after office hours.
❤️ A happy wife: My wife is a morning person, and she’s thrilled to see me up early too. That’s a bonus I didn’t plan for, but definitely one I appreciate.

This routine may not be perfect—but right now, it’s working beautifully for me.

🌟 The Takeaway

I finally realized this:

It’s not about being a morning person or a night owl.
It’s about finding a routine that works for your energy, your goals, and your life stage.

Right now, early mornings are working for me. They may not forever. But today, they’re helping me turn dreams into deliverables—and that’s what matters.

👋 About Me

Hi, I’m Shuvangkar Das, a power systems researcher with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University. I work at the intersection of power electronics, DER, IBR, and AI — building greener, smarter, and more stable grids. Currently, I’m a Research Scientist at EPRI (though everything I share here reflects my personal experience, not my employer’s views).

Over the years, I’ve worked on real-world projects involving large scale EMT simulation and firmware development for grid-forming and grid following inverter and reinforcement learning (RL). I also publish technical content and share hands-on insights with the goal of making complex ideas accessible to engineers and researchers.

📺 Subscribe to my YouTube channel, where I share tutorials, code walk-throughs, and research productivity tips.

Connect with me: