Day break

Lately, I've been experimenting with a crazy morning schedule. I'll wake up at 5 a.m., drink coffee and work for an hour and a half, then go running. Then shower and start the normal work day. Amazingly, it's just 9:30 a.m. at that point.

I kind of like it, but it's hard to do after a night like this (notice time stamp). My wild night involved working out, a vegan ice cream excursion, and much surfing of the Internets.

While re-reading today's content on Above The Law, I came across a comment that made me smile. But that made me worried -- should I actually be creeped out by this... or creeped out by the fact that it made me smile?

My co-editor, Elie Mystal, wrote a post about a law firm that wants its associates to be at the office promptly and not to wander in at 10 a.m. or later. Elie opined:

My day starts at 8:30. Kash's day starts at dawn. Lat never sleeps. But aren't young professionals more than capable of starting their day based on the work they have to do?

A very Gen Y observation. The information about ATL editors' sleep schedules led one of our readers to make this comment:

i'll start kash's day at dawn. god she's beautiful.

Which is the comment that made me smile, and then made me wonder whether I'm too dependent on ATL readers for affection...

My day does start at dawn. Sometimes earlier. I was amused to read another humorous piece in last week's New Yorker touching on this: My Quiet Time by Andy Borowitz. Here's the intro of the piece making fun of Disney C.E.O. Robert Iger's definition of quiet time:

Q. What are some things you do to manage your time effectively?
A. I get up at 4:30 every morning. I like the quiet time. It’s a time I can recharge my batteries a bit. I exercise and I clear my head and I catch up on the world. I read papers. I look at e-mail. I surf the Web. I watch a little TV, all at the same time. I call it my quiet time but I’m already multitasking. I love listening to music, so I’ll do that in the morning, too, when I’m exercising and watching the news.
—An interview with Robert Iger, the C.E.O. of Disney, in the Times.

Whoever said that the early bird gets the worm could have been talking about me, only I’m a person, not a bird, and I’m not interested in getting worms, more like getting things done. But I do get up early. In fact, the secret to my success could be boiled down to three little words: my quiet time. It begins at 1 A.M., when I get out of bed, check my e-mail, brush my teeth, scan some documents, and floss. Then I’ll surf the Web, maybe order a sectional couch or trade zloty futures. Last week, I bought a Swiss chalet and sold it at a twenty-per-cent profit while I was still in my pajamas. I wanted to high-five someone, but no one else was awake.

It goes on to address multi-tasking. I particularly enjoyed this, since at the time of reading, I was on an elliptical at NYU gym, listening to my music, occasionally glancing up at the news on the wall of TVs, and of course, flipping through the New Yorker.

By 1:03, I’ve had two cups of coffee, I’m down in my basement on the elliptical, and my heart is pounding like a cheetah’s. I know that cheetahs have a fast heart rate because I often watch Animal Planet while I’m on the elliptical, although sometimes I’ll do the picture-in-picture thing so I can watch CNBC Asia while I’m watching the thing about the cheetahs. It isn’t always about cheetahs; it’s about other animals, too, like meerkats. I just said cheetahs as a for instance. I do the elliptical naked. One time when I was on the elliptical, I patched myself into a conference call in Jakarta and accidentally hit the camera thing on my phone, so everyone wound up seeing me in the buff, all flopping around and everything. Another time when I was on the elliptical, I saw an amazing documentary about cheetahs.

While I’m on the elliptical and maybe ordering a hovercraft online, I’ll drain a six-pack of Red Bull.

Read the full piece.

When someone is on the elliptical, reading and laughing out loud, is that kind of cool? Or do you rather think to yourself, "What a weirdo. That girl must be suffering from some serious sleep deprivation"?