Maybe I can just dream about conquering the world

Someone is reading this at 5 a.m.

Someone else is reading this at 11 a.m.

Yet they have one thing in common. They’ve just woken up.

A six-hour gap may exist, but they’re both in their jammies, sipping coffee and contemplating a new day.

No question about it, the world is made up of early risers and late risers, and I am increasingly beginning to believe that therein lies our destinies. We late risers may get slightly more sleep, but those early risers are conquering the world.

As Ben Franklin famously noted, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Or to put it in modern terms, power-waking optimizes an individual’s wellness, earning power and entrepreneurial savvy.

This was brought home to me recently when some friends, who can best be described as go-getters, told me about their recent trip to the East Coast. The jet lag messed up their biological clocks.

“It was actually kind of nice,” my friend said. “We were able to sleep in really late for the first few days.”

“How late?” I asked.

“8 a.m.,” he said, with straight face.

What the …?

What kind of person thinks that 8 a.m. is sleeping in late? While on vacation?

The kind of person who normally gets up at 5 a.m., that’s who. Yes, as shocking as this may sound to many of you late risers, legions of people are rising with the dawn every day. Not all of them are sanitation workers, dairy farmers or Denny’s waitresses.

While the rest of us are drooling face down into our pillows, wrenching those last few precious hours of sleep from the grasp of rosy-fingered dawn, millions of people are already awake, cheerful and productive.

Yeah, I didn’t believe it either until I was forced by painful circumstances on several recent mornings to actually wake up at an hour that started with a numeral smaller than 6. One morning, I had to get someone to the airport at 5:30 a.m. On another morning, I had to wake up for a 6 a.m. golf tee time, which, while slightly more civilized from a pure alarm-clock standpoint, was actually more painful because IT WAS MY OWN FAULT. I could have turned down the tee time, or better still, taken that opportunity to swear off the ridiculous sport forever.

But no, there I was, getting up at 5 a.m., appalled at how light it was and how many birds were mindlessly chattering.

Even more appalling was the fact that I wasn’t the only one awake. As I drove, bleary-eyed through Spokane, dozens of people were out on the streets jogging, biking, walking their dogs and generally looking hale and hearty.

And I didn’t even see all of those people who were inside their homes, using the hours between 5 and 7 a.m. for nauseatingly productive purposes, such as writing novels or corresponding with loved ones or performing yoga or learning Japanese or studying calculus or applying for a Fulbright scholarship.

I couldn’t see them, but they were in there, I knew it. It made me feel ashamed, once again, to be the kind of person who sees 5 a.m. maybe three times a year, and only then with a lot of whining and demands for Starbucks products.

I have no statistics to back this up but I am certain that the world’s most famous go-getters were up and about with dawn. Did Alexander the Great loll around in his tent until 10:30 a.m. and then say, “OK, (yawn) let’s go conquer the known world”? Doubtful.

Did Teddy Roosevelt set his alarm clock for 9 a.m. and then repeatedly hit the “snooze” button? Not likely. Does Karl Rove sleep all the way through NPR’s “Morning Edition” before reluctantly rolling out of bed? No, the man has a government to run.

So we can all become go-getters just by getting up at 5 a.m. I am convinced that it is actually that easy.

Let’s all make a vow to try it tomorrow morning. The dawn of our new era of high achievement begins at 5 a.m. tomorrow.

Or we can just punch the alarm clock – hard enough to break it – and sleep in. Achievement is all well and good, but an extra two or three hours of sleep? That’s an achievement, too.