I work in a different time zone.

It started because I didn’t like what was happening at the other end of the day.

After five, after a day of work, there would still be a complicated strategy to work through. A presentation to make. A question that needed proper thinking. By then, I was tired. I didn’t feel like doing it, and it wasn’t the moment I wanted to give my hardest work.

Then dinner would happen, and afterwards I’d have to open my laptop again. Or we’d sit on the sofa, watching television, both with a laptop open. Together, but still working.

That wasn’t how I wanted to spend my evenings. So I turned it around.

I started with the hours from five in the morning until nine, for the work that otherwise spilled into the evening. A five-to-nine before the nine-to-five.

Over time, five became four, or three. I’ve done that for years. Not because those hours are more virtuous. I liked that part of the day most.

Wake up quietly. Get a coffee. Do the hardest things.

The complicated document gets my attention before a whole working day has already used it up. I can work through the strategic questions and prepare for difficult conversations without carrying all of that into the evening.

Before the day starts.

By the time a client’s working day starts, the work can already be in their inbox.

Something they sent the previous evening may already be processed. Instead of starting my day behind, trying to catch up with what arrived overnight, I’ve had some quiet time to deal with it.

If the document is there before nine, the client still has a whole working day to read it, think about it and respond. It creates pressure: the next step is now on their side.

But that advantage needs boundaries.

My hours are not your hours.

Especially with people earlier in their careers, I need to be careful about the signal I send.

An email at four in the morning can look like a standard, even if I never ask anyone else to work at that time. I don’t want my schedule to become an unspoken expectation. So I often schedule emails to arrive later.

The same applies to clients. Sometimes I can pick up an evening message and have something ready the next morning. That doesn’t mean an eleven-at-night request comes with a nine-in-the-morning delivery promise. There is other work to do.

My early start is a way of organising my work. It is not an overnight service.

The other end of the day.

Getting up early also means going to bed early. If I’m getting up at three, I go to bed at nine in the evening. If it’s four, bedtime is ten. I generally plan for six hours. My working day generally stops around dinner time. These are still long days, but dinner isn’t normally followed by another shift behind the laptop.

A different time zone.

The people around me are asleep. I get a coffee and start on the document that used to wait until after dinner.

Three or four in the morning is my answer. It doesn’t have to be anyone else’s.

Related: Design your ideal week and Walk through your week.