Optimizing your sleep and regaining "dead" time are two fundamental ways to improve your productivity levels. Obviously, the earlier in the day you wake up, the more time you'll have to accomplish tasks and be more productive.

Optimize sleep and get up early:

1. "Optimizing sleep", according to Cvijetic, means finding the "perfect time" to go to bed each night and wake up every morning to maximize energy and health.
2. He recommends trying to plan your sleep around sleep cycles, which last for 90 minutes (1.5 hours). This is because waking up during the sleep cycles can lead to fatigue, grogginess and other negative health effects.
3. Suggestions for optimizing your sleep patterns:
   1. Go to bed at the same time every (or at least most) nights
   2. Get up earlier gradually (If you are currently getting up at 8am, and your goal is 6am, start with 7:50am, then 7:40am, and so on, until you reach your goal, and then work on maintaining it)
   3. Note: you might experience energy drops in the first couple of weeks. But that's normal until your body adjusts to the new schedule.

Pro tip: if you experience a sudden drop of energy, take a 20-30 minute nap.

Reclaim dead time:

1. Dead Time = time spent on activities that you cannot eliminate at this moment, but can be used more productively.
   1. Example: commuting / working out / buying groceries...
2. In order to be more productive, find something you can do while being engaged in these activities.
   1. Possible options include: listening to audiobooks / podcasts / reading books / using apps like Duolingo or Memrise for quick language learning. (I use Babbel)
3. The main idea here is to do something that will give you value while performing tasks that you already are committed to spending time on.

My experience:

I've been doing both of these for the better part of the last decade and have found them to be extremely helpful in structuring my day.

During the week, I'm typically in bed no later than 10pm. (That gives me enough time to decompress after work, get some exercise in, have a slow dinner and then read or watch television for a bit before I make my way to bed.) Monday-Friday, my morning alarm is set to 6am--though often I'm awake before I hear the alar m go off. If it's a morning where I find myself awake before the alarm rings, I try to stay in bed until 6am, slowly waking up and allowing myself the luxury of a few extra minutes of relaxation.

On the weekends, I never (or almost never) use an alarm clock, though most Saturday/Sundays I am up by 7.30am. Considering I'm not a night owl, I typically get to bed by midnight or 1am on the weekends, so the 7.30am start compensates for the later bedtime.

Personally, I have found that having regular sleep and wake times helps me maintain high energy levels, even in the winter months when I tend to have lower energy due to the lack of daytime sunlight.