The 6 AM Experiment That Changed How I See My Days

I’ve read every morning routine article on the internet. I’ve tried the 5am club, the cold showers, the meditation-then-journaling-then-exercise stack that looks beautiful on paper and collapses by Wednesday.

So when I tell you I started waking up at 6am, I know how that sounds. Another guy, another morning routine, another article about it.

But this one is different. Because I wasn’t chasing productivity. I was chasing something I’d lost.

The problem wasn’t discipline

For 20 years I’ve been building companies. Started my first web agency at 19 in Denmark. Built Mailigen from 4 guys in a 12sqm office to a team of 40. Sold it. Went through a PE acquisition. Led product teams. The hustle runs in my blood — that was never the issue.

The issue was that I’d gotten so good at doing things that I forgot to experience them.

My days were stacked. Meetings from 9 to 6. Family time from 6 to 9. Then catch-up work until midnight. Repeat. Every day felt full but somehow empty at the same time.

Sound familiar?

One hour of nothing

So I tried something absurdly simple. I set my alarm for 6am — just one hour before my daughter typically wakes up — and I did… nothing productive.

No email. No Slack. No LinkedIn scrolling disguised as “staying connected.” No to-do list optimization.

I sat with coffee. I looked out the window. Sometimes I wrote a few lines in my journal. Sometimes I just sat there.

The first 3 days were brutal. My brain kept screaming that I was wasting time. That I should be doing something useful. That this hour could be spent on that pitch deck, that product roadmap, that email I’d been avoiding.

By day 7, something shifted.

What the silence showed me

When you remove the noise before the noise starts, you hear things you’ve been drowning out.

I noticed I was anxious. Not crisis-level anxious — just this low-grade hum that had been running in the background for months. The kind of anxiety that comes from having 47 open tabs in your brain and no clear sense of which ones actually matter.

I noticed I missed my daughter’s laugh. Not that I didn’t hear it — I did, every day. But I was always half-present. One ear on her, one eye on my phone. The laugh was there. I wasn’t.

I noticed I hadn’t asked myself a real question in a long time. Not “what’s the sprint goal?” or “what’s the conversion rate?” but actual questions. Like: am I enjoying this? Is this what I want? What would I do with today if nothing was expected of me?

The practice that emerged

After about 2 weeks, a simple practice crystallized. Not a system — I’m allergic to 17-step morning routines. Just three things:

1. One line about yesterday. What was the best moment? Not the biggest achievement — the best moment. Sometimes it’s “Lana said something hilarious about dinosaurs at dinner.” Sometimes it’s “solved a hard problem and felt that click.” Writing it down takes 30 seconds and rewires what I pay attention to.

2. One intention for today. Not a goal. Not a task. An intention. “Be present in the product review.” “Actually listen to what she’s telling me at dinner.” “Don’t check email before 9am.” One line. That’s it.

3. Just sit. The rest of the hour, I just sit. Read sometimes. Think sometimes. Stare at the trees sometimes. The point is the absence of input. The point is the space.

47 days later

I’m writing this on day 47 of the experiment. Here’s what I can tell you:

I haven’t become more productive. My output is roughly the same. I still have the same number of meetings, the same projects, the same pressures.

But I’m here more. Present. The fog that I’d accepted as normal turned out to be optional.

My daughter noticed. She said, “Papa, you’re funny again.” I don’t know when I stopped being funny. But she noticed I came back.

That’s the WOW moment that no productivity hack will ever give you. Not the output. The presence.

Try it — but try it honestly

If you want to try this, here’s what I’d say: don’t optimize it. The moment you turn your morning hour into a performance metric, it dies.

Don’t track it in an app. Don’t post about it on LinkedIn. Don’t set 14 sub-goals for your “intention practice.”

Just wake up one hour earlier than you need to. Sit with coffee. Be quiet. See what surfaces.

Give it 7 days before you judge it. The first 3 will feel like a waste. Day 4 or 5, you’ll hear something you’ve been ignoring. By day 7, you’ll understand why you’re doing it.

It might sound very geeky, but this simple hour has changed more about my life than any strategy document I’ve ever written. And I’ve written hundreds.

Live your life with arms wide open. But first — give yourself the silence to hear what “open” actually means.