For me, the hardest part about joining the working world after being a college student was adjusting to the fixed hours of 9-to-5.

Though it wasn’t the actual 9-to-5 part that bothered me. In fact, the idea of 9-to-5 is somewhat misleading if you’re in the advertising industry. Since most employees don’t roll in until 9:30 or 10AM, our day starts later than most other industries, which means it ends later too. Generally, we leave anywhere from 6:30 to 7:30PM. Sometimes we don’t leave until midnight. And occasionally, we don’t leave at all. In the advertising industry, it’s considered necessary to keep a change of clothes in your desk, because you never know when you’re going to spend the night there.

But it wasn’t the number of hours I was working that bothered me (especially since I’m somewhat of a workaholic), it was just that I was accustomed to having class interspersed throughout the day, on a schedule that varied depending on what day of the week. I liked the day-to-day change of pace that went along with that. I also appreciated the flexibility that came along with the ability to choose my own schedule at the beginning of every semester.

So, I guess the main issue I faced with the 9-to-5 schedule is that it wasn’t my own. It belonged to somebody else. And it was mandatory.

Even though I loved my first job out of college, especially at the beginning, when everything was especially new and exciting, I began to have trouble getting myself out of bed. And towards the end of the day, I started getting anxious and found myself desperately wanting to leave as soon as the clock hit 5PM.

I had never, ever faced these issues before. Even though I’m a night owl, I’m also an early bird. In fact, I hardly need an alarm clock, because I literally leap out of bed with a sickeningly cheerful attitude. On top of that, I’m the kind of student who was a little disappointed when the bell rings and class is over, and usually stays after class to talk with the professor.

What was wrong with me? How did I fix it?

Well, for starters, I made their schedule fit inside of my schedule.

Since I love getting up early, I started getting to the gym by 6:30 or 7AM to work out for a few hours, before showering and changed for work in the locker room.

I found that even though I was waking up hours before I had to be at work and getting so much accomplished, I stilly consistently arrived at work far earlier than normal. On average, I got to work 30 to 45 minute earlier than I would have if I had slept in and got ready for work at home.

In addition, I immediately experienced an enormous improvement in my attitude towards going to work every morning. Enthusiasm and endless energy returned to me.

And it wasn’t just the endorphins you naturally get from exercising. Those couple of extra hours in the morning spent doing a solitary (and arguably selfish) activity did wonders for my mental health. I loved having the opportunity to let my mind wander and let my brain mentally stretch. When I finally did arrive at work, I was ready and raring to go.

However, by the time 3PM rolled around, I still felt incredibly anxious. Since most of my work at the time heavily revolved around research and data analysis, there were not a lot of “small projects.” Everything I did required a lengthy time commitment, and when the end of the day started to get near, I didn’t like to start new projects. Starting new projects meant I would be interrupted by having to return home for the evening, and then having to come back the next morning, get my bearings on the problem, and figure it all out again.

Now, this might not be much appreciated by many other people (if any anybody at all), but my solution was to just quit going home for the day. So I started staying until the work was done. No matter what.

Once I got in the habit of staying until 10 or 11PM (or later) every night, I started actually looking forward to the so-called “end” of the work-day. That’s when everybody else went home, and I was left alone to deep-dive into a problem and work uninterrupted until it was fully resolved.

Not surprisingly, my productivity soared. In addition to my own work, I started taking on extra side projects within my department, and was able to easily integrate the increased workload into my schedule.

All for the simple fact that my EOD was differet than the EOD for everybody else. Once I trained myself out of the expectation that I would go home at a “normal” time, my overall stress level decreased and in actuality, I began leaving work at a so-called reasonable time on a more regular basis.

I believe this all happened because of the simple way I shifted my perception of the day. I became an even more highly efficient and effective worker. I quit worrying about the amount of time that any project or part of a project would take me, because, well, I expected to be there all night anyway. My attitude was that it didn’t matter when I started it, because I was knew I was going to stay as long as it took to finish anyway. This eliminated any possible reason to put it off, which in turn, meant that I started tackling it right away.

People always wonder how I possibly have enough time in the day to accomplish so much. Well, it’s because I quit worrying about time, and began concentrating solely on getting things done.