So, what’s really the secret to waking up early? If I can be 100% transparent right now and save you whatever time it takes to read this article, the answer would simply be: to go to bed early.
But, it’s not really that easy to tell anyone, including yourself, to go to bed early, especially when there are a billion things you’d much rather be doing.
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Why Is It So Hard to Wake Up Early?
- Reason #1: Your terrible mindset
- Reason #2: Your literal procrastination
To address reason #1, mindset is what makes or breaks any habit building. Your perspective of life is your life. The way you look at things actually shapes the things you look at. If you think of waking up early as an impossibility, a grotesque obstacle, or an agonizing task, then you will NOT get up early. It will be too uncomfortable.
As for reason #2, procrastinating when it comes to going to bed is a real problem for many people. Some of us are just way too addicted to our phones.
Some of us are addicted to our work. And some of us are addicted to other people. We all have certain distractions that keep us from hitting our beds at proper (early) times. Even though experts and non-experts alike tell us that we shouldn’t. So, why do we do it? Because we can. And because we don’t quite believe in the consequences.
The Benefits of Waking Up Earlier
- Peace and solace
- Enough time for breakfast
- Better brain function
- More energy
- Radiant skin
- Enough time for exercise
- Prevents lifestyle-related diseases
- Better academic performance
- Easier commutes
- More family/people time
Here is the misconception: by waking up earlier, you’ll miraculously have more time. That’s not true. Because you would have to go to bed earlier as well. What you will have is more time for yourself…when you are actually fresh, not when you are already done with the day.
By starting the day off focusing on yourself, on improving yourself, and changing yourself, you will notice that the things around you will also change. Everything flows much more smoothly. You accomplish things you thought you could never do, so you feel better, and then it cascades into a spiral of little achievements throughout the day.
How to Wake Up Early And Not Feel Tired
1. Get Enough Sleep
Here’s the thing, folks: fatigue makes cowards of us all, no matter how heroically you think of yourself. You have to set realistic times to wake up at so that you can actually function once you wake up.
There is no point in getting up at 5 am if you can’t really do anything because you are about to fall off the chair. You have to make sure that you are not incredibly sleepy and fatigued because of a lack of sleep.
What does that mean?
It means to know yourself. Calculate your sleep cycles, and base on them the time you wake up. Find out if you do best with moderate, consistent progress or cold turkey jumps. Do you need to wake up just 10 minutes earlier each day until you hit your goal time? Or would you do better with a two hour jump right away?
For me personally, I’m a cold turkey person. I do not have the patience nor the attention span to focus on such a trivial thing for that long when I can get it over with right away. Afterall, why extend the length of pain? I can grit my teeth for a few painful days instead of suffering slowly over a few weeks.
In any case, you will need to make sure that you get enough sleep to keep you going, so make all the accommodations you must make to have that work for your personality and lifestyle.
2. Have a Compelling Motive
Do you remember a time in your life when you were super duper motivated to get out of bed? It could have been because you were excited to open presents on Christmas or maybe you were late for school. The point is: when you have a sufficient motivation, getting up early is a whole lot easier.
Because of that, you must establish a compelling motive to make you get up! It has to be extremely compelling, so much so that you can get up in the dark, uncomfortable cold hours of the morning just for its sake.
Those compelling reasons are most likely going to be long-term, purpose-related goals, that when you think about, make you super excited to get up and achieve.
Yes, I know, sometimes “I want to be a doctor and save lives” isn’t the most motivating or practical thing to think about when all you want is to just lay in bed, but that’s why it is also recommended to have an immediate activity that you just do purely for enjoyment upon waking. That way, you have something tangible to look forward to on top of the future, potentially rewarding goal. For me, eating breakfast and having coffee is plenty compelling.
All of us need both. A personal purpose that is so dear to your heart might push you to do something, but unless you have an immediate reward (coming from an enjoyable activity) you can’t sustain that motivation for long (because the rewards of the long-term goal aren’t immediate).
3. Build an Automatic Response
When the alarm goes off in the morning, we usually respond in one of three ways: snooze it off/ignore it, get up right away, or stay in bed thinking/going on our phones.
Unlike the other two options, getting up right away requires an intentional, conditioned response. The others are done on the whim of the moment based on “whatever feels most comfortable to us right then.”
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you have to get uncomfortable in the process of training yourself to have this automatic response. There is no shortcut to it; it’s going to suck. But then again, you can’t expect yourself to experience all the benefits mentioned above without putting in some kind of work. It’s nature’s law, man.
So, that means, when you are so comfortable in bed and your alarm clock goes off, just jump out of bed without thinking about it. Hesitation almost always leads to procrastination. So, don’t allow yourself the opportunity to hesitate.
This tip works so well because it gets you outside of temptation’s doorway. You jolt off the bed and there is no reason for your brain to war against itself for one more melt into your mattress’s core.
Getting up right away comes from The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins, which is a psychological principle that suggests that if you act on ideas in the 5 second span of time in which you have them, you will succeed in carrying them out and experience no procrastination or hesitation.
4. Use Resources & People to Boost Your Efforts
There are hundreds of different alarm clock apps, all touting their own unique set of features and gimmicks that are designed to get you out of bed. You just need to get your hands on them.
Most of these apps work by forcing you to wake up and get out of bed through completing specific tasks or “missions” in order for them to turn off. They are especially effective when you have an annoying, highly disturbing sound as the ringtone. What a recipe for success.
The one I currently use, (which is both the best one I’ve used and ironically the only free one) is Alarmy. I highly recommend you use it.
However, I have a brother who is literally a human sluggard. He has such a hard time getting up in the morning (like extremely hard). He downloaded the app (Alarmy) and tried to use it. When it went off the first day, he completed the math problems and then went back to bed. So, he tried a different “mission”.
When it went off the second day, he scanned the bar code of a book and went back to bed. The third day, he took 20 steps to make the stupid alarm turn off and then went back to bed. The fourth day, he went downstairs to take a picture of the coffee machine as his “mission” and still went back upstairs to sleep. It was a disaster.
I recount this experience to acknowledge those people who really just don’t give a rip about cute methods like “missions” on alarm clocks and will find a way to go back to bed anyways. And to them, I say: You need a human alarm clock.
The only way my brother wakes up now is when my mom goes to his room every morning and annoys him by talking for 10 minutes and touching his face and slapping him around until he has had enough. She keeps an eye on him and restarts the whole annoyance process if he decides to fall asleep again. (I should probably note that my brother is only 13 years old).
Some people are just like that, so utilize whatever method you need to ensure your success, my friend.
If you don’t live with anyone or don’t have someone that is willing to spend 10 minutes a morning annoying you, then you should probably invest in a high voltage Ejector Bed (no joke).
After a while, though, you will no longer feel the need to use an alarm clock or any kind of system. Hard habits are only difficult at the beginning, but then your body readjusts and returns to homeostasis. Yes, you will be able to wake up early naturally if you stay consistent in the beginning.
How Do You Make Waking Up Earlier a Habit?
First, you need to understand the psychological process that takes place when habit change occurs. Then, you must use that process to your advantage.
Habits are formed when there is a cue, that induces a craving, which initiates a response, and then produces a reward. Consequently, to change each step of that process in forming a new habit, you must make the new habit obvious, attractive, easy, and rewarding.
* Read: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Secondly, to stick with any habit and actually see results, you have to: take on the simplest and easiest form of that habit (to make it appealing and convenient), make it pleasurable by rewarding yourself, and forget about results (just focus on the process).
* Read: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Is Waking Up Early Necessary?
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Benjamin Franklin
The main purpose of this article is to show you how you can wake up early, not to persuade you to do so. I’m not here to advocate for any particular way of life. I’m here to simply help those who have already made a decision.
Waking up early has certainly benefited me in many ways. It works really well for my lifestyle and allows me to monitor my energy levels.
However, the quote above isn’t true, for it isn’t reflective of the experiences of many people. I know many successful, healthy people who work night shifts and who, for other reasons, wake up considerably late. Despite all the aphorisms that get thrown around, “early to bed, early to rise” isn’t a prerequisite for success in life.
There is no universal advantage that you get when you wake up early. Because of that, my main recommendation is that you play your life according to your own preferences, personality, circumstances, and abilities. There is no rule. There is only “what is given to you” and how you can maximize that is your duty. So, deal well the cards that life dealt you and you will be happy, healthy, and wise.