I am not what you would call a morning person. I’m a writer, for heaven’s sake! But recently,when I’ve had a lot of work stacking up and I’ve added a blog into my daily routine, it felt as if there simply weren’t enough hours in the day. So I decided to make a habit of getting up earlier. This is how I did it:
- Decided what time I wanted to get up. In my case 6am so that I could do a couple of hours, write my blog and catch up my email before everyone else started work (and started sending me emails and phoning me). The point is to set a time and stick to it.
- Set myself a goal. Initially, I aimed to get up early every weekday for a month. I read somewhere that if you can make a new routine stick for a month, it becomes a self-sustaining habit. It proved true in this case.
- Promised myself a reward. I always wanted to learn clay pigeon shooting so I promised myself I would book a day’s shooting if I got up early for a month.
- Tracked my progress using Joe’s Goals. The more I use this little website app, the more I like it. I used to track these kinds of routine, habitual things using recurring tasks in Outlook but it was a bit fiddly and, addicted as I am, I didn’t have Outlook open all the time. I also used a little Post-it note on my monitor and ticked off the days, convict-style.
- Get clothes, computer and breakfast ready the night before. Don’t want to trip over everything trying to do basic tasks when I’m half-asleep.
- Alarms. I set my beside alarm for 0600 – and this is the clever psychology – I also set my telephone to ring at 0605 but I put the phone on the other side of the room so that I have to get out of bed to stop it ringing. In the UK, you dial *55*0605# to do this. What happens is this: either I wake up and cancel the alarm or I get up and answer the call to stop it ringing. First, we’re strongly programmed to answer the phone*. Second, I’m very strongly programmed not to wake my wife up! A ringing phone will do this so I have powerful motivators at work: guilt and fear. This technique works every time but I had previously reserved it for early morning trips to the airport and things like that.
- Naps. Sleep is like money in the bank. If you overdraw by getting up early, you have to pay in some other time. Initially, I did this by having short naps after lunch. I suspect that over time the body adjusts to less sleep – most army people get by on less sleep than the rest of us, for example – but this seems to happen over a longer period than a month.
- Earlier nights. In the long run, going to bed an hour or so earlier and having lie-ins on weekends meant that I was getting the right amount of sleep. Like jet lag the adjustment is a little painful but it only took a week or two to get used to the new routine.
- Boast widely about your new early-birdiness. It makes feel good to tell people ‘oh I get up at 6am’. Also, my friend Stuart says ‘we are the stories we tell about ourselves.’ If I describe myself as a punctual, early-rising, efficiency robot then maybe that’s what I’ll become (when I’m not a bohemain, enterpreneurial writer genius ).
- Always leave them wanting more! (See my post on writing top ten lists.)
To cut a long story short. It worked! I wake up at six, feel fresh and hop right out of bed without any alarms or bribery. I get two or three extra prime working hours a day.
None of this is rocket science, but I reckon if it can turn a lay-a-bed writer into a member of the dawn chorus, it’s got to be worth sharing. Your mileage may vary.
* This is the source of the classic joke: “The phone rang in the absent-minded professor’s house at 3am and he got up to answer it. Wrong number! ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ said the embarassed called. ‘Oh, that’s alright, I had to get up to answer the phone anyhow,’ replied the absent-minded professor.” (The old ones are the best.)
Technorati Tags: GTD, sleep, habits, alarm, productivity, goals
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I tend to wake up around 6.30am now, took myself a while to get into it, about a month. I am very much a morning person, doing all my best ‘work’ before 11am.
Great project! I’ve experimented with it by wakeing up about 5-10 min. earlier everyday, until I hit my goal. Being in the Marines doesn’t always allow this, but it seems to work for me.
I am an early riser by nature – I love the mornings but dont like have to leave for work lol I like to study, read the paper (online). breakfast, talk with friends on the phone. I find that I wake earlier in summer than winter by about an hour and that this has been consistent for the last 20years that I have been aware of it.
I get up at 6am for work every day, I work freelance so there are some weeks where I don’t go to work on those weeks I revert back to being a lazy bones again.
I can confirm that not everyone will find that getting up at 6am for a month will make a self-sustaining habit. In fact even though I do this every day it does not always get easier, some weeks it is almost impossible to get out of bed at 6am. On those days I am invariably late to work.
Also, wait until the winter when it is dark in the mornings, for me this makes it even harder to get out of bed. In the summer with a beautiful bright morning outside it is often much easier.
Good post.
I was once the type of person that had to be at work at 8 so I’d wake up at 7:15 and rush. This was very stressful every morning and generally guaranteed that I would be crabby until Noon. Over the years I trained (forced) myself to get up earlier and now I am generally up at 4:30-5:15 without an alarm. The 2 hours before I head to work are the most productive hours of the day because I can get stuff done while the wife, kids, cat co-workers customers are all sleeping.
Funny, I still go to bed at 11 so I think I’ve actually trained myself to require less sleep.
Those are some great tips. I personally developed an early morning habit in order to get that extra few hours as well. Improving your ability to nap will do wonders throughout the rest of your day to keep you going.
I can’t do this. I get up for work at 7 AM every weekday but on the weekends I sleep until I wake up. I know it’s bad for me but I have to catch up on the sleep. I’ve tried getting up earlier than I have to but if I set the alarm like on a weekend, I cannot bring myself to get up. I just say “I don’t HAVE to get up so I’m not going to.” I kick myself in the ass for it later, but it feels so damn good to sleep. Altogether though, I hate sleep. I think it’s a waste of time but I can’t function without enough of it.
Try having a baby – it really gets you up in the morning (and at 11pm, 1am, 3am, 5am)
for what in hell should this be a great idea?
“It makes feel good to tell people ‘oh I get up at 6am’.” – are you kidding me? the only thing i would think after a comment like this would be “poor guy. what a great luck i can sleep as long as it’s possible”
sometimes i’ve to get up at 05:00, sometimes i can sleep till 13:00 – its various, and i thank god for that.
do what you want to, but how would you think about being 60 years old, not longer working, and still getting up at 06:00 for no reason? calling the doctor one day because you couldn’t sleep any moore, guessing you trained yourself to be like a machine?
strange, very strange which goals some people have…
my2cents…
I agree with setting yourself a set time to wake up and most importantly stick to it. But I go to bed when I feel tired, and can’t really do anything more or feel irritable. This has the advantage of self correcting through the week, because if you have not had enough sleep then you get tired earlier and so head off to bed. Somehow it works!
Excellent tips — these make a lot more sense than Steve Pavlina’s. I have a general strategy of putting myself in the “early-rising mindset” the night before: reminding myself how important it is to get up at x o’clock. Generally I arise still in that mindset, and as long as I get up right away at that point, I’m alright.
I loved your list. Sure hope my husband sees it!
6am is early? I have to get up at that time everyday to make it into work by 7:30 (1 hour commute sucks). I then get home about 5, and I’m in bed by 9:30. I’d love it if by getting up at 6 I was getting a few more hours in the day, rather than just sitting in a car.
Cool! I am trying something similar with another tracking web site I use called http://trackslife.com
I bought an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock that doesn’t have a Snooze function! Knowing I COULD NOT go back to sleep because there was nothing to wake me up again was good enough to keep me up. Plus, the bell on those things is SO loud that it took about 10 minutes for my heart to stop racing every time it went off. Nothing like adreneline to wake you up and get you going!
Well, it is all good if you are a single person.
I used to wake up at 7 AM. But when my gf came back, I have to wait for her……..
Great tips.
I’ve found that minimizing temperature difference between your bed and bedroom also helps.
Having a bed thats reasonably high above the ground is better than a matress on the ground, because the physical act of getting up is less when all you have to do is put your legs out of bed compared to actually STANDING UP from lying down.
Seems like a good way to archieve your goal. The problem is I’ve tried everything and no way works for me.
I’m a creature of the night. It would seem like I was not designed to wake up early.
But im going to try this. If this work, it would be quite impressive.
With respect, getting up early isn’t really the complicated production many people make it out to be.
Normally I get up early naturally, but I had to train myself to get up early in the winter when it was still dark.
I got a fluorescent shop light and a timer. I set the timer for half an hour before the alarm clock, and put the light where it would illuminate one bedroom wall but I couldn’t see it directly from the bed. Worked on me, but maybe I’m easy to fool.
long ago i decided to be an early riser. i would be at the gym by 5am at the latest. bed by 11pm. if you really want to see early risers, look at people who work in financials. by 5am many have already left the gym, thats just insane.
I have been trying to train myself to get up earlier for the last couple of weeks. So far I’ve not managed it once properly.
I think a lot of things make sense, perhaps I’ve not been setting myself goals correctly. I find going to bed to be hard, always takes upto an hour to get sleep – its very annoying because I loose out on sleep.
don’t try to live on less sleep then your body requests. It’s been proven over and over again to have serious negative effects on your body. Go to bed early.
How, after 35 years of waking up late, do you quickly and easily switch to waking minutes, even hours, earlier?
Easy. Have a kid.
Sweet post
Im going to try it. I’ve always been so lazzy when it comes to getting up early in the morning. But I need to get up early :/ for work which kinda sucks cause I’m more productive during nights.
Let me share my solution. If you are a coffee drinker….even if your not…. go to your grocery store beverage aisle and pick up a few cans of Starbucks Italian Roast Iced Coffee. Keep them really cold in the fridge. As sson as the alarm goes off walk straight to the fridge, pop the can and guzzle. Not only is this the absolute best way to wake your butt up in seconds but it makes your day just take off! I know what your thinking, if I have a hard time waking up I won’t even bother getting out of bed. Well you only need to force yourself up the first day. After that you will sprint to the fridge in antisipation of that feeling of being able to conquer the world. Try it.
A slightly different take on this. . .at one point I was going to take a job that required me to get up very early – something like 4am. At that time my father was a colleague of the head of Stanford’s sleep center, and I was lucky to get a private interview, so to speak. The man described to me some sort of biochemical chain of events that starts the awakening process that is triggered by sunlight. (sorry, can’t remember the details except that it involved melatonin). So the prescription was, if you need to wake up early and quickly, look into bright sunlight for about 15 seconds, I think it was.
Likewise, if you need to sleep late, shield your eyes from sunlight – perhaps wear a pair of those airline eye covers.
I’ve tried both techniques and they work for me.
Awsome post, thanks for the advice!
Great post,i wrote about it in my blog
http://www.drorengel.com/Blog/TrainingYourselfToWakeupEarly.aspx
I HATE getting up early but when I do have to be woken up before I am ready I have learned to set my internal alarm clock.
Before going to sleep I picture a clock winding over from the present time to the time I want to wake up and then picture myself waking up.
I don’t quite trust myself, even after years of using this method so I always set a real alarm “just in case” but this it rarely fails to wake me before the backup goes off.
In fact, just this morning I needed to wake up and forgot to set either my body or a real alarm and slept right through.
I don’t think Steve posted those comments. Most likely an imposter since your article is about a quite different way of getting up early than the way Steve has written about some time ago.
And even if your advice were the exact same as what Steve wrote he still wouldn’t have any exclusive right to it.
Great article by the way!
I’ve read that a person’s natural sleepfulness and wakefulness cycles are not actually tied to when and how long a person sleeps but that they can be influenced by repetition and habit. Its always bugged me that such a natural behavior takes effort and concentration to get the most from. Great post, btw.
I doubt those comments are actually from Steve Pavlina. I’ve read his blog regularly for a month or so now and they don’t sound at all like him – he seems like a really, really nice guy, so this would be completely out of character for him. Also, in the second one, the name is spelled wrong
Maybe some jack*ss is trying to give him a bad name?
Nice one…. I am working on creating the habit… good to know that it works, just have to “put the work in” as it were….
I have to say that until I woke up one day at 4 am and just felt like staying up, I never realized the feeling that one has when the world is asleep.
I was out on my porchswing drinking tea when I realized that I could hear the cows lowing from the dairy farm a mile away. I never knew that they all called “moooo” at 4 am.
Rising early is GREAT!
make sure u have ur alarm clock far away from ur bed so u have to get up to shut it off. i tend to just it off and go right back to sleep if its on the nightstand sometimes
Another classic. “The night preceeding an exam on university a phone rang in the professor’s house at 3 am. He got up and answered it. “For god’s sake. It is 3 am and I am sleeping!” he started. “And we – on contrary – are still studying” – the voice wailed.
Cool techniques. I will give them a shot.
east or west !
rising early is the best !
Congrats! I’ve found that the mornings are the best time of day. I personally wake at 4:30 a.m. (see How I became an early riser and it’s one of the best changes I’ve ever made. Keep it up!
What you don’t say is how to train yourself to go to bed earlier. This is what lets me down – I always feel a surge of energy and creativity after 10pm, and I can’t remember when I last fell asleep before 1am. Usually it’s 2-3am, so I’m always tired.
Good ideas, I’ve been using some of them specifically #3 and #9 for quite a while. If you find that those don’t work for you try
http://www.howtowakeupearly.com or Steven Pavlina articles on early rising
THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I READ YOUR ARTICLE IN WEBSITE….I THINK IT WILL HELP ME TO GET UP EARLIER…IM NLY 21 YEARS OLD..AND WRKING AS A CALL CENTER AGENT…NICE!!!!! HHEHHEE
These blogs remind me that there are many types of people and needs, and various ways work for various people. If someone’s ideas here don’t work for you or don’t make sense for your situation, that’s ok! Your ideas can help someone else who functions similar to you! We are very different people, with very different needs. I think it’s great that you all want to help each other out in positive ways! wc
How do you *not* go back to bed after shutting off the alarm that is across the room? That was my problem.
What does work for me is waking up at the same time EVERY day, including weekends. Something about the regularity of a schedule works.
7am is about as early as I can manage. I’m a lousy sleeper anyway so if I got up even earlier and lost another hour I just couldn’t function