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Oh…Just kill me already. I don’t want to go through this anymore.” My mind kept begging me to put my head on the pillow, my torso resisted rolling out of the bed and my brain was too sleepy to control them. I agreed.

This was me in the first few days of my ‘glorious’ early morning resolution. I never considered myself as an early morning bird. I was coming to senses why I thought that way in the first place.

Don’t think this was my first effort to wake up early. I’m a 4th-year medical student and I used to force myself out of the bed just in time to go to lecturers or to attend clinical work. So I tried to change it so many times and I have lost count of it a long time ago. My nights usually ended very late, that too after watching YouTube marathon or rarely studying. You see, sleep was never a priority for me, rather a daily job just like for many of us.

And then everything changed. I’ve had enough. I experimented heavily on my sleeping schedule when I started my quarantine life way back in March. And finally came to a permanent resolution about 3 weeks after. From then on, I woke up at 5 am every day. And yes, weekends included.

So this is my complete guide to wake up early. I’ve backed it up with science wherever needed and I’ll keep it short and sweet as much as possible so you would not fall asleep while reading it.

Let’s go…

Take baby steps and don’t change too much at once

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This is where we all get it wrong. Whenever trying to adapt to a new habit we jump right into the deep end and get fed up in 2–3 days. Don’t do that even if you feel like you can manage it. It will fail most of the time.

Progress is progress no matter how small. So take it slow. Take baby steps. In the first week try to wake up 30 minutes earlier. Then remove another 30 minutes in the next week and so on until up reach your goal.

I used this technique in my experimental 3 weeks and I was feeling a whole lot better when woke up just a little bit earlier compared to all the way up at 5 am. And you don’t have to do it in 3 weeks. Take your time. You will always be better than last week and that’s what matters.

Identify your sweet spot for sleep duration

So even without sensing it, we wake up a few times during our sleep at night, without opening our eyes. If you go through a few uninterrupted sleep cycles it will make your brain fresh and raring to go. Simply there are 3 stages. In the first stage, your eyes are closed, but easy to wake up. In the second stage, you go to a light sleep which prepares you for the deep sleep that follows in the third stage.

So, when we set up an alarm we don’t what stage of sleep we’ll be in by the time it goes off. If it goes off in the first stage, then Yay! you are good. But if it rings when we are in deep sleep, we feel exhausted waking up even after sleeping for 8 hours.

So this leads us to the next tip.

Try no alarm challenge

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Contrary to the popular advice I will encourage you to experiment on the above theory for a few weeks. Try to identify the number of hours you want to freshen up. But when you wake up don’t take that ‘5 more minutes nap’. You know what happens if you do, right?

And set an alarm just in case. You don’t want to sleep well past your office starting time by mistake.

If you aren’t getting that and really want an alarm, don’t try your traditional phone alarm. Seeing how many times we can hit the snooze button in the morning is a game most of us like to play. So to avoid that, I use an alarm that requires taking a specific photo to turn the alarm off. (there are many in the App Store or Play store)

Guess what? That specific photo for me is my bathroom sink. So I have no choice but to go there and take that photo. I usually wash my face then and there so most of my laziness goes away. You will want to smash your phone in the first few days because that snoozing thing can’t be done here. But after a few days, you’ll come around.

Understand what you’ll loose

This is something we often realize after we start something. Before starting on your journey, think about things that you would miss out on and make peace with them. If you realize this a few days into the new sleep routine, you’ll begin to wonder about what you missed and your motivation will wane. So get those loose ends out of your system at first. If you accept what you lose upfront, you won’t keep trying to hold onto it when it’s gone

It’s not that you can’t have fun once in a while. You can take one-off outs when you at least pass 3 weeks to 4 weeks. But the time taken to develop a habit change from person to person. So it is better to commit to the early days and take one-offs later.

But giving up things in our normal life is not fun, right? There should be things to compensate for your losses. Something to add to your life.

Focus on benefits

Waking up early allows me to start my day in a very relaxed and intentional way. Think about having two hours of the day for yourself and yourself only. Surrounding is calm, no one is disturbing you and you are proud of yourself for starting the day before anybody else. Believe me, It’s amazing.

Also, early risers are more proactive and anticipate problems and try to minimize them. And your prefrontal cortex is most active right after waking up, making it optimal for creativity.  A 2012 study found that waking up early could be the distinguishing habit that makes older adults happier than younger adults.

When trying to wake up early, we usually adapt to good healthy sleep as well. So you benefit from good sleep as well. A night of good sleep is beneficial to your memory, cardiovascular system, fat loss, overall mental health, and much more.

So happier, healthier, more productive, and better at dealing with problems? I’ll take it in a heartbeat!

Clarify your purpose for waking up early and prepare the night before

In non of my previous attempts, I didn’t have this component. I was just focusing on only waking up. So I wake up and think about the long list of things I have to complete on the day. I get so stressed and I go back to sleep or mess around online, and when finally get to my first task I have already wasted a precious one hour.

So lay down the structure for your morning in the previous night. This will take less than 10 minutes. So when you go to sleep at night, you know exactly what you are going to do for the first hour of every morning. It provides that extra push to get out of the bed.

You can meditate, exercise, write a journal, or anything else you would like. I usually exercise 30 minutes after I wake up. I keep my exercise clothes just outside the bathroom at the night. So it is the first thing I see when I’m going to take ‘that photo’.I take the photo, put on the clothes and I’m good to go.

“It feels exciting to adopt everything you wanted at once, but you’ll be overwhelmed by 2 days and wouldn’t do even one thing then on”

And I use one other trick to maintain my motivation every day. I watch a YouTube video of the workout I’m going to do the next day at night. That makes me really want to have a body just like the one in the video. So I go to bed thinking about it and when I wake up the next morning, I jump out of bed to follow that dream.

The trick is to have 5–6 videos for different body regions. You know, watching one video over and over again will be super boring after a few days.

But don’t forget the baby steps. In the beginning, keep it simple. You don’t want to adopt meditation, exercising, writing, and god knows what else, all at once. Don’t let your morning routine to stress you.

The goal is to get a healthy routine that puts your mind in optimal shape for the rest of the day. And then to have this routine become a habit that is burned into your subconscious so that it’s just like brushing your teeth in the morning. (now, don’t tell me that is also a struggle for you)

Don’t Start Your Morning With Junk

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Please don’t do this to yourself.

I’m not talking about junk food. I’m talking about YouTube, Facebook, or any other social media you check as soon as you awake. I did this for years and I thought it was great to start the day off by doing something fun. Yeah…that little fun ruins your day.

YouTube and Facebook give us instant satisfaction by watching a video or going through that feed. Then our mind is resistant to do anything that ‘less fun’ than that. Ever heard of Dopamine and addiction?

This will mess up your routine and make you fed up with your morning again. Off you go to bed again…I know it is HARD to give up on this habit. So, to make it easy, you should give yourself treats.

Give yourself treats

It is a great feeling because this a break or a treat I have earned. It motivates me every day to go through my routine because I know there is a reward for me at the end of the tunnel.

But what if you could not meet your desired result? Simple, the treat is out of the table. You have to do your part to deserve that treat.

What About Weekends?

Finally, a ‘Mega’ question we all have.

I will encourage you to do this every day in the first month. By then it becomes a part of your life. Now I don’t feel like I have to wake up early, I do it because it is part of my life now. It is like brushing teeth and washing face. After you do it long enough you don’t think about it. You do it.

So when it is a part of you, an off day will not affect your routine. But in the first month, give your best. That is one month of investment for the rest of your life.

Conclusion

Don’t ever think 2 weeks of experimenting on your sleep is a waste. I felt it several times and I thought of just trying to wake up at 5 am straight away. But I thank myself now for believing in the process and not jumping to the deep end at once.

It.Really.Helps. So don’t skip on that.

And don’t be harsh on yourself if you had an off day. We are all humans and we mess up. Try again the next day and you’ll be good. There are fascinating parts to waking up early. You get to be productive. You get the feeling of accomplishing something before anybody else does. You get to focus on yourself. And much more. A few miserable days can give you a lifetime of VIP entry to the most glamorous hours of the day.

I love it. And you’ll love it too!