Effective Tips to help you wake up earlier and not hate it
Waking up at 4am, 5am, 6am, 7am, and even 8am, is not fun at all. But, a lot of us have to do it. Of course, you have your anomaly’s when it comes to waking up early, but most people have no choice but to wake up early and head off to either school or work.
The way I look at it is, if I need to wake up early each day of my life, I might as well get good at it. I might as well try my best to make each morning as smooth as possible for myself, and you should do the same for yourself. There is nothing like starting your morning in a strong way.
I am going to share with you some of the greatest tips I have found from my own personal trial and errors that really make a difference in any morning routine.
Take it from someone who has had to wake up at 3am for work, it never gets easy. The key to becoming more of a morning person, has a lot to do with preparation the night before and sticking to a solid morning routine that will deliver you what you need in the mornings.
Here Are A Few Effective Tips To Help You Become More Of A Morning Person:
1. Set Your Alarm 30 Minutes Earlier Than You Anticipate
Let’s be real, 30 minutes of extra sleep may sound like it will do you some good, but take it from someone who has had to work a variety of AM schedules—it won’t. You wake up just as tired and have the same impulses to stay in your warm bed. In fact, I have found that hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep, just makes me feel more groggy when I do have to get up. Due to this, when the alarm goes off, I just get up.
By waking up an extra 30 minutes earlier than you anticipated, you are creating extra time for yourself. This pays off big when you are moving like a sloth from brushing your teeth to getting dressed. Waking up an extra 30 minutes earlier, gives you more peace in the morning. You don’t need to feel rushed, or create any type of mental stress all because you need to be somewhere on time.
I have found that it is much better to wake up the 30 minutes earlier and have the extra time, versus sleeping in and feeling just as tired anyway. By giving yourself extra time in the morning, you can now take your time and do the things you need to do before you head out. All without the injection of stress.
It is a great feeling to walk out the door in the morning, knowing that not only did you own your morning, but you don’t need to rush anymore.
2. Don’t Eat Too Late The Night Before
Keeping the food intake to a minimum prior to bed, plays an important role in the way I feel the next morning. There are foods that can be beneficial to eat close to bed time that promote sleep and keep your hunger pangs away. You need to find which foods work best for you.
It is just as important to pay attention to the foods that you eat the night prior to your early morning wake up calls. Eating a large meal too close to bed time can cause interruptions in your overall sleep quality and can cause some bloating and digestive side effects the next day. This is not exactly the best way to start off your morning.
On a day where you may have a special appointment, interview, or just need to be up early to make it to work, the last thing you need is to not feel well physically and mentally. Nutrition choices and the quantity of food prior to sleep, plays an influential role.
I have found cutting food 2-3 hours before bed time to be an effective approach to allow digestion to occur and allow your body to rest properly at night. We all have those nights where we feel hungry and may not be able to properly fall asleep unless you have something to eat. I have been there, and for those moments, choose foods that are light and easily digestible. Your body will thank you the next morning.
“Win The Morning. Win The Day.”
— Tim Ferris
3. Exercise In The Morning
This one may be a bit of a stretch for some, and I get it. Here I am talking about becoming more of a morning person(key word: becoming 😂) and I am talking about adding in something like exercise into your morning. It can sound uncomfortable at first, especially if exercise is not something you incorporate into your daily schedule today. But, something that gets your blood moving and lungs pumping early on, can be a great way to wake your body up.
The extra 30 minutes that you create (as discussed above), you can use to incorporate some early morning movement and break a nice sweat. This stoke in metabolism will help ignite some steady energy levels throughout your day, lasting for several hours.
4. Plan Your Morning Routine
If you ask any “morning person” how they thrive in the mornings, they will most likely tell you it is all about the routine. If you place specific tasks, activities, and objectives into your morning structure, and you give it a name such as “your morning routine”— you now have a process. Something to work with.
How do we get anything done?
We follow a process.
If we don’t know the process, we research it, and if it doesn’t exist, we create one. Every single person has a morning routine. The truth of the matter is, most people have one and don’t know that they have one. They just move through it in auto pilot, without any conscious effort.
Others have learned from their mistakes and have created one for themselves. Those that create one for themselves have fostered specific pieces to their morning routine that inject meaning and purpose. This changes the morning from a chore, something you don’t want to do, to now a challenge and learning process. The good news is, if you fall into the category of never working on your morning routine, you can change.
5. Place Your Alarm Far Away From Your Bed
If you are like most people that I know, you keep your phone by your bed. I used to. I have found that if you use your phone as your alarm clock, and you need to wake up early in the morning, having your phone right by your bedside is erroneous.
Why?
You have made it far too easy to hit that snooze button and roll back over into your warm bed sheets.
A great strategy that I picked up over time, is to set your alarm using your phone. But this time, place it on the other side of your room. A place where you will have no choice but to get out of bed, take a few good steps, and turn it off.
While you still have the same opportunity to hit that snooze button and do a belly flop right back into bed, the chances of you doing that are much slimmer, compared to laying your phone or alarm close to your bedside.
6. Strive To Get 8-9 Hours Of Sleep
When it comes to sleep, there is so much information out there, that you can get lost. However, most of the information always comes full circle, back to reaching 8 hours of sleep a night. I have experimented with all sorts of sleeping schedules. I have pulled off all nighters, I have gone to work running off 3 hours of sleep, and I have been to class running off of 4 hours of sleep. Conversely, I have also done those things with 8-9 hours of sleep.
The way the brain, body, and spirit function when your body is reaching high quality levels of sleep each night, does not compete with those 4-6 hour sleep nights. Some people can get away with getting 6 hours of sleep and say they feel great. If you feel like you are one of those people, then keep doing what works for you.
If you are a person that does not get along with early morning wake up calls, but are now required to face them, you are going to want to take a look at your sleep pattern over the past 10 days, and begin there.
Going to work, to school, or staying home with children all require high levesl of brain power. Depending on the physicality of your job, that too, will require both brain and physical power. This energy is going to get depleted rather quickly if you are shorting your body on sleep.
Instead, take time to audit your current sleep schedule. Make adjustments that will lead you towards improvement, and watch how you start developing into more of a morning person.
7. Prepare Your Coffee The Night Before
This is a quick little hack that I have learned to do right before I go to bed at night. I prepare my coffee maker the night prior. This way when I wake up in the morning, all I need to do is ask “Alexa” to turn on my coffee. By the time I have brushed my teeth, showered, and have gotten dressed, the coffee aroma is ripping through the air.
The smell of coffee in the mornings, helps my morning wake up process. It is an added detail, prepared the night before, that for me, makes all the difference in my morning routine. If you don’t drink coffee, maybe you can experiment with this same idea, but with tea.
The point here, is that if you are coffee drinker in the mornings like we are, then prepping your coffee maker the night before, will give you high reward the next morning when you most need it. I have found that taking 5 minutes to do this the night before, is well worth it. Rather than already having to wake up early, only to take care of something that could have been done the night before.
Which leads perfectly into the last tip…
8. Prepare As Much As You Possibly Can The Night Before
Last, but definitely not least on the hierarchy of tips to become more of a morning person, is to prepare as much as you possibly can the night before. This one tip sounds so simple, yet too many people leave everything they need to do right to the morning of.
This is not only a terrible way to go about your morning routine, but a lousy way to start your day. If you can take a quick 15 minutes of your time the night before, and prepare your gym clothes, your gym bag, your coffee, your work clothes, your lunch for work the next day, and putting gas the night before (if you know, you know) you make the morning so much better.
The point is, that there are so many little things that can get knocked out the night prior. This alleviates so much stress and so much anxiety off of your already hectic morning. The goal should be to wake up early in the morning, (although you may not like to) and enjoy your morning routine.
You want to be able to wake up, get out of bed, get dressed, get a quick workout in, shower, have some breakfast, sit by the window, drink some coffee or tea, journal, catch up on some audible books, and maybe play some nice music. And then, when the time arrives for you to head out, you can casually stand up, grab your things and head out without a worry in the world.
Why?
Because you prepared the night before. 😉
