The Secret to Waking Up Early

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Let me preface this by saying that I have never been a morning person.  Waking up in the morning is not an easy thing for me to do, but I have realized how beneficial it is to have the entire day to get sh*t done after a few morning classes (and before class even starts).  I have 8am classes every day of the week, so this practice is something I am constantly working on.

I have tried every method of "making yourself a morning person" out there, and I could not find anything that actually worked for me.  Then I stumbled upon the secret to waking up early:

Calculate your wakeup time.

This is the single most important thing to do.  The science: a full sleep cycle runs about 90 minutes.  When you wake up feeling groggy and more tired than when you went to bed, it’s almost always because you interrupted a sleep cycle.  5-6 sleep cycles is considered a full night’s rest, but you can get away with 3-4 if you’re older (younger people need more sleep than older adults!) or that’s the way your life works.  The website sleepyti.me will calculate what time you should wake up if you go to sleep immediately, as well as what time you should plan to fall asleep if you have to get up at a particular time.  It takes me about 10 minutes max, but everyone is different, so this is something to consider.

Other Helpful Tips

1. Choose a new alarm sound.  If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably had the same alarm tone for a solid several months.  Having the same alarm sound for too long is bad because your brain associate that sound with hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep.  Pick something that’s not jarring or obnoxious, especially if you have a roommate/bedmate.  Something that starts out slowly, then picks up a little and turns into something a little more upbeat

2. Get out of bed within 1 minute.  I toss the covers to the side and stretch my legs and back a little, then get up.  I am that person who has always had to set 4+ alarms to go off every 5-10 minutes because I fall back asleep.

3. Adopt a habit that triggers your brain and body that it’s time to begin the wakeup process.  Personally, the first thing I do as soon as I get out of bed is put saline in my eyes, splash water on my face, start the tea kettle.

4. Other good examples are: dabbing on a dot of a scented lotion (not too much, so you don’t assault your sense of smell), packing your bag for the day (for me, this doesn’t require a lot of thought, so it’s easy to do when still waking up), putting in contacts, drinking cold water, getting your outfit together, taking a shower, dynamic stretches, etc.  Anything that doesn’t require excessive brainpower, but is easy to do first thing and is something you can commit to doing every morning.

5. Create a morning routine to follow your trigger habit.  My routine looks like this:

• Put saline in my eyes
• Rinse my face
• Start the tea kettle
• Get my outfit together
• Fix up my tea
• Drink my beverage while making a list (see below)
• Make and eat breakfast
• Get dressed/fix hair and makeup
• Quick email check, reply to only very urgent messages
• Pack my bag for the day
• If I have extra time, I will read a little (either for class or for leisure)
• Leave!
• Other ideas for a morning routine: yoga (I’m trying to figure out the best way to fit this into mine!), walking your dog (if you have one), reading the newspaper, going for a run/working out, making your lunch…

Tips that I have found useful:

• Don’t check social media.  This is the first thing I’m tempted to do, but the rest of the day is going to be interactions with other people, so I like to save the mornings for my own time.
• The list that I make during my routine is a “3 Things” list: I write down 3 things I want/need to accomplish during the day, and 3 things that I need to do by the end of the week.  The next day, I like to take at least 1 thing from the previous day’s Week list and add it to my Day list.  My lists usually look like this:

Day: 30 min work on paper X, 30 min chem reading, organize desk drawers

Week: finish paper X, do chem homework problems, start paper Y

• It helps me to have the tea setup ready to go the night before so all I have to do is press start.  I make sure there’s a clean mug, fill the kettle, and put a tea bag next to my mug and spoon.
• For maintaining your trigger habit, it’s really helpful to write yourself a note!  A “Start tea J” sticky note has been sitting on my desk for awhile, and seeing it every morning has helped me make it a habit.