Tips for waking up early?

orangesmartie

Let me know how you get on with this. I'm not a morning person and I've tried almost every trick in the book. I have a natural light alarm clock that is supposed to gently wake me before the noise element comes on. It doesn't.

I don't hit the snooze button on the noise bit because i can sleep right through it. I've put different alarm clocks in different rooms of the house. i simply switch them off and go right back to sleep. I've tried putting alarm clocks next to, on top and under work out clothes, to no avail.

I have a dog. He doesn't like getting up early either. If i force him out for a wee, he goes right back to bed when we get in.

I don't drink caffeine, so the energy drink idea is out for me.

I posted about this on my timeline just last week and someone said that perhaps I just need to accept that i am not a morning person and forcing myself to get up early, just makes me feel negative at the start of the day and a failure for not managing it. And yet if i have to get up early for a meeting or something, i can just about do it. I just can't seem to do it on a regular basis.

So for the last week i've been setting my alarm clock for the time I've normally been getting out of bed (2 hours after the alarm has originally gone off) and this is working much better for me. I'm usually up within 10 mins of the alarm going off, i don't feel so grumpy/negative. The downside is I'm not managing to get exercise in before work. But i feel this is the trade off i have to make.

I also found that if i sleep until i naturally wake up, i'm in a much better mood and more able to take on exercise during the day. I'd far rather sleep til i wake up and then be awake all night long. That was how i studied for exams at uni

Ta2dchic20

I get up at 3:30 every morning to get to the gym. Now I am a morning person so it's a bit easier but what I remind myself every day when that alarm goes off is how good it feels to start my day knowing that my workout is DONE!!!!

YES! I agree completely! There's nothing like being done with your workout when most people are just waking up

SoozieQuarks

This sounds counter-intuitive, but try it. If it's too hard to get up at the first time you try, set the alarm half an hour to an hour earlier. You do through different cycles of sleep, and some of them are easier to wake up from than others. I once had a job that required the alarm to go off at 5:00 AM. It was soooooooooooo hard to get up at 5:00. Then my boss told me he needed me to come in an hour earlier, and I thought I'd never make it, but turns out it was much easier for me to wake up at 4:00 than it had been at 5:00.

Those sleep stages are in hour and a half cycles for most people. So you were probably trying to wake yourself up right in the middle of a deep sleep stage at 5, whereas at 4 you woke up easier because you were coming off an almost awake sleep stage. So, for the OP - think about when to go to bed so that you wake up at the end of a hour and a half cycle.

Also, I use an alarm on my phone that makes me do math to get to the snooze button. And I hate math, especially in the morning, so that will wake up my brain and my body. It's Alarm Clock Xtreme Free if you've got an Android.

Oh, and as for the telling yourself to wake up at a certain time before falling asleep - two things - My Dad is a master at this, like down to the minute mark, even when he had sleep apnea! I wonder why I didn't get the morning person gene! Foiled again! Also, this is a trick that the lucid dreaming community use to help them have better dreams or to realize they are dreaming. So, tell yourself something like "I am going to get up at 6am, and I am going to dream about Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt telling me I look hot in that BCBG dress and Louboutin heels I drooled over today." ...Okay, maybe that's a little too extensive, but you get the point.

Keep us updated!

FOR SCIENCE!!!!

painthoss

Some people just take a long time to wake up. Making the change from asleep to awake takes me about 30 min. I've read that you can train your body to wake up quickly by practicing during the day. Go through your night ritual, whatever it is, set the alarm for 5 minutes after you lay down, and when it goes off, get up. 5 minutes may not sound like a long time, but it feels long enough when you are lying in bed in the middle of the day feeling stupid. :-) Repeat this several times in succession.

I did this with success when I needed to get up early for work, but went back to my usual habit when my hours changed.

loopingcaterpillar

i used to write myself a list of stuff to do in the morning when i was a student, i wrote it just before bed and read it in the morning, i wrote stuff like what i was going to wear and where my keys were and stuff. it worked for a good while.
now i have a drink if i wake up in the night and im forced to get up to pee :P can't snooze in that circumstance. i put my kettle on on way past for my morning cuppa.

ShmoozyQ

This sounds counter-intuitive, but try it. If it's too hard to get up at the first time you try, set the alarm half an hour to an hour earlier. You do through different cycles of sleep, and some of them are easier to wake up from than others. I once had a job that required the alarm to go off at 5:00 AM. It was soooooooooooo hard to get up at 5:00. Then my boss told me he needed me to come in an hour earlier, and I thought I'd never make it, but turns out it was much easier for me to wake up at 4:00 than it had been at 5:00.

Those sleep stages are in hour and a half cycles for most people. So you were probably trying to wake yourself up right in the middle of a deep sleep stage at 5, whereas at 4 you woke up easier because you were coming off an almost awake sleep stage. So, for the OP - think about when to go to bed so that you wake up at the end of a hour and a half cycle.

Also, I use an alarm on my phone that makes me do math to get to the snooze button. And I hate math, especially in the morning, so that will wake up my brain and my body. It's Alarm Clock Xtreme Free if you've got an Android....

THIS!

Use this nifty little calc to help you figure out what a good time to fall asleep/wake up is. It makes a huge difference for me. And I find that I do wake up naturally at the predicted time on mornings when I don't have an alarm set.

http://sleepyti.me/

Leigh_b

I set my alarm for 10 min earlier than I need to be up cause I know I'll hit snooze at least once or twice. I get to feel like I slept in but I'm right on time.

This is what I do too. But I also mentally walk through my whole morning the night before.... "I need to leave the house at 7:30 so I need to get the kids up at 6:30... so I need to be in the shower at 5:50... so I need to be on the street running at 5:10... so I need to be out of bed by 5:00... so I'll set my alarm for 4:45. If I don't get up by 5:00 I will be late for work." I think about it in terms of making me late for work rather than having to skip the workout. If I mentally make the workout non-negotiable I am more likely to get out of bed because being late for work isn't really negotiable most days either.

DanaDark

Go to bed earlier.

LastMinuteMama

I set my alarm for 10 min earlier than I need to be up cause I know I'll hit snooze at least once or twice. I get to feel like I slept in but I'm right on time.

This is what I do too. But I also mentally walk through my whole morning the night before.... "I need to leave the house at 7:30 so I need to get the kids up at 6:30... so I need to be in the shower at 5:50... so I need to be on the street running at 5:10... so I need to be out of bed by 5:00... so I'll set my alarm for 4:45. If I don't get up by 5:00 I will be late for work." I think about it in terms of making me late for work rather than having to skip the workout. If I mentally make the workout non-negotiable I am more likely to get out of bed because being late for work isn't really negotiable most days either.

Leigh, I like your process! I'm gonna try this!

CasablancasTX

My friend keeps an energy drink next to his alarm clock on days he has to get up early, so as soon as he gets up to turn off the alarm he has some caffeine to get him going.

I cannot think of anything less appetizing at 6am than warm red bull.