How to Become an Early Riser?
Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. I rarely went to bed before midnight and almost always slept late. I usually did not start hitting my stride each day until late morning or early afternoon. But after a while I could not ignore the high correlation between productivity and rising early, even in my own life. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticed a significant feeling of well-being. So wanting to maximise my productivity and discipline, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 6AM…
… and the next morning, I got up just before noon. Hmmm…
I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. I figured I must have been born without the early riser gene. Lolx... Whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that blasted noise and go back to sleep. I tabled this habit for a number of years but eventually I came across some sleep research that showed me that I was going about this problem the wrong way. Once I applied those ideas, I was able to become an early riser quite consistently.
It is hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it is relatively easy. The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you are going to get up earlier, you better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep you are getting now and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from midnight to 8am, you figure you will go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable right? But it will usually fail. Hehe..
It seems there are two main schools of thought about sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same times every day. It is like having an alarm clock on both ends. You try to sleep the same hours each night. This seems practical for living in modern society. We need predictability in our schedules. And we need to ensure adequate rest.
The second school says you should listen to your body’s needs and go to bed when you are tired and get up when you naturally wake up. This approach is rooted in biology. Our bodies should know how much rest we need so we should listen to them. Through trial and error, I found out for myself that both of these schools are suboptimal sleep patterns. Both of them are wrong if you care about productivity.
Here’s why:
If you sleep set hours, you will sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it is taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you are just not sleepy enough. You are wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that you are assuming you need the same number of hours of sleep every night which is a false assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day. If you sleep based on what your body tells you, you will probably be sleeping more than you need. In many cases a lot more, like 10-15 hours more per week (the equivalent of a full waking day). A lot of people who sleep this way get 8+ hours of sleep per night which is usually too much. Also, your mornings may be less predictable if you are getting up at different times. This is because our natural rhythms are sometimes out of tune with the 24-hour clock, you may find that your sleep times begin to drift.
The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches. It is very simple and many early risers do this without even thinking about it. But it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. LoLx.. The solution was to go to bed when I am sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days a week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 6am) but I go to bed at different times every night.
I go to bed when I am too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I could not read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I am ready for bed. MOST of the time when I go to bed, I am asleep within like 3 minutes...? I lie down, get comfortable and immediately I am drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9.30pm, other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If I am not sleepy, I stay up until I cannot keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time since it becomes obvious when I am too sleepy to read.
When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds and sit up. I don’t think about it. I have learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I try not to allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.
After a few days of using this approach, I found that my sleep patterns settled into a natural rhythm. If I got too little sleep one night, I automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasn’t tired, I sleep less. My body learned when to knock me out because it knew I would always get up at the same time and that my wake-up time wasn’t negotiable.
A side effect was that on average, I slept about 90 minutes less per night but I actually felt more well-rested. I was sleeping almost the entire time I was in bed.
I read that most insomniacs are people who go to bed when they aren’t sleepy. If you aren't not sleepy and find yourself unable to fall asleep quickly, get up and stay awake for a while. Resist sleep until your body begins to release the hormones that rob you of consciousness. If you simply go to bed when you are sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, you might cure your insomnia. The first night you will stay up late but you will fall asleep right away. You may be tired that first day from getting up too early and getting only a few hours of sleep the whole night but you will slog through the day and will want to go to bed earlier that second night. After a few days, you will settle into a pattern of going to bed at roughly the same time and falling asleep right away.
So if you want to become an early riser (or just exert more control over your sleep patterns), then try this: Go to bed only when you are too sleepy to stay up and get up at a fixed time every morning.
Believe or not is up to you..
kAkA.hUnTeR
It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth and wisdom.
spoke at : 3/21/2008 08:49:00 PM
