Not so long ago I was definitely not an early riser. Bed at 1-1:30am and wake up at 8:30-9am, that was how I rolled all the way through high school. One day, while I was stuck in the black hole better known YouTube I came across a series of videos by Vanity Fair in which successful people explained a typical day for themselves. Almost every single one started with getting up at 4:30 or 5am, and it got me thinking: is this some happy coincidence, or a true correlation between being successful and getting up early?
Operation Early Riser
So, I decided to try it for myself. I set my alarm for 5am and it was lights out at 10:30pm that night. Terrible idea. It took me absolutely ages to get to sleep and I turned my alarm straight off in the morning and slept in until 9am.
Lesson #1: Do NOT try and get up at your goal time on morning one. You will fail and it will be counterproductive I promise. Instead, get 15 or 30 minutes earlier each morning (depending on how much of a sleep-lover you are). Going for gold on morning one is like getting inspired to run and doing a marathon on your first day.
Learning my lesson, I decided to set the alarm for 7am the next morning and headed to bed at 11pm this time. Again, it took me ages to get to sleep, but this time I managed to haul myself out of bed at about 7:05am!
Lesson #2: You might just have to take the L for the first night. The hardest part of this whole endeavour for me was actually getting to bed at a time that would allow for me to get seven hours or so of sleep. What I learned is that the only real way I could do this was to have a pretty terrible sleep on night one and then be tired enough the next day to go to bed early. Consequently, don't try and start a new sleep schedule on a big night!
Fortunately for you guys, I wear a Garmin watch (HIGHLY recommend), so I can show you the difference between how I used to sleep and how my sleep schedule was starting to look in the first week of the new initiative:
As you can see, the first week was a little wobbly, but it's a definite improvement from the ol' 1-8:30am! Interestingly, I was averaging almost 20 minutes more of deep sleep too!
Before you start, the next thing you have to consider is whether you are presently getting too much or too little sleep - if you're 18-65 then the recommended sleep is between 7 and 9 hours, but if you're any other age check out this link. Personally (as you can see above) I was getting over 8 hours everyday, which definitely isn't too much but I thought it could be taken down to 7 hours since that was still in the recommended bracket - I'd have an extra hour every day!
Lesson #3: You may be getting more sleep than you need. To my surprise, changing from 7 to 8 hours of sleep was super successful - I didn't feel tired at all from day one, and I started to become a whole lot more productive. Again, though, I wouldn't recommend going straight from 8 to 7 hours of sleep - stagger it a little.
Mission Complete
Retrospectively, the decision to start getting up early was one of the best I've ever made. The best part of it all is how much more you can get done in a day. Before, I would wake up at 8:30am and do a few hours work and boom it was already lunch time. Now, by the time I've done the same amount of work it's only breakfast time. You also become a whole lot more productive, because when the world is sleeping and you aren't there's nothing to do but work and it's awesome.
A few months later I'm still loving waking up early (I know how ridiculous that sounds), and when you next get the chance I implore you to at least try getting up (and going to bed) 30 minutes earlier than usual. While it might look like Mission Impossible, the horizon is a lot closer than it looks my friend - so get out there and start Operation Early Riser today!
Note: Do not make your favourite songs your alarms. You WILL hate those songs after a week.
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