How to Wake Up Early — The 5 Point Hack!
As someone who has been a night owl for almost my entire life, it is still fascinating to think that I could consistently wake up early. So I thought I’d share the process that got me into this new habit.
Like most people, I had previously tried and failed hard at this waking up thing. After several attempts to fall out of bed at 7 am, I eventually gave up. Well, life was still good, I could get 8–10 hours of sleep and plenty of time to work/play at night. Let me be honest here and state it outright, I never truly wanted to shift my routine (or the lack of it). I simply didn’t have a good reason to do so.
Then one fine morning (my mornings used to be 11 - 12 am), I had this epiphany, how much time am I squandering a single day curling up in my sleep procrastination. I have been waking up late my whole life, it had me thinking, it is just as difficult for me to wake up at 11 am as 5 am, so why not 5? So the process…
1. Have a Good Reason to Wake Up
If you don’t have a good enough reason to wake up early, you might not as well do so. My reason to wake up came unexpectedly when I was randomly, you know, browsing through website to understand the universe and life as we know it. I came across a link that listed the habits of successful people. When I put together the rising times of these people, it was something like a Yuvraj Singh over, 6 6 6 6 6 6! All the people I looked up to were in this category. Time to find a new role model! I kept searching to find someone in my category, but in vain.
I now I had a reasonable enough reason to wake up! So I set up my first early morning repeated alarm at 6.
2. Do the 10 sec Reasoning
So this hack is actually meant for the hardcore sleepers out there. And for a typical legendary sleeper, the following thought can be much intriguing.
It is just as difficult for me to wake up at 11 as 5, so why not 5?
Time your alarms, rise and go through this 10 sec thought process whenever you feel like going back to bed.
3. Avoid the Snooze Button
The little Devil button called Snooze is actually a metaphor for life. It simply says just a little more, a wee bit more. We, being human beings, always want a little bit more of everything, money yes, food yeah, sleep hell yeah!
Not having that snooze button just means that you rise now, or never. We also come to my previous reasoning, why go through the hell of waking up more than once?
So we have been setting up our mentality right in the first 3 points. Over to keeping us awake.
4. Make an early Morning Routine
Now that I had woken up early, I had to do something. If I didn’t have anything, I’d just have to go back to my magnetic bed. So here were the options:
- Go to the Gym
- Go jogging/walking
- Get to your computer and play games
So many choices! Now, why would I go through all this physical torture of waking up and then do something even more harder. So that choice was easy peasy. This got me going for my first week until I got bored with the game (seemed a better short term reason to wake up). But surprisingly, I found that waking up early had now become much more easier (even without the alarm).
Now that it was slightly easier to wake up I needed a good routine to keep me engaged. So this was something easy and consistent, that I came up with — Wake —Personal Stuff — Walk — Tea — Newspaper — Emails — Social Media Updates—Write. So this took like 2 hours in total and had everything I liked. I also loved the peace and silence of the morning. Now the important thing is not to get too comfortable or you’ll fall asleep again. Also, if you are a game addict I recommend staying away from games.
5. Pour some Caffeine into your Routine
Waking Up — Check, Routine — Check. Now I just needed a bit of nitro, which came from a good cup of tea or coffee. I used to take a lot, but then brought it down to an optimal level. Now the reason of the tea is to make yourself active while awake. You don’t want to be morning zombie. you need put all your hard work of waking up into something useful. You also have to keep improving your routine, making it more productive.
Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise — Kindergarten (Benjamin Franklin)
Consistency is key to staying within the routine. Try not to take off days and wake up that procrastinator within you.
I leave you with a brilliant talk by, Tim Urban at TED which actually puts your life into procrastination boxes and give a literal picture of how much time each of us have left.
