My Best Trick to a Great Morning
I have many personal problems and two of them are that I am neither a night person nor a morning person. Many are blessed with one or the other. I was cursed with neither. I don’t like staying up late and I am glued to my bed in the morning.
I’ve long ago given up on the night, mostly out of lack of desire. I can drink Mountain Dew to stay up late if I need to (and you would be surprised how little Mountain Dew it takes to keep me buzzed until 4am), but I never feel great. It’s simply not something I want to do.
Waking up early on the other hand has been my great quest. You see, on those magical mornings when I do wake up early, I feel SO good the rest of the day. I’m energized, productive, and happy.
But the quest has been a frustrating one. I’ve tried many ideas, including putting my alarm across the room, going to bed earlier, and visualization. I’ve scoured online articles, including this helpful Quora post, but haven’t been able to get the habit to stick.
The best I could do for a long time was to schedule “can’t miss” meetings in the morning. This would make me wake up and is why I am always suggesting we move our team’s daily standup to 6a.
The “can’t miss” approach works but is not ideal. It’s frequently stressful and not fun. What I craved was quiet time in the morning to meditate, study, and have a quality workout. All of these things didn’t mesh well with the “can’t miss” scrambling start to the day.
In the midst of my quest my son was born. Of course, his sleep schedule threw a curveball to my sleep schedule. The first few months were “get as much sleep as I can” survival mode. However, now as his schedule has become consistent, my son is the key to my best trick for waking up early.
My best trick is simple. I set my alarm clock for 525a. Then, I set an alarm clock in my son’s room for 530a. In the morning, my alarm will go off and a surge of adrenaline will run through me as I rush to turn off my son’s alarm. By the time I do that, I’m wide awake and pumping out my daily push ups.
This approach has worked with 100% accuracy for two weeks. I’m hopeful that soon the morning habit will be established, you know, where your body simply wakes up at the time you do everyday.
If you want to wake up early and you have a hard time, try this approach out. Set an alarm to wake someone else up for five minutes after your alarm. You’ll need to hurry to turn theirs off before you wake them up!
Do you have other things work for you? I would love to hear them in a response.
