Why would anybody wake up at 5 am? I will tell you.
It’s a dark rainy Sunday morning. The clock is showing 5:20 am and I don’t know why I am awake, writing this story.
I was going to talk about owls vs larks and which one is better, you know the debate on waking up early or late, not the birds, but I keep forgetting which one is which.
And I am also hungry at this early hour which doesn’t help to concentrate. You know that writing on an empty belly is recommended by the association of hungry writers? It’s a side discussion, not for now.
The important topic of the day is:
Happy as a Lark: Morning-Type Younger and Older Adults Are Higher in Positive Affect
I didn’t make this up, it’s the result from this study. If you understandably don’t want to read it, the study reports that early type individuals are in better moods, they are more alert and have greater overall experience of emotions associated with positive activation, including excitement, and cheerfulness compared with individuals who wake up later in the day.
Why might morningness be beneficial to us?
The study suggests that one possibility is the correspondence between societal expectations and individual preferences. Work schedules and school openings begin early, which force evening type individuals to wake up earlier than their preferred time which may result in sleep deprivation and emotional distress — also called “societal jetlag”.
Personally, I concur that waking up early feels good sometimes. The problem is when I am forced to get up because of work, or back in the days, because of school and university. Nobody likes to be forced to do anything. It’s kind of a human nature to go against limitations. Same with waking up. It’s nice when I naturally wake up at 5:20 am and decide to write a whole essay on sleeping patterns. It’s not so cool when I have to wake up at 7:01 am and get ready for a working day full of meetings, emails, colleagues, not enough food, lack of a comfortable sofa, and other distractions.
We should change the practices of work and school openings! Anybody should wake up whenever they want! Eh, that probably won’t happen so easily in a functional society :(
The alternative is to create a routine of waking up early and do some alone stuff before going to work or the place you are going to early in the morning.
How to keep waking up early?
Even if you manage to wake up early once or twice, the problem for most people is to keep doing it. I have always struggled to keep waking up as early as I would like.
Just get up from bed!
Yeah, no. My bed is so comfortable. If I could just get up, I wouldn’t write this article trying to find the secrets of waking up.
A loud obnoxious alarm is a simple solution. Another old trick is keeping your alarm in the other side of the room, so you will have to get up and walk to it.
Mindset
Set it as a goal to wake up early and keep yourself motivate it. Listen to podcasts about waking up early. Follow people on Instagram or search for #wakeup
Read stories and articles online about celebrities waking up before everybody.
Do you even need any more motivation than this video?
I thought so.
