How to become an early riser Join Course
How to become an early riser Join Course
Early
The name says it all. Wake up early



Steve Pavlina is an American self-help author, motivational speaker and entrepreneur. He is the author of the web site stevepavlina.com and the book Personal Development for Smart People.



External url: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/



Tags: sleep, early rising


You should go to bed and get up at the same times every day. It’s 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.





Briana Regrg r

3days at a stretch woke up at 4.30 am .. Yes it is difficult at least now.. I still yawn a lot.. Yet .. !! I compensate for that.. hitting the bed early.


Briana Regrg r

After been able to 6 am early morning. . . For fun and probably to ease up my day I thought to prepone my waking up time.... There I found this ... Wow... I am going for it now..


Briana Regrg r

Those days are gone, when I used to struggle to get out of the bed. When I kept on snoozing the alarm so that I could dooze for a minute more..


Briana Regrg r

Again I woke up before the alarm rang.. Only thing that I changed is my time when I hit the bed. Whenever, I feel too sleepy to stay up I understand that my am tired and need rest. Withut any hesitation, I head towards the bedroom.

 

As a result, I am happy early bird ...


Briana Regrg r

For the last 10 days I have beat the alarm and woke up at 6am... It is working!!


Briana Regrg r

I wake up at 6am but really feel lazy on the weekends. Then just motivate myself I was running through different webpages. Then came to keystooptimalliving.com... and there I found about the week end. I found it to be interesting so sharing it with you guys. "keystooptimalliving.com - How to wake up early?"


Briana Regrg r
Help wanted

Got up early.. Friends.. Could you help me? I want to track my sleep. I was reading this lifehacker article and was wondering should I try this? Anyone tried?


Briana Regrg r

My day begins at 6 am folowed by a short workout session and heavy meal. I love to ready my kids for school... and making the lunch box.. Waking up same time helps me to take care of everyone including myself without a single worry.


Briana Regrg r

AAAhhhh... The fresh air of the morning.. I am trying Lexie to follow this routine too so that she sticks to a fix time to leave the bed. It is going on well.
 


Briana Regrg r

As the winter is aproaching, I am facing problem to wake up early.. I just feel like curl in the blanket... No matter even if I sleep extra 15 minutes it doesn't seem to b enough.

 


Briana Regrg r

I am waking up same time... since I had trouble with that.. now I got proper reasoning.. I have been unaware of it so long.


Briana Regrg r

This is a big deal for me.. for the last 5 days I have gone to bed almost same time.. and suprisingly I have fallen asleep fast and work up same time max to max with a time difference of 5 mins. I feel like I won a game.


Briana Regrg r

I was down with fever... 105 degree.. Scared like hell.. Was in hospital everything starting from my eating habit to strength just shattered.. I got weak. I won't be able to rise up early.. I actually realized I get a deep sleep and unless I feel reenergized I don't wake up. I decided to give myself all the time and rest it needs to get back into shape...


Briana Regrg r

I have difficulty with the alarm clock.. tried so many times but think its time to change my alarm clock.


The second school says you should listen to your body’s needs and go to bed when you’re 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.





Briana Regrg r

Those tricep dips killed me litterally. I got a bad pain.. I slept 2 hours more than usual. Couldn't make an effort to move. Gosh!!

Just listened to my body...


Briana Regrg r

Having a horrible back pain. Going to spend the whole of the day in bed..


Briana Regrg r
Help wanted

Don't know what is wrong, and I have been sleeping around 10 hours for the last few days. Having a mild headache all the time..

Can anyone out there HELP me?


Briana Regrg r
Help wanted

For last 2 days I was sleeping late and had to wake up early.. I just thought to give my body a few hours of more rest and compensate. Yes honestly I was having troublle to get a proper sleep infact. Then while reading this article I understood that either I am making wrong anticipation over my sleeping habit.. going to follow the instructions as well as see how things go... sleep and active life.

Any suggestion?? Why I feel I didn't get enough sleep?


Go to bed only when you’re too sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning.





Briana Regrg r

Had a very tiring day. So going to bed early tonight.


Briana Regrg r

Wohhhh,,,,,, I go on talkinig about my observations about this habit change... But, honestly I have plenty of time for myself. I help my kid with homework, take her to swimming classes. In fact I am going to join a cookery class from next week...


Briana Regrg r

There is no substitute to Good Habits.. !! It is good and now I finally have plenty of time in my hand foor myself.. :)


Briana Regrg r

For last 5 days no caffeine in night in fact I made a fixed time to hit the bed.. I wake up fresh these day..


Briana Regrg r

I am about to break my addiction of having caffiene through out the day and sometime after super. Now, while i was going though Steve's article I finally figured out what was actually messing up my sleeping cycle.


Briana Regrg r

What a week.. But, dint stay awake much late.

Happy New Year!!


Briana Regrg r

It is inter-related. If I get up early at a fixed time and follow a routine then I fall to sleep pretty early. Even with few hours but I have seen.. I really have a quality sleep. I really don't yawn the next morning..


Course Additional Information

It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
- Aristotle

Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon.

But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high correlation between success 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 being the proactive goal-achiever I was, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 5AM…

… 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. 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 consistently.

It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it’s relatively easy.

The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep you’re getting now, and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from midnight to 8am, you figure you’ll go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable, but it will usually fail.

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’s 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’re 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’ll sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that you’re 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’ll 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’re getting up at different times. And 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’s very simple, and many early risers do this without even thinking about it, but it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.

I go to bed when I’m too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldn’t read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I’m ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, I’m asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately I’m 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’m not sleepy, I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when I’m 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’ve learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I don’t 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’d automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasn’t tired, I’d 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 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’re sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, you’ll cure your insomnia. The first night you’ll stay up late, but you’ll 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’ll slog through the day and will want to go to bed earlier that second night. After a few days, you’ll 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’re too sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning.

Edit (5/31/05):  Due to the incredible popularity of this post, I’ve written a follow-up with some extra detail and clarifications: How to Become an Early Riser – Part IIAnd if you really want to take sleep to the next level, read about my experiences with Polyphasic Sleep, where you only sleep 2-3 hours a day by taking 20-minute naps every few hours, around the clock.

Edit (5/29/06):  Be sure to read the related article How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off.

 

 

------ 

Part 2:

 

Last Monday’s post How to Become an Early Riser obviously struck a chord with many people. That post has generated more links than I can count, sending more new traffic to this site than any other post or article I’ve written. And the traffic logs indicate that the surge was decentralized (not attributable to a mention in any one major source).

You can get an idea of what that post did for StevePavlina.com’s traffic at Alexa (note the big spike at the end of May 2005). Alexa isn’t very accurate, but it’s good enough for noting general trends.

Last Monday I did a Google search on “how to become an early riser” (in quotes). It returned zero results. Now look at how many results it returns.

OK, so this was an instalanche. But why? Getting up early is a relatively benign topic, isn’t it? At least I thought it was at the time I posted it.

Since this appears to be a topic of interest, even though I don’t fully understand why, I figured I’d do a follow up post to add some more detail.

First, on the subject of going to bed when you’re sleepy… to do this correctly requires a mixture of awareness and common sense.

If you’re doing stimulating activities before bed, you’ll be able to stay up later and stave off sleepiness for a while. In college I used to participate in poker games that went until dawn, and then we’d often go out to breakfast afterwards. I can easily stay up later than my normal range of bed times if I work, go out with friends, or do other stimulating activities.

But this isn’t what I meant by noticing when you’re sleepy. I mentioned the test of not being able to read more than a couple pages of text without losing concentration. This doesn’t mean waiting until you’re about to drop from exhaustion.

The onset of sleepiness I’m referring to is when your brain starts releasing hormones to knock you out. This is different from just being tired. You actually feel yourself getting drowsy. But in order for this to happen, you need to create the right conditions for it to occur. This means giving yourself some downtime before bedtime. I find that reading is a great way to wind down before bed. Some people say reading in bed is a bad idea… that you should only sleep in bed. I’ve never had a problem with it though, since when I’m too sleepy to keep reading, I can just put the book down and go to sleep. But read in a chair if you prefer.

Another test you can use is this. Ask yourself, “If I were to go to bed now, how quickly could I fall asleep?” If you think it would take more than 15 minutes to fall asleep, I say go ahead and stay up.

Once you set a fixed awakening time, it may take a bit of practice to hone in on the right range of bedtimes for you. In the beginning you may see some huge oscillations, staying awake too late one night and going to bed too early another night. But eventually you’ll get a feel for when you can go to bed and fall asleep right away while allowing yourself to wake up refreshed the next day.

As a failsafe to keep yourself from staying up too late, give yourself a bedtime deadline, and even if you aren’t totally sleepy, go to bed by that time no matter what. I have a good idea of the minimum amount of sleep I need. 6.5 hours per night is sustainable for me, but I can do 5 hours in a pinch and be OK as long as I don’t do it every night. The maximum I ever sleep is 7.5 hours. Before I started waking up at a fixed time each morning, I’d often sleep 8-9 hours, sometimes even 10 hours if I was really tired.

If you consume caffeine during the day, it’s likely to mess with your sleep cycles. So the original post assumes you aren’t drugging yourself to stay awake. If you’re addicted to caffeine, then break the addiction first. Don’t expect natural sleepiness to occur at the right time if you’re screwing with your brain chemistry.

The idea of the original post was to explain how to develop the habit of arising early. So the advice is geared towards creating the habit. Once the habit is established, it runs more subconsciously. You can be doing stimulating activities like work or playing video games, and you’ll just know when it’s time for you to go to bed, even though it may be a different time each night. The sleepiness test is important for developing the habit, but subtler signals will take over afterwards.

You can always sleep in late now and then if you need to. If I stay up until 3am, I’m not going to get up at 5am the next morning. But I’ll return to my usual routine the next day.

I recommend getting up at the same time for 30 days straight to lock in the habit, but after that you’ll be so conditioned to waking up at the same time that it will be hard to sleep in. I decided to sleep in late one Saturday morning and didn’t set my alarm, but I woke up automatically at 4:58 am. Then I tried to sleep in, but I was wide awake and couldn’t fall back asleep again. Oh well. Once the habit is established, it isn’t hard at all to get up, assuming you’re going to bed at the onset of sleepiness.

If you have kids, adapt as needed. My kids are ages 5 and 1. Sometimes they wake me up in the middle of the night — my daughter is in the habit of doing this lately, popping into the bedroom to tell my wife and me about her dreams or sometimes just to chat. And I know what it’s like when there’s a baby waking up every few hours. So if you’re in that situation, I say that the rule is to sleep when you can. Babies aren’t very good at sticking to schedules. :)

If you can’t get yourself out of bed when your alarm goes off, this is likely due to a lack of self-discipline. If you have enough self-discipline, you’ll get out of bed no matter what. Motivation can also help, but motivation is short lived and may only last a few days. Discipline is like a muscle. The more you build it, the more you can rely on it. Everyone has some discipline (can you hold your breath?), but not everyone develops it. There are a lot of ways to build discipline – you can read the whole six-part series on self-discipline to learn how.  Basically it comes down to taking on little challenges, conquering them, and gradually progressing to bigger ones. It’s like progressive weight training.  As your self-discipline gets stronger, a challenge like getting out of bed at a certain time will eventually become trivially easy.  But if your self-discipline has atrophied, it can seem an almost insurmountable hurdle.

Why get up early?

I’d say the main reason is that you’ll have a lot more time to do things that are more interesting than sleeping.

Again, I’ve gained about 10-15 hours per week doing this. That extra time is very noticeable. By 6:30am, I’ve already exercised, showered, had breakfast, and I’m at my desk ready to go to work. I can put in a lot of hours each day of productive work, and I’m usually done with work by 5:00 pm (and that includes personal “work” like email, paying bills, picking up my daughter from preschool, etc). This gives me 5-6 hours of discretionary time every evening for family, leisure activities, Toastmasters, reading, journaling, etc. And best of all, I still have energy during this time. Having time for everything that’s important to me makes me feel very balanced, relaxed, and optimistic.

Think about what you could do with that extra time. Even an extra 30 minutes per day is enough to exercise daily, read a book or two each month, maintain a blog, meditate daily, cook healthy food, learn a musical instrument, etc. A small amount of extra time each day adds up to significant amounts over the course of a year. 30 minutes a day is 182.5 hours in a year. That’s more than a month of working full-time (40 hours per week). Double it if you save 60 minutes a day, and triple it if you save 90 minutes a day. For me the savings was about 90 minutes/day. That’s like getting a free bonus year every decade. I’m using this time to do things that I previously didn’t have the time and energy to do. It’s wonderful. :)

Blog entries by followers

Briana Regrg r

Those tricep dips killed me litterally. I got a bad pain.. I slept 2 hours more than usual. Couldn't make an effort to move. Gosh!!

Just listened to my body...

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

Having a horrible back pain. Going to spend the whole of the day in bed..

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r
Help wanted

Don't know what is wrong, and I have been sleeping around 10 hours for the last few days. Having a mild headache all the time..

Can anyone out there HELP me?

    1 comment
Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

Had a very tiring day. So going to bed early tonight.

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

Wohhhh,,,,,, I go on talkinig about my observations about this habit change... But, honestly I have plenty of time for myself. I help my kid with homework, take her to swimming classes. In fact I am going to join a cookery class from next week...

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

There is no substitute to Good Habits.. !! It is good and now I finally have plenty of time in my hand foor myself.. :)

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

For last 5 days no caffeine in night in fact I made a fixed time to hit the bed.. I wake up fresh these day..

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

I am about to break my addiction of having caffiene through out the day and sometime after super. Now, while i was going though Steve's article I finally figured out what was actually messing up my sleeping cycle.

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

3days at a stretch woke up at 4.30 am .. Yes it is difficult at least now.. I still yawn a lot.. Yet .. !! I compensate for that.. hitting the bed early.

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

After been able to 6 am early morning. . . For fun and probably to ease up my day I thought to prepone my waking up time.... There I found this ... Wow... I am going for it now..

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

Those days are gone, when I used to struggle to get out of the bed. When I kept on snoozing the alarm so that I could dooze for a minute more..

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

Again I woke up before the alarm rang.. Only thing that I changed is my time when I hit the bed. Whenever, I feel too sleepy to stay up I understand that my am tired and need rest. Withut any hesitation, I head towards the bedroom.

 

As a result, I am happy early bird ...

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

For the last 10 days I have beat the alarm and woke up at 6am... It is working!!

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

What a week.. But, dint stay awake much late.

Happy New Year!!

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

I wake up at 6am but really feel lazy on the weekends. Then just motivate myself I was running through different webpages. Then came to keystooptimalliving.com... and there I found about the week end. I found it to be interesting so sharing it with you guys. "keystooptimalliving.com - How to wake up early?"

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r
Help wanted

Got up early.. Friends.. Could you help me? I want to track my sleep. I was reading this lifehacker article and was wondering should I try this? Anyone tried?

    2 comments
Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

My day begins at 6 am folowed by a short workout session and heavy meal. I love to ready my kids for school... and making the lunch box.. Waking up same time helps me to take care of everyone including myself without a single worry.

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

AAAhhhh... The fresh air of the morning.. I am trying Lexie to follow this routine too so that she sticks to a fix time to leave the bed. It is going on well.
 

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

It is inter-related. If I get up early at a fixed time and follow a routine then I fall to sleep pretty early. Even with few hours but I have seen.. I really have a quality sleep. I really don't yawn the next morning..

Add a Comment

Briana Regrg r

As the winter is aproaching, I am facing problem to wake up early.. I just feel like curl in the blanket... No matter even if I sleep extra 15 minutes it doesn't seem to b enough.

 

Add a Comment

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