How to Become an Early Riser
How to Become an Early Riser » Steve Pavlina’s Personal Growth Blog
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.
…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…
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 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.
I also discovered this pattern myself by setting my alarm clock and waking up at the same time every morning. It just seemed like a good thing to do to get into a habit. Once you get used to it (and often during the Spring and Summer when it’s lighter in the mornings) your body (well, mine at least) will wake up automatically at the time it’s used to getting up. I usually have a lot of stuff I like to/need to get done in the morning, so staying in bed is not an option. It’s been longer than I can remember since I hit the snooze button.
A slight variation on this system is that I will often sleep in until 8 or 9 on the weekends (during the week, I get up at 6). I usually sleep in a little later on Saturday and/or Sunday if I’ve stayed up late for a few days during the week. I kind of just let my body wake me up on those days. However, I don’t stay in bed for an artificially long time; after I wake up the first time, I get up. Yes, this is true even after I’ve been out drinking. I’ve got my alcohol tolerance pretty well figured out, so I know how much I can handle without getting a hangover. In addition, I make sure to have water ready in the fridge to drink when I come in from a night out. I try to drink at least 16 ounces of water, and find that it’s enough to help my body flush the alcohol. But I guess that’s getting a little off topic…
So, yeah, wake up at the same time every day. Go to bed when you get sleepy. If you need to stay up later, you’ll probably get tired sooner the next day, so you should still wake up at your usual time.
