Erik I

Rising early is something I find very rewarding. FWIW it is now 0508 local time as I'm finishing this post.

It used to be that I'd wake up at the last possible moment (to get as much sleep as possible) and stay up at night as far as possible (to get something done or be social). At some point I finally realized that I am no night owl, so I tried looking into if I could rather rise earlier. Turns out I can, I now more or less comfortably wake up somewhere between 0345 and 0430 and get things done.

Those hours between 4 and 6 are kind of magic: Nobody execpt me and the flyer delivery driver that keeps putting stuff in my mail box on my wall seems to be awake. I can write, plan my day and even sometimes program a little.

FWIW, here are some tricks/observations that might help you if you want to try this:

• It seems I feel less tired if I wake up around 0400 sometime than if I stay in bed until the rest of the family wakes up.
• Generally it seems I need to get up about a couple of hours earlier than I'd usually have to so that I can get some time to get stuff done.
• My brain need to have a reason to be awake, just waking up to stare at the wall doesn't work.
• For a couple of years I've used the app Sleep as Android which would wake refuse to turn off until I scanned a QR code in my bathroom. (I later used an NFC sticker that I placed underneath a shelf so that it didn't bother anyone by looking ugly.)
• Now I just rely on my normal alarm clock but I use one really nifty trick:
• From time to time, either when I know I've had little sleep lately and know it will be hard to get out of bed the next day, or if I find my early rising habit slipping I do the getting-out-of-bed-drill[0]. The longest version of the getting-out-of-bed-drill goes as follows: I go to my bedroom, set my alarm clock app to ring in two minutes, go to bed and pretend to be sleeping. When the alarm goes off I do the exact steps I'm planning to do every morning:
  • Sit up in my bed, yawn
  • Step out on the floor
  • Stop (not snooze) the alarm
  • Head for the bathroom
  • Get cold water in my face
  • I then go back to bed and repeat
• Now that I've been rising early for a while I'll just pretend that my alarm clock rings (I'm that lazy : ) and go through the rest of the drill.
• But if necessary I'll do a longer one that even includes going downstairs to put on coffee.

Comments and ideas can be sent to @eitland@mstdn.io

[0]: While I call it my drill, I didn't come up with this drill on my own, rather I read about getting up early on Steve Pavlinas blog: – How to Become an Early Riser – How to Become an Early Riser – Part II – How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off

Filed under: #risingearly #life and #lifehacks