I wake up at 5 AM during the week. Not because I have to or need to, but because I want to. If you find yourself trying to get things done at night but not accomplishing a damn thing, one suggestion would be to wake up early and get to work.
Serious, if you consider yourself a night owl, write down everything you accomplish from 9 PM to when you go to sleep. If your time is spent binge watching early 2000s sitcoms, get yourself in check.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSwcGueqFRI
The downside of waking up early.
None.
The benefits to waking up early.
You’re hours ahead of everyone else. It might not seem like much now, but waking up early puts you ahead of the curve so far. Instead of slugging through the morning like a normal slob, you have hours on them so your 9 AM feels like noon.
Instead of mouthbreathing all morning, you’re alert and ready to go.
There’s no rush at the start of your day. Instead of scrambling out of your bed trying to find matching socks because you overslept, you can wake up, put on a pot of coffee, cook a hearty breakfast if you’re into breakfast, and set the tone for the rest of your day.
It’s damn quiet. When I start doing work, whether it’s for a class or personal, I like to be undisturbed. Of course, who doesn’t? I can put on some smooth jazz or some other non-lyrical music and get to work.
Review your day. I write down my schedule for the next day every night before I go to sleep. You will have more time to review that and get started knocking out your goals if you’re not in a rush out the door.
Get more work done. Imagine when you wake up, your fuel take is on full. As you do things throughout the day, your fuel tank goes down depending on the activity.
Unfortunately, your give-a-damn is tied to your fuel tank as well. At the end of the day, not only is your tank almost on empty, your effort is also almost on empty. See where this is going?
When you wake up and have time to accomplish your important tasks to reach your goals, you have more damns to give about them. That makes a difference in the quality of the final product.
How to wake up early
It’s fairly hard waking up early in the morning when you’re used to rising late as hell.
Suck it up. I basically decided on a whim that I was going to start waking up early. For a few days, I tried drinking around half a gallon of water before bed, and when I got up to piss in the middle of the night that was when I was going to stay awake.
It wasn’t fun, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t help me get my sleep schedule right.
Have the discipline to wake up. There’s no slow adaptation allowed. Do you want to wake up early? Do it.
Melatonin. Get yourself some melatonin for those nights you can’t get to sleep. I take between 15mg and 20mg depending on the pill dosage. This knocks me out in twenty to thirty minutes.
The best part of melatonin is the incredibly vivid dreams you will have. Last night I had a dream that the damn twerk team was following me around Walmart. Boss.
Coffee. If you want it, coffee is killer for morning risers. You’re already awake ready to crush the day, might as well enhance it with some of that black sludge. Oh yeah, black coffee only. You don’t need any of that foofoo lame creamer or sugar. Or maybe you do. Go for it.
Drink some water. One of the first things I do in the morning, after shutting off my alarm, is drink a few ounces of water. I’m not a scientist, but there’s some magical property in water that gets the juices flowing and wakes up the body.
Have a reason to wake up early. Oh baby, this goes along with planning your day out in advance. You need to have a reason to wake up early, otherwise you’ll justify staying in bed. When my alarm goes off, I know exactly what I’m going to do at 5:01 (drink some water). At 5:02 I know where I’ll be (on the floor doing pushups).
I urge any and everyone to try waking up a few hours earlier than normal. The pros surely outweigh the cons, and it’s not hard to start.
Get to it.
Big dawgs gotta work.