For most of my life I have never been a morning person- in fact, quite the opposite. Before year 13, I’d usually wake up about 10am on weekends and that would be completely normal. During A-Levels, I wanted to stop sleeping in as much so I started waking at 7.30/8am but it was still a bit of a struggle. When I first came to uni, I’d wake up to have just enough time to get ready and eat breakfast before 9am lectures, but it was always a rush and I never had any time for myself in the mornings.
From January this year, I challenged myself to start waking up at 6am at least 5 days a week and honestly it made such a big difference to my productivity and made me feel so much better each day. I woke up at 6 pretty much every day from January until June! Since I am on my summer break at the moment, I have been waking up slightly later but I definitely want to get back into my 6am routine again soon.
If you are thinking about trying to become a morning person, here are some tips: 1. Think about WHY you want to start waking up early. Without that motivation to get out of bed, it can be so easy to just hit the snooze button and go back to sleep – sleep definitely seems more appealing a lot of the time! But if you have a reason to want to start your day earlier, it makes it a whole lot easier. 2. Decide what time you want to wake up, and how much sleep you want to get You might want to start waking up at 6am (or earlier!), or even just slightly earlier than normal. I’d say to pick a time and try to stick to it so you get into a good routine. I also started using ‘sleep calculator’ (just type it into google), which tells you what time to go to sleep and wake up to have a complete number of sleep cycles – the idea is that you wake up feeling less groggy if you wake at the end of a sleep cycle. It did seem to work but I have no idea if there is any scientific proof behind that! I use the ‘bedtime’ feature on my iPhone and pretty much always get 7 hours and 45 minutes sleep – if I get a later night, I will wake up later so I don’t compromise on sleep. I feel this is enough sleep for me but you might want to experiment and see how much sleep you think is best for you 3. Go to bed at a decent time! This might seem obvious, but you need to go to sleep fairly early in order to wake up early. Try and get into a good evening routine and just get into the habit of going to bed earlier – it will soon become normal and you will feel so much better when the alarm goes off! 4. 5 second rule- this helped me so much! I found this ‘rule’ by Mel Robbins on YouTube- definitely worth the watch! The idea is that, if you just force yourself to get out of bed within 5 seconds of your alarm going off, your brain can’t decide against this so you just get up, rather than pressing snooze. I genuinely think this is such a helpful tip. I hate snoozing because it just makes me want to stay in bed longer and longer and makes it harder to eventually get up. Mel Robbins 5 second rule video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI2VQ-ZsNr0 5. Keep your alarm away from your bed This way, you have to get out of bed to turn it off – and if you follow the 5 second rule, you will be up and ready to start your day as soon as the alarm goes off! It can be tempting to still snooze and go back to bed, but the more you try and push yourself to stay up, the more normal it’ll become and you will get into the good habit of getting out of bed straight away! I have read that snoozing your alarm actually puts you into another sleep cycle, which actually makes you more tired when you actually do get up! 6. Persist It can take a while to form a good habit like getting up early, but if you really try and stick to it, it will eventually become easier! If you start to see benefits in terms of productivity after you started getting up early, it is going to give you that extra motivation to continue and eventually it will just become part of your normal routine! I hope these tips helped- I’d love to hear any of your tips, and if any of these worked for you! Jasmine x