To wake up early in the morning without feeling tired is to bless yourself with a truly awesome day, let me tell you. Can you imagine how much you could get done? The question just becomes, how exactly can you do that?
By curbing your sleep inertia through ordaining a task to do in the morning, physically moving as soon as the alarm sounds, and falling asleep for as long as necessary, you can wake up early in the morning without feeling tired.
It sounds fairly simple enough, but trust me. It is even simpler than that. Add in other productive techniques, and you are off. Once you master waking up early without feeling tired, you will be so confused by people who seem to be unable to do it.
Why Is It So Hard To Wake Up Early?
Sleep inertia is the main reason it is so hard for may people to wake up early. It keeps you drowsy, and sluggish if you manage to wake up, but it can put you back to sleep almost instantly if you remain in bed.
Waking up early has a number of benefits.
It gives you more hours in the day so that you can be more productive. Also, it has some more specific benefits for writers.
For example, the quiet that is awarded in the morning can be a great time for writing. Even more, studies show that waking up an hour before your usual time decreases depression by almost half.
However, waking up early in the morning is extremely hard to do for most people, because of sleep inertia.
“Sleep inertia limits the level of human ability immediately after waking, lowering a person’s motivation and available time for productive morning behavior.”
PubMed central, ‘Using wake-up tasks for morning bejavior change: development and usability study’
Sleep inertia is when your sleep moves on to you in your waking hours. The word sleep inertia is composed of sleep, which means sleeping obviously. But also inertia. Inertia refers to force that remains even after there has been a change in direction.
For example, when driving down the road, then you turn suddenly. You body continues in the direction the car was travelling in with the same momentum, which is why it leans another way.
That’s what sleep inertia is. Imagine putting sleep in place of momentum. So it is when you fall asleep then something wakes you up, and although you are awake, your mind is still awake.
When you are having severe sleep inertia, its when you open your eyes after the alarm rings, then close them again, and when you open them again, an hour has passed. Lighter sleep inertia is when you manage to get out of bed, and walk around. but you are so drowsy and woozy, you might as well still be asleep.
It is not tiredness. It is sleep inertia.
You can read more about it in this study, but this entire blog will be using this studies’ principles to try and break sleep inertia.
How Do I Force Myself To Wake Up Early?
1. The First Step To Wake up Is Sleep Properly
If you want to wake up early, you need to sleep at a time that is going to give you the maximum amount of rest needed.
The truth is that most of the things that we will discuss here will be useful for you if you intend on falling asleep at 3 am, and waking up at 5 am.
You will need to give your self a proper amount of sleep, and rest.
You will notice that I did not say you will need to sleep early. The thing is, if you oversleep, you are doing as much damage as under sleeping. Instead, you need to find a time that will allow you to sleep for at least 6 hours.
This will be somewhere between 9 and 11 pm.
To wake up early, make yourself fall asleep at these times. You can use ASMR to help you fall asleep faster, or you can just get in bed, and use whatever routine you know that has allowed you to fall asleep quickly
If you do not have such a routine, then you can stick around, and I will show you a few tricks
2. Try The Mummy sleeping trick to wake up early
If you want to wake up early, you could help yourself fall asleep by pretending to be a mummy.
I know what it sounds like, but trust me, this works wonders.
What you need to do is climb into your bed, and sleep in a position that you feel comfortable laying in until morning.
The trick here is that you want to make sure that your limbs are not laying on top of each other, but you are also not using any of your muscles to hold up your body parts. So sleeping with your knee in the air is out of question because you had to hold it up with your thighs.
Basically, just deactivate your entire muscles structure.
You can do this by thinking consciously of each muscle group as you lay. First your legs, then your torso, then your arms, and finally your neck. Check to see tension, and release.
I say this is like being a mummy because, I cannot do this. You see, I always sleep on my side, and so my arms are crushed, while I have to hold up my body. The only way that I can balance myself is with my blankets. By pulling them, and sleeping on them, make the blankets pull me up.
In this way, I can completely relax my body.
Do this relaxing technique for as long as you can, and you will soon find yourself drifting off.
3. Do The Breather Meditation Technique To Wake Up Early
You can fall asleep quicker using the breath meditation technique.
Once upon a time, I tried meditation. I discovered the quickest way of putting myself to sleep.
Hopefully, your willpower is as weak as mine.
So basically, this is a technique that the marines use to fall asleep quickly, apparently. What happens is that you need to breathe in for about 4 seconds. Then, you have to exhale for five seconds.
Ignore how big your chest gets as you breath in and ignore how deep it gets as your breathe out. Also, try breathing in through your nose, and out your mouth.
The explanation for this technique is that by breathing in like this, you lower your heart rate. You lower it to the same pace that it gets to when you are asleep. This tricks your body into believing you are sleeping, and so it shuts of your muscles, and your brain. Then, you will fall asleep in a matter of minutes.
4. Do The Mind Flow Technique
The next thing you could do to fall asleep quickly is practicing the mind flow technique.
There is a popular meme. The meme starts by saying ‘all dreams have meaning’, then in the second panel we see some of the most random assortments ever. Planes are flying in the air, with burgers dancing by the rivers, and other random things.
The point of this meme is that dreams seem to be an assortment of the most random things that ever existed.
This is what dreaming looks like. So a simple way of falling asleep is trying to dream, while you are still awake. Then, the body follows suit, and you fall asleep.
I have done this a number of times to great success.
Basically, you think of a clear image. Try to make it as clear as possible. maybe a cup on a table or something. Your mind will quickly present a random image. Maybe the cup grows wings, or a dolphin appears. Or Rand Al Thor cuts a mountain in half.
It does not matter, flow with it.
Unlike in meditation, where you are trying to practice mindfulness, and you fight of these random thoughts, here you do the opposite. Here you are supposed to let your mind wonder, and leave it to do as it sees fit. Instead, try to follow and pay attention to what your mind is thinking, without judging any of it.
Next thing you know, you will find that you are seeing yourself falling asleep.
Extra tip
If you really want to do the full nuclear option, combine all these aspects into a single thing. Lay in a mummy position, do the marine breathing technique, and practice mind flow. You will find that you fall asleep almost instantaneously.
5. You Need To Sit Up When Your Eyes Wake Up
The next thing thing you need to do to wake up early in the morning is to actually get up when you wake up. You should move out of bed to break the sleep inertia.
This one is fairly easy. If you remain in bed after your alarm has woken you, you will want to close your eyes for 5 more minutes. Then, you will wake up an hour later.
If you even wake up at all that morning.
So the best way for you to get around that is to try and get up the minute that you wake up.
When you wake up in the morning, roll around, and change your position. Remove the blankets from your body. Or you could have a continental pillow, and as soon as morning hits, just pick that up and place it above you. Then you can just sit up, and lay on it.
In whatever way that can help for you, try to make sure that you stand up, and move when you wake up.
6. Put The Phone Away For The Alarm
The next thing you could do to wake up early is to set an alarm on your phone, and then place the phone faraway from you.
This is such a simple strategy that I am surprised more people do not talk about this.
So basically, when the alarm goes of, it tends to not work for most people. They will just wake up and turn it off, giving in to their sleep inertia. However, there is a way around this.
If you place your phone far away, you will find you have no choice but to get up, and walk all the way to the phone in order to turn it off.
Now, we have all been sleepy one night, and suddenly we find we had to pee. However, we all hated this. We knew that if we got up, and walked to the toilet, our sleep will be gone by the time we get back to bed.
Use this to your advantage.
By placing the phone far away, you are forced to walk to it, and turn it off. This will get rid of your sleep inertia..
7. Put Something You Want To Do In The Morning
The seventh thing that you could do to wake up early is to save what you like to do for the morning.
I like watching funny YouTube videos at night. However, I have found that by simply saving these for the morning, I feel more motivated to fall asleep. Also, i feel more motivated to wake up in the morning, just to watch those videos.
In order to save yourself from falling into a downward procrastination spiral, you need to choose a specific video. Choose 1 specific video you want to watch, and you will be good.
Or if you have something else that you like to do, maybe eating, then save it for the morning.
This will make you want to get out of bed when you wake up.
8 Do Something In The Morning
You could do something productive as soon as you wake up in the morning to allow you to wake up fully in the morning.
The main point of the study that we quoted earlier was that it was trying to discover how to build productive habits in the morning. What they discovered was that it actually works wonders to do something productive in the morning, as soon as you manage to climb out of bed.
Doing something in the morning helps, “(1) waking up on time, (2) escaping from sleep inertia and (3) quickly starting the desired target behavior”.
So you could wake up and reader, or write your book if that is your desired target behavior.
9. Look To Your Daily Habits
In order to wake up early, you need to find a daily habit that you can do in the morning.
Naturally, in order for you to be able to do the above task, you need to have some sort of habit that you want to do.
You can pick whichever habit that you want to build. The point here is that you are trying to build a habit that will assist you.
10. Make The 5 step planners
What could help you wake up early in the morning is planning exactly what you are going to do the following day.
So the night before falling asleep, you could use the 5 points to create your plan. These are planning, procrastination, distractions, directions, and motivation.
The night before, sit down, and fill out a paper that answers these 5 specific points.
- Planning: What is your goal for tomorrow? You could say ‘write a scene’ or ‘read a chapter’. But make sure it is something that is doable, and not too ambitious.
- Procrastination: What time can you begin working at? What time do you have no obligations, and are at your most free? Choose that specific time, and its span. It could be from 6 am to 8 am for example.
- Distractions: What will take some of your attention and focus from this task? Basically, what will you do instead of what you must do during that time you have no obligations? This can be things like social media, movies, YouTube, video games, sleeping and all the things that you spend your time on when you are procrastinating. When you have discovered them, write down what you will do to make sure you do not fall for each of them. You could stash phone away, and set an automatic time blocker that activates at the specific time.
- Directions: What specific step by step actions can you take when you are seated at the spot, and at the right time, to complete the task? If it is writing the scene, you could say, I will open my book, and word. Then, I will write a planning for character x, z and F. Then, I will write out the scene, using the opening line “Somehow, things always went south when you were with Mereth.”.
- Motivations: What will you do that is fun at that moment, and what will you do an hour before that will get you excited to start writing the scene? Maybe you could read your previous scenes. Or read a chapter of a book you wish to emulate. You could even watch top 10 authors list. Or make yourself something to eat/drink during your writing phase.
Of course this is just my interpretation of how it is supposed to be. The 6th one is the one I’m not as sure about to be honest. But let me know if you think that it is fine, or if I should change it somehow. When we can finally wake up early every morning, we will be that much closer to mastering mastery.