How to Become an Early Riser
It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
– Aristotle
Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon.
But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high correlation between success and rising early, even in my own life. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticed a significant feeling of well-being. So being the proactive goal-achiever I was, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 5AM…
… and the next morning, I got up just before noon.
Hmmm…
I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. I figured I must have been born without the early riser gene. Whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that blasted noise and go back to sleep. I tabled this habit for a number of years, but eventually I came across some sleep research that showed me that I was going about this problem the wrong way. Once I applied those ideas, I was able to become an early riser consistently.
It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it’s relatively easy.
The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep you’re getting now, and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from midnight to 8am, you figure you’ll go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable, but it will usually fail.
It seems there are two main schools of thought about sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same times every day. It’s like having an alarm clock on both ends — you try to sleep the same hours each night. This seems practical for living in modern society. We need predictability in our schedules. And we need to ensure adequate rest.
The second school says you should listen to your body’s needs and go to bed when you’re tired and get up when you naturally wake up. This approach is rooted in biology. Our bodies should know how much rest we need, so we should listen to them.
Through trial and error, I found out for myself that both of these schools are suboptimal sleep patterns. Both of them are wrong if you care about productivity. Here’s why:
If you sleep set hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that you’re assuming you need the same number of hours of sleep every night, which is a false assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day.
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.
The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches. 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. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when I’m too sleepy to read.
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 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.
A side effect was that on average, I slept about 90 minutes less per night, but I actually felt more well-rested. I was sleeping almost the entire time I was in bed.
I read that most insomniacs are people who go to bed when they aren’t sleepy. If you aren’t sleepy and find yourself unable to fall asleep quickly, get up and stay awake for a while. Resist sleep until your body begins to release the hormones that rob you of consciousness. If you simply go to bed when you’re sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, you’ll cure your insomnia. The first night you’ll stay up late, but you’ll fall asleep right away. You may be tired that first day from getting up too early and getting only a few hours of sleep the whole night, but you’ll slog through the day and will want to go to bed earlier that second night. After a few days, you’ll settle into a pattern of going to bed at roughly the same time and falling asleep right away.
So if you want to become an early riser (or just exert more control over your sleep patterns), then try this: Go to bed only when you’re too sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning.
Edit (5/31/05):  Due to the (mysterious) popularity of this post, I’ve written a follow-up with some extra detail and clarifications: How to Become an Early Riser – Part II. And if you really want to take sleep to the next level, read about my experiences with Polyphasic Sleep, where you only sleep 2-3 hours a day by taking 20-minute naps every few hours, around the clock.
Edit (5/29/06):Â Be sure to read the related article How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off.
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Now something more personal. I’m almost 35 and I feel like
I’m sleeping my life away. When I wake up, I’m
exhausted … not rested. My body wants me up at 5:30am, when
my cats get up. I’m alert and love that time of day. But my
bed is a santuary of sorts. I feel safe there and don’t want
to leave.
Simple. Have kids. I have never been more productive since
having a family. Plus it is fun!
Do you perceive any difference in your sleep patterns between
summer and winter? Biologically, I suspect we’re wired to
sleep more in the winter (when there’s less natural light),
and less during the summer (when the sunlight lasts longer). But
I’d be interested in your personal experiences on that.
Thanks.
Clearly he doesn’t have children, those of us who do have
great difficulty controlling the time we actually get to go to
sleep despite levels of sleepiness…
Thanks for the advice & interesting article, I will be
starting this tonight! not sure about getting up at 5am though.
Interesting article. Enjoyed your comments about self-discipline
(staying up after the alarm goes off). Not a fan of alarms but have
always awaken at the same time everyday naturally. I’m a
second shifter by trade so it’s not 5:00 am but reasonable.
Diagnosed with a sleep disorder a year or so ago and have to take
meds now otherwise I don’t sleep more than two hours. Feel
like a sloth because the meds last 7-8 hours. I can tell you from
experience that your body does need sleep as well as your brain.
Before that I found that doing something in the morning that I
enjoy (not just getting to work or household stuff) helps my
motivation to get moving…for the rest of you that detest
alarm clocks.
I’m excited that you wrote about this subject because
it’s a topic that I’ve been struggling with a lot
lately. I’d like to be an early riser for a lot of reasons,
but I find it extraordinarily hard. And unfortunately, last time I
tried to adjust my schedule — using the very technique you
describe — it was an abject failure. For weeks I forced
myself out of bed at 6am (really early for me), and went to sleep
only when I was tired.
1. Discipline is the key. I have, in the words of my very own
mother (who spent many years as a therapist), “poor sleep
hygene.” Thanks, Mom. But I tend to go to bed at sub-optimal
times (too late, after I’ve battled through sleepiness, or
too early and I just lie there and stare at the ceiling). But I get
up in the mornings when my alarm goes off. Sometimes it’s
4:30, others its 6:00. If it’s 6:00, I’m sleeping
in.
Expect to have some fluctuating sleep times the first few days.
If you need a bridge nap, take one, but keep it short… just
enough to make it to dusk.
Me and my wife have been struggling with getting up early for
some time now. We have tried the early to bed, early to rise
technique without much luck. No matter at what time we go to bed we
seem to be sleeping well past 7am.
2. Naps are a big benefit to me. When I’m sleepy mid-day,
or simply mentally slightly exhausted, I take a 20-minute power
nap. I’m embarrassed to admit I use help for this (software
based: pzizz). I was pretty skeptical at first, but now I find
it’s a very pleasant way to make sure my nap is exactly the
time I want it to be, and I *always* wake up feeling more
productive and refreshed.
Steve, thanks for this article…the timing couldn’t
be better. I have no problem getting up at 5AM but falling asleep
began to be a problem on occasion a year or so ago (in fact, the
last 2 nights have been that way). I usually go to bed at 10:30PM
and if I have a problem falling asleep I stay in bed using the
logic that when I fall asleep I want to be where I supposed to be.
I also reasoned that if I started watching TV (or doing anything
for that matter) and got sleepy just the act of getting up and
going to bed could mean that the ability to fall asleep quickly
wouldn’t happen again and I’d be up till 3AM.
I’m going to give this “go to bed when you can’t
keep your eyes open” approach, maybe it will help. Last week
I had no difficulty falling asleep for 7 days in a row, now
I’ve got 2 days going the opposite. ANYTHING is worth a
try.
A problem I find myself facing quite often is that I don’t
always feel sleepy during the proper ‘windows.’ I have
a habit of staying awake for 30+ hours at a time…this, in
turn, means that if I wait until I am sleepy, I might be going to
bed with only a few hours before I have to get back up. I pretty
much have to just lay down at certain times and try to force myself
to sleep. I guess I should note that my method does leave me
lacking energy on a fairly regular basis. Its just that I
haven’t figured out a better way of doing things yet.
(Full-time student with a full-time job…schedules are always
changing) Nice article, by the way.
On Getting Up Early
May 23rd, 2005
the biggest problem I have with this is often the cursed
afternoon nap. Now, I’m still at school, and when I come
home, I do get some time to take an afternoon nap. I usually do end
up with an afternoon nap since I slept late the night before and
had to get up at the same time. This process continues on, since I
slept in the afternoon, I sleep late at night, and so on and so
forth.
Maybe someone has already said this – but I haven’t
read all the replies, so I don’t know…
To get up earlier, just wake up earlier but go to bed a LITTLE
bit earlier, say 20 minutes earlier and add it each day. Each
sleeping cycle is around 60mins to 90 mins if I could remember!
good writeup, but there’s one omission: different people
have different optimal sleep patterns. some are most productive
when they get up at 0500 every morning, others are most productive
when they can work through the night.
I would have to agree with your approach. I didn’t realize
it, but use this method myself and it works well for me. I am in
the office and working by 7am most mornings and I find that the
biggest impediment to that would be when something is happening
with my kids or there was an accident on the highway. I have found
that on mornings when I have allowed myself to sleep in, even a
little, I am behind the rest of the day.
Thanks for taking the time to analyze your own life and in the
process helping me understand my own!
Melatonin requires self-discipline because you have to go to
sleep at the same hour every day. After taking Melatonin for
2-weeks at 10:00 PM every day, my body develops a reflex of
becoming very drowsy and sleepy at about 10:30 PM every day, even
if I stop taking Melatonin. But the big problem is that if I start
going to bed later for 2-3 days, the effect wears off.
So much I’m missing. Love, family, home. And honestly I
blame THE VERY THING that keeps me from being able to get up at a
reasonable time in the morning.
The other factor that needs to be addressed here is effective
personal time management. What is the point in getting up at 5am
every day and then squandering the time watching TV, staring into
space or mindlessly surfing the web? I think a significant factor
to keep the motivation going to rise early is showing yourself the
fruits of your increased labour. Whether this be extra hobbies,
reading, training, more work, etc.
And I say 24 hour periods because my sleeping habits are now
thrown way off wack.
My overall advice to those interested in improving their sleep
and overall wellbeing, FIND TIME to:
1. wake early
2. exercise regularly (to the point you are puffing and sweating,
not just a leisurely stroll in the park)
3. minimise or cut out caffeine (especially at the end of the
day)
4. nourish your body with lots of fresh fruit and veg. Avoid
refined foods that give you highs and lows.
The fact that I’m able to fall asleep whenever I want to
(even if this takes up to 60 minutes) is absolutely GREAT. I have
fixed all my problems related to insomnia this way.
I haven’t read all the response but the surest way to
become an early riser is to have a child. Works every time!
In the winter if I go running at the same time, it’s still
very dark when I return. But I don’t think it’s any
more difficult to get up at the same time across seasons. If my
body needs more sleep during the winter, it just means I’ll
end up going to bed a little earlier.
1. Do you take naps? What happens when you are REALLY struggling
at times during your day i.e. to use Steve’s test of being
unable to read a page or two of text without closing your eyes. Are
naps part of the solution or to be avoided?
“Experts say that if you feel drowsy during the day, even
during boring activities, you haven’t had enough
sleep. If you routinely fall asleep within 5 minutes of lying down,
you probably have severe sleep deprivation, possibly even a sleep
disorder.” (“Experts say” is weaselly wording, of
course.)
1) Babies. I have four children aged five, four, two and one.
Two nights out of seven they will wake me up in the dead of night
and the time varies between 20 minutes after getting into bed to
5:30am. If one is frequently woken by infants during the night and
one finds it very difficult to rise at say 6am, what would you
suggest is the course of action to take?
Sleep can also be improved by exercise. I always find I rest
better when I exercise daily.
I’ve been enjoying the recent lifehack meme by reading
Lifehacker, the Flickr Lifehack pool, and the lifehack del.icio.us
tag.
Anyway, thanks for the column — I just wanted to share my
frustration (and hope)!
Wake up early and other healthy sleeping
tips
If I just lay in bed waiting to sleep without reading, after
half of hour of laying in the dark, I get very impatient and even
nervous. So I can’t sleep.
If I smoke pot the day before I will easily sleep till 10 or so.
In all other instances I rise and am wide awake immediately around
7:30.
Steve, do you think you would be able to suggest an optimal
strategy for giving up caffeine?
If I nap for more than 20 minutes though, it’s a mistake,
and it messes with my sleep cycle. So I tell myself to wake up in
20 minutes or less. I can lie down, fall asleep, have a short
dream, and wake up usually within 15-18 minutes. My record is 11
minutes. In lieu of a nap, sometimes I’ll also take about 10
deep breaths.
Great post. But I agree about the 30 plus hour problem.
Also one other thing about this method is that it’s
effortless, and doesn’t depend on self-discipline at all.
- I turn off the light, set the PDA’s illumination to the
minimum at which I can read without having my eyes get tired, and
then read an e-book. I choose an e-book which is mildly interesting
– not something very interesting, but not boring, either.
A wise man told me two ways for a great night sleep.
I have a shifting sleep pattern – and have had for almost
forty years. I wake up when it’s light outside – which
means sleeping next to a streetlight leaves me unrested, and that
sleeping at higher latitudes is a problem in winter. Lately
I’ve been waking at about 5:00, getting in a few hours work,
then finding that my concentration flags. I’m not tired, and
can do relatively mindless tasks, but the best part of my day is
generally a couple of hours after waking. Sometimes this means that
I take naps in order to recharge that mysterious ability to sustain
concentration. I can take a couple of fifteen minute naps and find
that I can concentrate throughout a long working day.
For the past few years, I havn’t been able to sleep until
about 2am. I can get in bed at 11pm, but not drift off until
12:30am. I am going to start practicing this technique. But one
thing I want to cure, is the dark around my eyes, and crease under
the eyelid.
my alien circadian runs about 22 hours up and 10 down; i do my
best to stay up until noon or get up by then to have a window for
interacting with “normals” world. if i try to
“force” it, i need more sleep for some reason, and
i’m fogged for more hours after waking. this is why i’m
a freelancer in a creative field but i understand many folks must
suffer a lot more than do i.
Yes, my kids usually don’t get up until around 6:30am.
Maybe this is depression? I’ve felt this my entire life.
So one thing you don’t address and that is VERY relevant to
difficulties in getting up early and greeting yet another day is
depression. Even in its mildest forms, depression can affect sleep
and our willingness to get out of bed in the mornings.
So what happens is, I get up at the same time every day (~6:15),
but by staying up too late every night I get progressively foggier
throughout the week.
I do tend to sleep a little longer in the winter (mainly by
going to bed earlier), but I haven’t been formal about
measuring how much difference there is. I’ve been adjusting
my sleep habits a lot too, so I have yet to go through a full
winter with my sleep habits as they are now.
Your strategy doesn’t work either. Here’s what
happens:
I also try to incorporate lots of wholesome food. Generally, our
bodies digest fresh, raw fruit and veg much better than refined,
processed foods. I know that when I have too much rubbish food it
can upset my digestion and can effect my sleep quality. It also
means that my body is getting the nutrients it needs to function
optimally. My energy levels are much better for it. Part of this is
keeping my blood sugar levels under control. Regularly eating
refined carbohydrates can throw your blood sugar levels out of
control which causes to you have periods of sugar highs and lows. I
know that when I eat chocolate or sweet bakery treats, I usually
feel like I need a coffee or more sugar once my blood sugar levels
drop again. It is a vicious cycle.
What if you set your alarm for 5am, put it on the other side of
the room, turn the volume up to full blast, and when it goes off in
the morning, you sleepwalk to shut it off and go back to bed. Then
when you wake up and realize it’s 9am your like SHIT.. I did
it again!
Well that’s me…
You obviously don’t have kids.
This week I started a new “personal program”.
I’m waking up 40 minutes earlier and I’m jogging.
I’ve found it hard to get my runs in in the evening with a
baby and a toddler wanting my attention. And running…
Great article. I’m hooked on this technique. I’m now
going to bed when my body/eyes shut down, and waking up at 05:50 in
the morning. Its almost 3pm now and I still feel energised, which
is such a nice change from when I would normally crash at around
2pm everyday after 9+ hours sleep. Now I sleep around 7 hours per
night. For years, I admired my father for being an early riser,
never fully understanding how he did it. But after reading
Steve’s article, I realised that he was applying this exact
technique without even knowing it. Amazing!
Just wondering if you had any input, advise or thoughts.
Day4: Wake up at 9am, with herculean efforts. Barely able to not
fall asleep. Lots of coffee to keep me awake so that I can go to
sleep at something “normal” – say, at least 8pm.
So what happens at 8pm? I “WAKE UP” AGAIN! Then I go to
sleep at 5 am!
I too follow the same principles; go to bed when sleepy, wake up
at the same time every day. Now I’m a 5am person (with or
without alarm clock), but on weekends, my body clock wakes me at
7am, not 5am as it does during the week.
I haven’t consciously trained myself to achieve this, but it
happens nonetheless.
When I was sleeping for as many hours as possible it would take
me half an hour to 1 1/2 hours to fall asleep and an occasional two
hours of laying in bed before falling asleep. This was because I
would go to bed no because I was tired but because I wanted to tack
on hours of sleep before facing my next day.
Your advice is pretty sound, though your motivation is:
“if you care about productivity”, which is not
everyone’s motivation. My other blog is devoted to circadian
rhythms etc., and teh most popular post to date is this one, about patterns of human sleep.
My whole midnight thing will never change I think, I am better
at nights than days, even after six years of 8am-5pm work.
The most dangerous thing is to do a lot of exercise after
midnight. When that happens, it’s impossible to sleep for two
and a half to three hours after the exercise is done.
The only thing that I have some resistance to with the article
is that I have grown accustomed to taking the time after everyone
has gone to bed as some “me time,” and this often means
that I push myself to stay up longer even though I am very tired,
just because I want to unwind etc. The consequence is that I
frequently feel a bit wiped out during the day. I understand that
this pattern should really change if I am to have healthy sleep
patterns, but I would miss that time to myself nonetheless.
Steve Pavlina has some [tips][] on how to become an early riser.
Interesting stuff. I know I typically need less than 8 hours of
sleep, but I hate the idea of going to bed late and getting up
early — even if I could be doing something productive
(li…
I also had problems with dosage – too low a dose and I
don’t fall asleep, too high a dose and I have problems waking
up. I also don’t like taking medicine if I can avoid it.
I have not always slept well really well. Over the last 10
months started exercising 3 – 4 times a week. I don’t
mean a gentle stroll, either, that is good for relaxation but
doesn’t burn much energy or work your muscles much (depending
on you current level of fitness of course). I go to the gym 3
mornings a week and then usually go for a jog and or stair climb on
the weekend. I find that I spleep much better since starting
exercise and go to sleep very quickly.
I averaged 4 hours a night as a kid and never had an issue with
lack of sleep, I always felt fine. So maybe that’s the issue,
listen to your body and rest when you need rest. I do like the idea
of no alarm and just pop up out of bed. That I cannot believe I did
this morning.
I see naps not so much as rest but as a way to give my brain
time to process an overload of information. If I get sleepy, I take
it as a “out of memory” message from my brain, so I
take a quick nap to give it time to catch up. It’s like doing
a mental reboot.
My boss and coworkers are all on messenger and most of them are
early risers. It helps me get out of bed in the morning to know
that I have to go into the living room and switch my status out of
Zzzzzz… If I don’t, then it’s pretty obvious to
everyone that I’m late because I slept in.
I didn’t read all 90-something comments, but did you
REALLY post this entry at 3:15 am? Explain THAT one, Sleep
Doctor.
How to Become an Early Riser » Steve
Pavlina’s Personal Growth Blog
This is ridiculous.
93 comments on something a stupid as waking up early? This Steve
must be some deranged lunatic who spends all of his time writing
comments on his own blog masquerading as a variety of interested
readers.
Day5: Alarm rings at 9am but this time it is met with furious
anger. There is no “argument” inside my head since my
capacity to argue (internally or otherwise) is gone. Most of the
time I don’t even remember getting up, carefully unsetting
the alarm and going back to sleep. Then I wake up at about 3-4pm
instead.
Thanks another time – this article will surely help to
“improve” my sleeping another time
I don’t have any specific suggestions for what to do if
you travel a lot. Virtually all of my travel is within the same
time zone, so I haven’t had to deal with this problem much. I
think my changes would depend on the length of my stay and the
number of hours difference.
2) Partners. My wife usually is the one to get up and sort the
infants out if they require attention during the night, because I
go to work and she doesn’t and sometimes I don’t hear
them anyway. She is not going to like me setting my alarm for 5am
or 5:30am because I want to be more productive. The alarm would
wake her and then she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep
which makes her irritable during the day, etc. What do you say to
this Steve.
The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches.
It’s very simple, and many early risers do
this…
I have completely solved the sleep problem (and became an eary
riser) by applying this method:
Welcome to the seventeenth edition of The Carnival Of Education.
Here we have assembled a variety of interesting and informative
posts from around the EduSphere that have been submitted by various
authors and readers. As with other editions, those en…
what a load of crap; file this with the “Hipster
PDA” et al… most people get up at a fixed time (ie, a
bit before they have to be @ work). it is exceedingly unpleasant;
glad i stopped years ago.
Im also going to del.icio.us this page
How to Become an Early Riser, I think his tip easy to
appproach.
As someone upthread said, my main problem with this is that I
prize my late-night time.
I’m really skeptical about this.
Most people sleep 8+ hours because they are doing too much at
once. The body tries to make up for a lack of sleep when we are not
getting enough. Once we have worked off the “sleep
debt,” our sleep pattern will usually return to normal. On a
second note, not everyone needs 8 hours of sleep. Some can sleep as
little as 6 hours, while other can go as long as 10-11hours. I must
say that I agree that people who are sleeping 15 hours are going a
little overboard
Another great post Steve. I’m going to try this tonight,
and report back how it works. Sounds like a great idea!
I often go to bed before I am tired enough, and almost always
set the alarm to allow myself 8 hours’ sleep.
I am an early riser. I generally get up beterrn 5:30 – 6am
(not as early as some). I do need an alarm to wake up this early. I
find that when I sleep in later I feel drained all day. I also feel
like the day passes by so quickly that I have wasted it by sleeping
in. I think the morning is such a beautiful time of day.
If your kids are sleeping on a matress in your room, it’s
much easier to settle them at night. There’s some evidence
it’s better for the kids as well, especially when
they’re very small- being alone is something that skyrockets
small children’s stress hormones, which makes sense. It used
to be that if a child was seperated from their parents,
they’d get eaten by a saber tooth tiger.
Day2: Wake up at 9am. 5 hours of sleep. Useless zombie for most
of the day. HOWEVER, energy levels actually go up around the
evening again, so I’m up until 4 am again.
Don’t consume *any* caffeine while trying adjust your
sleep patterns. That includes coffee, tea, soft drinks, chocolate,
etc. Caffeine will only make a mess of it. Same goes for
alcohol.
I think i’ll give those tips ago, Its rather irritating
when you go to bed and just lie there, staring at the ceiling and
getting frustrated because, tired as you are, you won’t go to
sleep. Or is that just me?
actually I just remembered that someone told me years ago that
your dreams (does not matter if you do dream or not) work in
multiple’s of 3 hours. Therefore if you sleep for 3,6,9 or 12
hrs, etc (must be pretty much exact) you are meant to wake up
feeling well rested. I have tried and tested this method for 3, 6
and 9 hours and it seems to work for me.
Then my kids must be figments of my imagination.
I’m also working on becoming an early riser. I
haven’t tried this technique yet, so I’ll give it a
shot!
First point, what you’re suggesting is sleep deprivation
according to some people (there’s a clip below). Of course,
conventional wisdom dies hard; scientists may not put much effort
into critically examining the hypothesis that most people need 7-8
hours of sleep. Still, I’d at least want to look at some
empirical studies to see if there’s any evidence for or
against the conventional view before I took your advice. Maybe more
importantly, I feel better and I think I do better work when I
sleep “more than I need to.”
And ofcourse, this entire system goes out of whack on weekends,
where I wake up pretty late, no afternoon naps, and sleep late.
It’s quite irregular really. I really like this idea of
sleeping only when you are completely tired, and I will definately
try it and get on the early-morning bandwaggon.
So if you want to become an early riser (or just exert more
control over your sleep patterns), then try this: Go to bed only
when you’re too sleepy to stay up, and get up at
a fixed time every
I can’t necessary suggest an optimal strategy for
giving up caffeine, but I can offer up one that has worked for many
people. Coincidentally, this was the topic I planned to cover in
the next blog entry.
Great post. Have been trying to do this for a long time as part
of a health routine. However, personally have found it extremely
difficult. I have never fallen asleep within 5 minutes in my whole
life and often find myself awake until 5 am. There have been times
when I have gone 24 hours with NO sleep and managed to function,
work and kids although in a particularly grumpy way! Contrary to
popular belief this does not mean that I will fall asleep early the
next night. It seems that over-tiredness does remain a problematic
factor which prevents me falling asleep when I most need
to……then of course there’s the psycholological
panic factor of “Oh my goodness, I haven’t slept for 2
nights running…..I MUST sleep now…..” and then
sleep is even more evasive……WISH it were as simple as
your post:)
So Melatonin is not as good as people claim it to be. It is
excellent, but only for people who are self-disciplined enough to
go to bed at the same hour every day, without fail.
Hi Steve,
I cannot express how indebted I am to your sage advice on waking up
early. I have waged a battle for about 20 years. I have had scores
of missed appointments, late for work etc.. I have been looking
around for such material for a long time. I took my body about 4
days to tune itself to this new rhythm. I sleep late, but still
wake up at 5:30, and feel more energy and do productive stuff in
the morning (as opposed to browsing if I stay up late).
Thank you for the positive view on this. As a single person I
remember being able to do this, but now, between the children
waking up at night [constantly] … oh wait, maybe there is an
idea about their sleeping pattern as well! No, kids
“never” are tired… lol
I’ll try it though.
As far as whether there are studies that indicate whether the
connection between early rising and productivity is correlative or
causal, I don’t actually care. I study myself and encourage
other people to study themselves as well. For me it’s a
causal relationship to the degree that I can measure my output as
being much higher when I rise early. I simply have time and energy
to do more things each day. Also, it’s pretty easy to notice
that I sleep less and thereby have more waking hours.
well,do you sleep at noon?
I changed this to waking up at 6am and hitting the gym at 6:30
and targeting getting to bed between 10 and 11 pm (later if I am
not so tired earlier if I am tired) and overall have felt better
for it.
I decide my wake up time when I go to bed. In the morning,
it’s non-negotiable. I don’t have a snooze alarm, so
when it goes off, I get up. Period.
However the problem I would have with your method is weekends.
On weekends I traditionally go to bed much later (12-3/4am). If I
was to get up at 6am on these days I would feel shattered. So on
weekends the alarm goes off and I leave myself to wake up
naturally.
P.S.: Although the entry is time-stamped at 3:57 am, at my place
it’s about 2:00 pm
Here in Las Vegas, which is very far east in the Pacific time
zone, it’s already getting light outside at 5AM. The official
sunrise time today was 5:24. I was running hills this morning
around 5:30, and the sun was well above the mountains already.
For this to work it requires a daily fixed wake-up time. A fixed
wake-up time means a fixed wake-up time. No exceptions. No sleeping
in no matter what. If you don’t go to bed until 4am and have
to get up at 5am, then you only get an hour’s sleep that
night. If you’re a zombie that first day, then you’re a
zombie. Try making it until 4am the next night without crashing
earlier.
- I got a good PDA (HP iPAQ Pocket PC) which can vary the
illumination intensity. Almost all modern PDAs can vary the
illumination intensity. Older PDAs like Palm III can’t
– in fact they just change the LCD contrast.
I’m really skeptical about this. Pardon my ramble.
- I go to sleep at 10 to 11:30 o’clock every day,
regardless of whether I feel sleepy or not. I don’t go to
sleep at the same hour every day, but at least I make sure
it’s before 11:30 o’clock.
In the past I have tried taking melatonin and self-hypnosis.
These methods are good and work, but they are a lot worse than the
method described above because they require self-discipline.
Today was my first day and I got up at 6. It was little tough
but I am feeling so much energy right now that I am totally going
to do it tomorrow! Btw, yesterday I got into bed even though I was
not feeling sleepy. Though what you said here makes sense and
tonight I will sleep when I feel sleepy and still wake up early
tomorrow! Thanks for the tips!
2. How do you handle international travel or indeed moving
across time zones within the US? Do you reset your own ‘body
clock’ to get up at 5am wherever you have arrived or do you
offset the time somewhat?
Now I am going to put your method into practice. Thanks once
again for the sound advice.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you thank you
thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou
I’ve only been getting that amount of sleep for over a
week now but I feel just fine during the day (Quite good actually),
and I sleep when I am unable to be awake anymore (I fall asleep
near instantly).
Is this something that I should continue to worry about?
@Anonymous Coward – Sure getting 3-5 hours of sleep is
bad, but do you really feel great after you’ve slept for
12-14? Probably not. If your like me you probably feel lazy and
groggy.
I have got the same result by using a paper book and a reading
lamp with variable intensity – I set the lamp to minimum
intensity at which my eyes don’t get tired, and read.
However, the effect is a lot weaker than when using a PDA –
the PDA is really the BEST method of doing this.
Seems people think too much of their significiant others first
of all. You have to take care of yourself b/c if you’re not
working w/ 100% of you how do you expect to work w/ or take care of
others? Co-sleeping is not good for children, I must say. Yes,
Steve says it works well for him, but he seems to be forgeting the
“rule.” When you have kids you become, well your not
first anymore. And since Steve goes running at 5am, I would assume
he has someone there to take care of his kids when they wake up @
6:30am, which helps. He must not know what it is to be a single
parent. I would challenge him to be a single parent, go to work,
school, cook, and take care of other household duties daily. After
doing these things I would like to see what his article sounds
like. I belive the word, “bored,” is used way to much
too. And I would like to mention this book Steve is writing about
“self-disipline.” Come on Steve, most people do have
some common sense, I should hope. If one can not find from within
how to wake up and go to bed to ensure thier own good qualilty of
life, then how is another going to find it for them? I’ll
give you my own personal credit if you can sell someone a way to
give someone else self-disipline. I’ll be embarassed for this
society, but hell if you can sell it, what can I say?! Oh, and as
far as the caffine or drugs you mention, here is my opinion on
that: I can drink a 12-pack of coke, drink a pound of coffee, wash
my cup, and go fast asleep. I may have to get up and go to the
toilet, but back to sleep I shall go. Here is my point, the bottom
line. Everyone is unique, everyone is different. You must find your
own way to sleep and wake up refreshed. I am not even 30 years old
and I know that all the literature in the world can not teach me
how to sleep, wake up, and sure can not teach me how to be
self-disiplined! I would also beg to differ on the comment that
only the mind needs sleep. The body does not. I personally have a
disease in my back and if my body and mind are up for too long
those muscles back there are screaming at my brain to lay down and
go to sleep. And I’m sure even w/o this disease there would
be a muscle or two wanting to sleep. Some of these claims and
comments I have just read are ignorant! They should not be made w/o
proper research and/or experience. One more thing, going back to my
point about taking care of your body and mind so that you will be
able to take care of your wife/husband, children, etc., the fact
that I read people don’t want to set their alarms b/c they
fear waking the wife, sounded more and more like an excuse
everytime I read it. I hope I did not offend, but I did read your
article as well as ALL the others regarding your article, and just
could not help but express my thoughts. Good luck on the book!!
Interesting post, but I can’t get this to work for me.
I’m by nature a late person. If I can’t go to bed at an
early enough hour to get a full night’s sleep and wake up by
a fixed time, I’d have to go through the day tired. I’m
an academic, and if I’m not at the job at full mental
capacity, I might as well not show up. Really. I can’t afford
to “train” myself as you suggest if it means being
chronically sleep-deprived for a period of weeks. Also, on those
occasions which I do manage to get myself up early, I don’t
have a problem with getting out of bed, but I wake up very slowly
and it takes me a couple of hours to reach full alertness. So extra
time in the morning at the expense of sleep usually isn’t
very productive for me. It’s more productive for me to stay
up later and sacrifice the time in the morning. I’m told that
biorhythm is correlated with blood pressure, and I have the low
blood pressure typical of “owls” versus
high-blood-pressure “larks”.
… I liked his system, which is easy to implement, logical
and suits me. Although I usually woke up about 6.20 in work days, I
only had time to prepare myself for work. Now I rise at 5.30. This
allows me first to do my daily exercises….
Example: going dancing. Stop at 3 am. Can’t sleep until
six. Sleep cycle trashed. Perhaps the solution is to stay up all
the next day after a night out dancing.
Great article. I wanted to contribute another tip for your
readers. When I go to bed, I set the status on my yahoo messenger
to Zzzzzz…
UNFORTUNATLEY FOR ME I GO TO BED JUDGING BY THE CLOCK….
NOT MY SLEEPINESS… SO I NEVER EVER FALL ASLEEP WITHIN 15
MINUTES… NORMALLY AT LEAST AN HOUR !!! I HATE IT !!!!!
IN THE MORNING I WAKE UP AT THE TIME I WANT TO… I I ALWAYS
JUST FALL BACK TO SLEEP…. I HATE THAT TOO !!!!!… THEN
I END UP WAKING UP FREQUENTLY AFTER 11AM !!!! I HATE THAT THE MOST
!!!!
SO THIS MEANS…I WAKE UPL ATER THAN I SHOULD… AND GO
TO SLEEP EARLIER THAN I NEED TO…. MY DAYS ARE CUT IN HALF
!!! I AM REALLY GETTING ANNOYED… BUT ON THE RARE OCCASION
THAT I DO GET UP EARLY… I JUST WATCH TV AND SIT DOWN…
(sigh)
GREAT IDEAS THOUGH !!!!
Jon, that presumption would prove to be incorrect.
If you can’t get up and stay up when the alarm goes off,
then most likely your overall level of self-discipline is too low.
Self-discipline is like a muscle — the more you use it, the
stronger it becomes. In my upcoming book I’ve written a whole
chapter just on self-discipline, especially on how to strengthen
it.
Your development of a sleep pattern that includes early morning
arising is interesting as a conscious, rational approach to the
issue, but clouds the issues of insomnia and early risers. Early
risers are people that are frightened by their feelings of
responsibility, at the same time that they are also frightened that
they will likely fail at these responsibilities, and that there is
no parent substitute in view. They get into a pattern of trying to
overcompensate for their supposed weaknesses, which becomes an
automatic (is autonomic the right word?) response, and they
regularly awaken before the alarm clock, if they so much as set
one. The people who want to lie in bed until they feel slept out
are people who have habitually left to others the responsibility
for making a go of life. To hell with independence and growing up.
This is the emotional gist of insomnia. Physical issues may
impinge. For example, someone with a physically strangulated
capacity for performance, like a heart condition that limits
stamina, may well have an unusual problem with insomnia because he
feels little resource for completing his expectations for the day.
John Wickey, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist
In the last couple of months I also began to slowly cut out
coffee (I don’t drink coke. In fact I don’t drink any
soft drinks). I still drink a weak tea and chocolate every now and
then. I buy a good coffee occassionally and really enjoy it when I
do have it. By only drinking coffee once a week or so it has the
stimulating effect when I really need it (as opposed to becoming
immune to it). Overall, I don’t feel any worse off for
cutting coffee out of my day. When I do feel like I need an energy
lift I find the natural energy in fresh fruit does the job. It also
provides me with nutirents, as opposed to ‘poisoning’
my body with caffeine.
This isn’t a healthy cycle, but I don’t know what
can give. I just can’t give my alone, wind-down time.
It’s precious to me.
hi steve,
i just want to say thank you. your article is great and unique.
Maybe its just time and patience. I have been awake for about an
hour and a half now and I am falling asleep while I sit here and
type this. My normal sleeping patterns are this, if it does
matter:
Typically I fall asleep 5-5:30 am and wake up 8:30-10 am (I sleep
through my alarm)
@CBP: I’m not up writing blog entries at 3am. I often
write new posts in batches and then set them to appear on different
days (usually with a post time of 3-5am).
I am in a different situation. I go to bed when i am sleepy and
i don’t have an alarm to wake me up. What happens is i wake
up at 7am every day including weekends! I may go to bed at 11pm or
4am but always at 7am i am awake. This was never planned. I tried
it because the sound of the alarm pissed me off!
Self-hypnosis also works, but many times it requires a lot of
self-discipline to stay in bed and go through the routine.
thank you for these great tips, i often feel tired throughout
the day and begin to drift off during the middle of my classes,
these tips seem like they will help me a lot with getting my sleep
and staying on task.
Day1: Set alarm for 9am. Stay up until 4am as always.
Love the article, definitely some interesting ideas there. As
far as the “obviously doesn’t have kids” crowd
goes, I do have kids, ages 1 and 2, and yeah they do often wake up
at night. Sometimes they go back to sleep relatively quickly and it
doesn’t really affect me overall, and sometimes they are up
for a very long time and I can really feel it throughout the day.
Generally, though, this does not happen as often as it seems it
would. I guess what it boils down to for me is that if my kids kept
me up for a long time some night then the method outlined here
would dictate that I would probably end up going to sleep earlier
the following night.
Steve, I have tried your method (before reading your article)
for several years. I have tried to wake up at the same hour every
day (8:00 AM) and to go to sleep when I feel sleepy.
I use my wrist-watch alarm, which isn’t as blaring as some
stand-alone alarm clocks and doesn’t scare the hell out of me
and my wife when it goes off. I find the intermittent beeps a more
gentle way to wake up.
I hate mornings. Especially mornings in which I am greeted way
too early by a less than welcome alarm. Unfortunately, that would
be five out of seven days of the week. So, maybe I should try
retraining myself to…
Then, on weekends, I binge and sleep in until 10 or 11am (yes,
my wife is a saint).
I’m not even trying to wake up at 5am, 10 am would be just
fine! 8 am would be perfect.
This is the only technique that has worked so far. Wish I had
journaled while trying all the other techniques. Thank you —
Zygo
I enjoy having the amount of time being awake as I do now, I
accomplish a great deal more now than I ever have before. But like
I said, I am fearing that in long-term it will all catch up.
I sometimes take a quick power-nap in the early afternoon,
usually when my brain feels overloaded, like if I’ve had a
lot of unexpected things come at me in a short period of time. Most
days I don’t nap though. Sleep processes short-term memory
into long-term memory, so napping is like wiping your mental RAM
clean and saving it to your brain’s hard drive. This frees up
more mental “working memory” to start new tasks instead
of dwelling on old ones.
What do you do during daylight savings time?
Mission: TRY AGAIN WITHOUT THE DRUGS
The problem was that, despite the 6am daily wakeup, I still
wouldn’t end up going to bed before 1am or so. What’s
worse, my energy level during the day was hopelessly low —
until noon or so I felt like a complete zombie, walking around with
a head full of fog. Around 5-6pm, which is usually around the time
of day when I have a second wind and kick into a productive
evening, I was just dead mentally (even though physically I
wasn’t nearly tired enough for bed). Needless to say, this
killed my productivity and made me miserable. I kept telling myself
that if I stuck with it, my body would eventually adjust, but after
weeks I was still struggling and decided to call off the experiment
so I could get some real work done again.
In contrast, my method of using very-low-light reading on a PDA
(described above) requires almost NO self discipline.
When you get up in the morning, stay up for at least a couple
hours, but after that, if you get sleepy, then sleep, even if
it’s earlier than your target bedtime. But whatever you do,
don’t drug yourself to stay awake and then complain that you
didn’t get sleepy!
Steve Pavlina wrote an excellent post about how to beat
insomnia. I noticed the same that I am really productive when I
wake up early in the morning I get to do so much more. His
technique is a bit…
John Derbyshire wrote that an hour of sleep before midnight is
worth two afterwards. Good sentiment.
Sounds like peopld would rather drown in their own sorrows, and
appear at intelligent as they can here.
However, I am an insomniac and had horrible problems with
insomnia during my life.
I am a night person. Unfortunately. Nothing seems to change
that. No strategy, no medicine, no trick. Traveling to China (which
I do yearly) gives me 3 or 4 days of early rising (I love it) until
I adjust to the local time and then it is right back to my usual
late to bed, late rise. It sucks but tactics like yours simply do
not work for some of us.
This post and number of comments to this site proves that sleep
research/knowledge is lacking in humanity. The researchers need to
focus on this subject and enlighten us all. Most of us spend one
third of our lives in sleep, we should know more about it.
My personal viewpoint and experience – I personally
believe that the only decisive factor in this is nothing else but
my own psychics, to be more specific – it’s all about
motivation. There’s no doubt that the sleep patterns do have
to be somehow regulated, you can’t cut it too short nor you
can prolong it too much thinking you’ll make up for what you
lost. Although nobody can really gather motivation just by wanting
to do so, I see it as the major factor in all this. Everytime
there’s no real motivation for me it’s incredibly tough
to get up, it’s much more tempting to just lay down and give
everything its time. We all do have different systems of perception
in us, leading to different levels of motivation, so there
can’t be any universal rule drawn out of this. Most likely
the only probable rule appears to be that everybody tries to make
his/her days/weeks/entire life as much exciting for him/her as
possible. I just can’t imagine getting up in the morning
extremely easily, no matter how perfect my sleep pattern is, when
there’s nothing really special for me that day. Expecting
something really interesting in that given day makes me get up much
faster no matter what my pattern was.
I like your idea and I will give it a try because I love the
daytime, it makes me feel alive and pumped up, as opposed to night
time where I sometimes feel cold and alone. I will set my alarm for
11am and lean up when I wake up and see how this works.
Steve Pavlina has posted an pretty interesting post on his
thoughts on sleeping and wake up early. An approach that works for
him is:
Second point, I have trouble with “insomniacs are people
who go to bed when they’re not sleepy.” For me, the
biggest determinant of whether I get to sleep quickly is whether
I’m worried (or excited) or not when I go to bed — my
sleep deficit or surplus doesn’t matter much.
I love sleeping. Sleeping kicks ass. What’s wrong with 9
hours a night? I still pay my bills on time and get stuff done.
Maybe most of our ancestors were farmers who got up with the cows,
but I’m not a farmer, and I seriously doubt most of your
readers are.
I’d adapt to daylight savings and keep getting up at
5am.
Thanks, I’m definitely going to give this a try. Your
first few paragraphs were *very* familiar – I’d love to
get more done in the mornings too.
Steve, I am presuming you don’t have little children in
the house Great post though which I discovered
through digg.com and I have subscribed to the feed so I am sure
I’ll be back.
Seriously, I’ve been looking for someone who suffers as I
do. Really great idea, and if followed, really helps free you from
all the unhelpful crap about proper sleep times, and REM cycles,
etc etc.
Steve, reading the latest and I see you do have at least one
little one. Congrats on Kyle’s first steps, always a great
moment. I guess having a 5am alarm would let you be up before him
most days anyway?
LMS / May 27th, 2005 at 11:09 pm
I agree about the excercise part. Getting moving is a really good
thing. I haven’t got a gym nearby, so I’ve done various
things like a fast & furious bike ride for ten minutes; moving
construction materials around in the garden; sit-ups and stretches;
carrying something up and down steps.
Sounds great, I usually get up at 6:10am (my alarm on my mobile
phone wakes me), but there are two scenarios where this system may
break down and I’d like to ask Steve his opinions.
Shadal / May 26th, 2005 at 10:56 am
I can relate. Alarm clocks are useless. But there’s nothing
like a wake-up call to trick you out of bed. Actually having to say
something coherent to someone is a terrifying prospect and always
wakes me right up. Thereafter it’s only a matter of staying
awake…
a) Exercise regularly (keeping your circadian rhythm in
check)
b) Natural sunlight into your eyes (keeping melatonin levels down
during day to keep u wide wake and sleepy during night otherwise
why did you feel sleepy all day, hmm?)
Looks like I’m a college student.
What about those of us addicted to caffeine? I wonder what this
nasty little variable would do to your model. It was very well put
and I believe it would work for me, except for the Diet Dr. Pepper
that I most suredly would drink sometime after 7pm. That magic
moment of sleepiness doesn’t come knocking sometimes til 1 am
or so. I’ll try it though and try to slow down the good doc
as well.
I read two articles the other day that I wanted to pass on. How
to Become an Early Riser & How to Become an Early Riser Part II
It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits
contribute…
Day3: Wake up at 9am again. 2 consecutive days of 5-hour sleeps
– I’m 99% useless during daylight. Once again, energy
returns at night. Sleep at 4am.
After a few weeks the kids should settle down. And it
shouldn’t affect relations with your wife if you’re
just a bit more creative about when and where. I have several
friends who have done this and they’ve all been fairly
pleased with the increased amount of sleep they’re getting at
night.
Staying up until I am tired enough to fall asleep quickly would
keep me up until 4:00 a.m. or so. Not good.
So Stuart… if you go to bed at 4am then and get up an
hour or two later, you think you’ll continue staying up until
4am the next night and every night thereafter? I’m doubtful
that you could do that for long without going to bed earlier.
I used to sleep very long hours, sometimes sleeping in until 4pm
(occasionally even when I had a job that started at 9am). Ten hours
per night was usual, but I could sometimes sleep up to 14 hours.
The main reason was probably that I had nothing to get up for. The
funny thing was that I always felt tired.
About 10 years ago I realised that I was wasting my life, so I did
some research and experiments and found that I have much higher
energy levels and feel less tired during the day on between 5 and 6
hours a day. I now normally go to bed about 11pm, read until I get
sleepy, and get up at 5.30am.
One problem with getting up at 5.30 has been that it disturbs my
wife, and she feels that she needs more sleep (she often has
trouble getting to sleep at nights, and is quite a light sleeper).
So I now use my Palm PDA as the alarm clock, and place it on the
other side of the room. The advantages are that it is a different
alarm from the one that my wife uses, so she has learned to ignore
it, and I have to get out of bed to turn it off. I often find that
I wake up a minute or two before the alarm goes off, which is a
good feeling. Sometimes I will wake up naturally around 4.30am, and
I usually get out of bed then.
Occasionally I will have a 15-minute “power nap” during
the afternoon. This is usually only necessary on days when I am
either bored or the day isn’t going well.
I can usually fall asleep within a few seconds of deciding to
sleep. I think this is explained by some Buddhist meditation
techniques I learned years ago. I sleep very soundly, and I’m
not disturbed by normal nightly noises, so my sleep is good quality
sleep.
Sorry to ramble, but this is one of my favorite subjects. Excellent
blog, Steve. Keep up the good work.
It has never worked for me. The result is that I go to sleep
later and later, and my state (awareness, alertness) during the day
gets worse and worse. I also started to have problems waking
up.
OK, I may a little strange or just an Alien from a different
World. I’ve tried valium to get me to bed earlier, but I will
still sleep in. If I don’t sleep, I’m a trainwreck.
Even after a week of getting up early, I’m in shambles and
will literally sleep ALL weekend. HARDLY productive in any way. On
the weekends, no matter how tired I am, I can pop right out of bed,
with a hangover or no sleep, it doesn’t matter. No alarm
clock.
I have a deep problem in that if I go to sleep before, approx.,
midnight I will wake up and then no matter how tired I am not ever
get back to sleep. Sometimes I do just a half-hour or so before the
alrams go off and I have to start dealing with the kids.
Ruy, did you drink coffee every day, or just on day 4? Either
way, if you’re going to use drugs to keep yourself awake,
this isn’t going to work. You’d probably have fallen
asleep earlier on day 4, but you drugged yourself to stay awake.
Now how is the experiment supposed to work if you use drugs to
cheat?
Is their any actual proof that getting up early actually makes
people more productive or is it just anecdotal? My experience is
most artists, especially comic book artists, game artists, 3d movie
aritsts, storyboard artists and others are late risers. Whether my
experience is the norm and whether they’d be even more
creative and more productive if they got up early I’m not
sure but given that the worlds they dream up are often dark (which
I find more interesting that the everyday light world) I wonder if
they would lose that if they didn’t experience so much
darkness.
Lifehack: how to stop biting your nails
However, when I get home from work at around 7pm, I get a rush
of evergy that lasts until about midnight. I would definitely love
to try, but maybe my lifestyle doesn’t support it.
Really interesting and quite similar to my own experiences I
have found. I used to go to bed between 1-3am and wake up as late
as possible (around 8am give or take) and never felt good for
it.
I have two kids, ages 1 and 5. My son is playing in my home
office right now.
Recently I have only had 3-5 hours of sleep per 24 hour
periods.
Im going to try this the next two weeks and see how I do.
I am in the midst of an attempt to stay up from when I woke at
5pm to some reasonable bedtime tomorrow; that is, I’m trying
to stay up for slightly more than a full day in order to correct my
sleep cycle. This happens about every two or three weeks.
This is very interesting and I am going to try it. For years I
have thought I was a night person bacause I can stay up very late
and start a new project about 2 AM. Even when I was working, the
last few years when I was really bored with the whole thing, I
could not get up on time. Yet I remember years ago when my children
were young and I was a stay-at-home mom, if something didn’t
get started by 10 AM, I was really disgusted. I really would prefer
to rise early and get things out of the way, and fall asleep as
soon as I get into bed. Wish me luck!
Can timing of this post be any better? This weekend, I decided
that I want to get up early (5 AM) from now on, whether week day or
not.
I would also like to see how the affects of soda pop, coffee and
other caffeine producing foods and drinks work when trying to fall
asleep. I’m an avid pop drinker, especially at work, or after
work. I hate coffee which is probably a good thing, and I can only
drink tea with lotsa sugar.
Eventually you’ll adjust. You’ll have to. But it
won’t work unless your wake-up time is non-negotiable.
So, invest some time in your overall wellbeing, and I hope your
sleep improves!!
…The biggest change in his system, though, is not
sleeping late on weekends. I thinks that’s a good advice,
since this way every day is equal and the sleep patterns are not
disturbed during the weekend. This should allow getting up early on
the first workday easier than after a “sleepy”
weekend…
I think the key is the fact that I read something (so I
don’t get horribly bored when staying in bed and trying to
sleep) combined with the fact that I do the reading in the dark,
with as little light as possible (illumination set to minimum).
This way my brain has the patience of staying in bed, and also
registers the fact that it’s very dark, so I get very
sleepy.
I was always used to sleeping a great deal because of the fact
that I thought sleeping as much as possible would give me as much
energy as possible. Although on many occasions I would sleep for up
to 10 hours most of the time and be groggy throughout the day.
While on other occasions I would be getting no more than four hours
of sleep and feel just fine.
Just to say that after reading, I switched from a wake-up
between 7am and 9am depending of my mood/whatever, to an everyday
at 6am. It has been 2 weeks like that, perfect, I am able to do a
lot more in the day. I see no point in going back to my previous
way. Thanks a lot!
Great post – I would love to be able to rise at 5am every
day and got to bed no earlier than 10:30pm.
I can fall asleep, and sleep more deeply in bright sunlight,
especially if it’s rising and in my face, that’s my
best sleep and I am most comfortable with my blinds never closed.
When the Sun comes up and warms my room, I finally feel tired and
cozy. I can stay up all night no matter how tired I am. No matter
how exhausted I am, once hit the pillow, I am WIDE AWAKE. It drives
me insane because I want to get up early, go for a road bike ride,
go surfing, etc.. and make a nice breakfast, and be prepared for my
day. I will hit the snooze 20 times nonetheless.
Thanks for sharing ur “theory” with the rest of ppl
out there ! It sounds ok to me .. i will apply and let u know the
result .
dude, this is genius… i’ve been trying to do this
for like ages, but never could i bring myself to be a morning
person… and the timeing is excellent, considering i’ve
been incredibly low on sleep and my productivity level has gone
down quite a lot.
When I used an alarm clock, I could wake up 5 seconds or so
before it went off! I don’t know if there’s a little
noise the clock makes before inducing its cardiac-arresting sound,
or my inner clock saying “I’m not going through this
again!”, but this happened with several different clocks.
I know this really doesn’t pertain to sleep patterns, but it
was interesting to me.
I sleep at 11 O’clock and always prepare myself to wake at
5 in the morning and I manage to wake by 5 am but feel very sleepy
so that I can not cope with my daily schedule.
Will it a matter if I sleep less than 5 hours a day?
And how to get rid of this early morning drowsiness?
Please help me.
Well I went to bed at 10 when I was exhausted. I ate 3 home
cooked meals, didn’t drink andonce I hit the pillow, wham! My
eyes stared at the ceiling for 8 hours straight. I did not set my
alarm, I did get up early and get my day started, and I’m not
the least bit tired. Not one hour of sleep and I feel great? Maybe
my problem has been I sleep too much!
I am a morning person. I have energy throughout the day, but i
never related it to my sleep patern!
My wife falls asleep within 5 minutes each night. I have never
been able to do that… usually more like 45 minutes to an
hour. Reading will only make that worse as I will become engrossed
in the book and read for hours.
I just would like to know if anybody could tell me, how-come
some people wake up from any alarm and hear it even though they
slept a few hours, and some people just don’t hear any alarm
clock even if it trembles and shouts.
I am truly tired and ready to sleep around 7AM – 8AM.
Sometimes I will fall asleep at 8 or 9, but will still hit the
snooze until 10 – 11 AM the next morning. We’re talking
14 hours of sleep here. I truly hate going to bed but can’t
get out of it.
Thank you for that arousing article
I will definitely try to follow you scheme to get my sleep at the
right time. I’m no insomniac, but i tend to stay up the whole
night if some coding problem won’t let me go.
In the past I have tried using an alarm clock to wake me up at
the same time everyday (around 6:30 AM). I’m
always able to get up but I always feel groggy. By 1:00 PM
I’m feeling tired again. I think my problem is
that I just can’t fall asleep at night, tired or
not. I’m capable of staying up the whole night
even if I only got 4 hours of sleep the night before. In the end I
just decided to l accept the way things are. I still function well
enough at my job and there is always that one day of the week that
I get the most amazing sleep and wake-up refreshed and ready for
the new day… it’s a great
feeling.
Whoa, this is a great article and so many replies. Personally, I
have always struggled with falling asleep. I think it started in my
teenage years. Sometimes it would take me 1 hour to fall asleep and
often times 2 or 3 hours. On average though I would have to say it
probably takes me roughly 1 ½ hours to be completely
knocked out. It’s always the same, whether
I’m dead tired or not. I very rarely fall asleep
instantly. But on those few occasions it is such a blessing. My
diet’s not that great but not that horrible
either and I get regular exercise at least 3-4 times a week. I
think I may suffer from some sort of sleeping disorder but I never
got it checked out and just learned to live with it.
New Program: Wake Up Early and Jog…
I have god-awful sleep patterns. My day Starts at 12-1pm and
ends at 4-5 am. I’ve tried a lot of things but none of them
seem to really help.
My entire life and lack of success is wrapped up in my sleep
habits/patterns. I so desire to get up early and to feel rested in
the mornings, and time and again I’ve tried to
“fix” this. But I can’t. I’m stuck. And
it’s ageing me, hurting me, and tick-tock tick-tock …
so many missed opportunities as a result.
After 30-60 minutes of reading in the dark with the PDA
illumination set to minimum I feel extremely sleepy, and fall
asleep naturally.
Seems I’m getting it all totally wrong and need to try out
your suggestions.
no matter how many times I work late night, I have to admit that
I am more productive, fresh and sharp-minded in the morning.
I have a young child (under 2) and another one the way. My days
are very busy, and after 10pm, when everyone’s in bed, I have
time just to surf the web, fiddle around, read, unwind. I love it.
I just can’t seem to give it up.
Ok, after my last post I have only decided to write one thing
down. Get out of bed earlier. My goal is to get out of bet at 6am
for 30 days straight. The second the alarm clock goes off, I am
gong to roll my arse out of bed, onto the floor, and out
th…
i cant belive that all these people are being so rude to you i
think it’s really sweet you want to share your experience
with other peopel i’m glad for all the helpfull ideas i have
found on this site and to all the other peopel if you want to be
bums thats your problem but i want to do the most i can with my
life so thhhbbb! to you!
How to Become an Early Riser
Some people don’t need an alarm — they can condition
themselves to get up at the same time every day. I can do this too,
but I still set my alarm because I’ve conditioned myself to
react a certain way when the alarm goes off, so it’s like
Pavlov ringing a bell. I respond on cue without having to think
about it. So it’s not just that the alarm wakes me up;
it’s that it triggers me to actually get up.
Sleep is entirely for the mind. The body needs no sleep, muscles
just need brief rest between activities. Too much sleep can be
detrimental to the body just as a lack of it is.
Hi,
since you mention the mysterious popularity of this site –
could it have to do with the fact that it is a recommended site in
“StumbleUpon (self improvement)”?
Off Topic: Do you know any good information, or article, on the
harmful conditions staying up all night has on your body? I have
the idea to stay up all night, and fall asleep the next day
(hopefully without drifting off at the poker table) at a good time
(10pm.) Will this work out, or is an all-nighter to harmful on my
body?
And if so how can I change it and keep up the nergy levels that
I have now?
My kids names aren’t Excuse1 and Excuse2 though.
fear or desire will get you out of bed in the morning. as i age,
i have less of both…
I have started to move to just waking in the morning and not
thinking about it, but because of my compassionless nature for my
current employer I find the “tireds” getting a hold of
me and pudhing me back into sleep in the morning. Is there any cues
or clues someone has for overcoming stress related anxieties in the
morning for getting up?
Hmmm. Maybe this whole thing WILL work. And when I can’t
sleep, I’ll just lay there and rest my muscles from working
out and get up when the sun starts to light up my room….
Another thing I have found, is that I need to get into bed
sometimes to feel tired. I can faff around for ages, doing crap
that doesn’t need to be done. I need to get into bed and
start reading a book to allow my mind to start to shut down. This
doesn’t always work, but if I am on the laptop coding, or
watching TV I can go till 5am without feeling tired. I need to shut
off those things that keep my mind active to feel tired.
It’s amazing how much you can get done if you get up a
couple of hours earlier than normal. I normally get up for my alter
ego’s day job at around 7:00 am, take a shower, check my
email, and head off to work by 7:45 am.
Well, this mornin…
What you consume during the day will affect your sleep cycle,
especially caffeine, refined sugar, and animal products. So if you
have a problem falling asleep at a reasonable time compared to when
you wake up, it could be dietary. The onset of sleepiness is a
biological function after all. If you corrupt your biology with
chemicals, your endocrine system will have trouble secreting the
right hormones in the right quantities at the right times. For
example, if you eat animal products like meat or dairy,
you’re consuming the hormones that were fed to those animals
to make them grow faster and fatter (the reality of factory farming
these days). These animal hormones cause a host of
“unnatural” side effects in human beings. I remember
reading that young girls now get their first menstrual period an
average of four years sooner than they did a century ago, mainly
due to overconsumption of animal hormones (especially dairy
products from cows given hormones to increase milk production).
I have to wake up at 2:48 am for my first job, then I go off and
teach full time. Rule 1: no freakin’ TV ; Rule 2: go to bed
at 7:30 (7 if I’m smart), screw whatever else is going on;
Rule 3: read for a bit. Then lights off.
This is a great post and (hopefully) really useful to me.
I’ve always struggled with waking early, although lately
I’ve been considering how best to shift my sleep patterns to
enable me to do this (and I was intending to follow what you
describe as the ‘most common wrong strategy’).
I do this. Lord knows how. I just think about getting up at that
time when I go to sleep and the next morning it happens. I never
set an alarm anymore unless I have something really important to do
like catch a plane. Mostly this involves deciding whether I am
getting up early to exercise (5:30), regular time (6:15) or late
(after 7). These times are all pretty close. I don’t think it
would work with a time like 4:00.
I am starting to fear that only getting the amount of sleep that
I am right now will catch up to me somehow and have an eventual
negative effect.
If I went to sleep when I couldn’t stay awake any longer,
I think I’d end up going to sleep sometime around noon the
next day
Your technique sounds very natural and very simple. And I
STRONGLY believe in simple things being more effective than they
actually seem to be!!!
i don’t know about others, but for me there is no
correlation between physical exhaustion and sleepiness. of course,
they quite often coincide, which sets up a good situation for
falling asleep quickly. however, i’ll often be exhausted in
the middle of the day, and i just feel like sitting or lying down,
not sleeping. i have yet to try any of these methods. what i really
need is a way to trick myself into actually getting out of bed with
my alarm.
Great theory, but maybe not so great in practice. It’s
mid-afternoon, I’m at work, and can hardly keep my eyes open.
Should I go to sleep?
Question – what about days when you have to be up much
earlier? Do you adjust your sleep patterns at all? Do you have
trouble during the day?
But I’m not ready to give up just yet. I plan to try this
again soon, in conjunction with more attention to my exercise
habits and eating patterns (both of which are fair but could be
better). Starting at this time of year, when it’s light so
early in the morning, should help. I’ll also monitor my
compliance more closely. I wonder, for example, if I was letting my
resolve to get up early slip on weekends (I admit, it’s hard
to imagine going to bed at 3am Sunday morning and waking up three
hours later — not that I do that every weekend, but certainly
now and then). I probably need to keep a written sleep log so
I’m not confusing perception with reality, and see where that
leaves me.
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…
I read your article the 6th of June and attempted for a few
weeks to do this. But the thing is.. I can’t drift off to
sleep! I HAVE to force myself to sleep, or I can’t get any. I
don’t know why.. I had bought a “sleep machine”
(a machine that plays soothing noices) and that only seems to help
just a little bit. But when I do get fully to sleep, and wake up at
my planned time, I’m fine, until I sit down or lean against a
wall and I just fall asleep! The other day I took a nap at the
poker table, which was embarassing. Is there any natural, or
unnatural (ie. medication, etc) that I would be able to take/do to
help me and give me better sleeping habits?
How to Cure Bad Sleeping Habits
Thanks Steve. I couldnt have come across this article at a
better time.
I’m quite the insomniac, and I’ve noticed my work is
suffering. I’ve read the whole report an will give it a
try.
How Effective Are You? Can Sleep Help?
Let me sum it up like this – with sleep it’s just
like with everything else – IT’S ALL JUST ABOUT WHAT
YOU BELIEVE. As long as I truly believe in something I bet
it’ll work for me the way I want it just because I want to
perceive it that way. Just think about religions – BELIEVE IS
THE STRONGEST THING THERE IS.
I quite agree – I do something quite similar and it works
for me…
This sounds OK in theory, but how does it work in practice? What
do you do when you got out for dinner with friends and the chat
goes on into the night? Make your excuses and leave at 9:30pm, so
you can get to bed? Or battle through the sleepiness? What happens
when your kids wake up in the middle of the night and you have to
tend to them? What happens when your wife does not want to go to
bed at the same time as you? Or does not want to have the alarm go
off at 5am?
I report to work at 9am. So I get up at 7:15. Last week I had to
be at some 7am employee meetings. So I woke at 5am. Tough days
requiring naps and I really slept in Sat am.
I think my sleep habits are lame. After skimming through
“How to Become an Early Riser“, maybe they’re not
so bad. I think I just need to make sure I don’t just turn
the clock off and lie back down in bed – that’s my
terr…
“It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits
contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom. –
Aristotle”How to Become an Early Riser ? Steve Pavlina%u2019s
Personal Development Blog
I am so amazed. I think I will definatly try that. In the past
I’ve been trying to sleep early. At my current rate,
I’m falling asleep by 6am. Not good, I want to wake at 6am.
So I would force myself to stay awake only to sleep early and then
wake at 2am. This kinda works but it’s not always the best.
I’ve steadily kept my alarm clock on for 10am, and I seem to
just be able to keep hitting the off button and I immediate fall
back asleep. I’m excited now to try this.
Love your blog, your articles, and this post in particular.
Thanks for the article…I am going to start waking up
early every day now and see how it goes!!!
@Kate: It’s rare that I’d ever have to get up
earlier than 5AM, except maybe to catch a plane. But if I had to be
up earlier than that, I’d just do it and probably be a little
off that day. I might take a 20-minute nap in the afternoon to
help.
The same way you say go to sleep when you are tired, I say
it’s best to wake up when you are not tired. Your body knows
when it’s the best to wake up, and waking up naturally you
wake up during the light part of your sleep cycle, not the heavy
part. Waking up via alarm when you are in a deep sleep never feels
good. Although on weekends I do wake up naturally much earlier now
as well.
What causes these dark patches? Staying awake too late at night?
Also, how much sleep is recommended for the average male?
This is distinct from getting up too early and feeling tired,
which does me no good, as I feel the effect for more than a day,
and it throws my entire existence out of kilter. Steve’s
method would not work for me as I’d be feeling whacked out a
couple of days each week. This may have something to do with sleep
physiology in other areas. I lost the ability to stay up all night
at least ten years ago. If I try it, I suffer for several days
afterward.
I guess I will see how this works and differs to your situation
and give some feedback.
Perhaps there is something psychological with setting an alarm
clock, I anticipate it’s click and music coming on. I get
anxious and it builds and I worry. If I don’t set an alarm, I
can pop right up and out, even if I have to work on the weekend. I
love my job. I think I just answered my own question. I’m
going to NOT set my alarm for work the rest of this week and
perhaps that will get rid of the anxiety of waiting for that horrid
awful thing to interrupt me. Hmm, maybe I don’t like to be
told what to do, ha! ;o)
I work from 4:45pm to 1:15 am. I usually want to say up and do
things like work on my website or hang out with friends and stuff,
and don’t feel tired most of the time until like 4 or 5am.
Then I set my alarm clock for 2pm and end up flalling asleep around
6am – 6:30am usually.
For the gentleman with four kids: You may want to look into
co-sleeping (google it, I don’t have time to find good links,
so sorry)
If I sleep late its impossible for me to wake up (when I’m
at home)…Some times I put up to 10 alarms around the
room/house at different times, and I still either sleep through
them, or wake up in the morning finding them ALL turned
off/unplugged/thrown out a window,lol(really did happen once).
Though, I do want to try the telephone call technique. The problem
may have to do with self-determination, because even in life, I
kinda get lazy to get things done/study… Any
ideas,websites,etc. Anyone???Steve? BTW I might forget to check
here so can you please send to my e-mail at richyrichrich0@yahoo.com
thank you
I have also tried exercise, but the exercise did nothing good
for my sleep in the long term. In spite of this I exercise 3-4
times a week at a gym, for the other health benefits (exercise is
GREAT for reasons other than the sleep pattern).
hey, steve. have you ever heard of melatonin as a
helpful regulator for sleep habits? i started using it because of
its positive effects on alleviating migraine headaches. your stuff
here is wise. thanks.
i use this same approach but i was kind of forced into it by my
baby son who incredibly, wakes up at exactly 7am every morning and
has done since birth. works a treat.
There are just some nights on the rare occasion where I’m
not sleepy whatsoever, and end up pulling an all nighter or force
myself to sleep at 8 – 9 pm. and belive me, it
sucks…