How To Wake Up Early And Have The Motivation To Get Things Done

If you can wake up an hour earlier than the average person, you will have an additional hour per day. And within a year, you will have 365 hours extra, which is equivalent to an addition of 15 days. Imagine what you can accomplish with these extra days.

Studies have shown that most successful people wake up early.

• Richard Branson, the business tycoon behind Virgin Airlines arises at around 5M every day.
• Xerox CEO, Ursula Burns starts her day as early as 5.15AM.
• The same goes for Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO who usually reaches the office around 6 AM.

Successful people choose to wake up early because they want to have a head start than most people. Think about it, by the time you reach the office at about 9 AM, you have already completed some of the most important tasks of the day, how’s that?

Therefore, if you want to achieve greater success and produce outstanding results in life, you might want to seriously consider waking up early.

Here are 5 simple and effective tips on how to wake up early and still have the motivation to get things done and be productive.

1. Get Enough Sleep and Sleep Earlier the Night Before

One of the most common reasons most people can’t wake up early because they don’t get enough sleep. Their body is tired and when the alarm rings in the morning, they just feel too tired and lazy to get up.

Most people don’t want to sleep early. They rather spend their night time watching movies, playing games or checking social media than getting to bed early so that they can wake up early and be productive the next day.

Come on, you can’t cheat your sleep. If you want to get up early, you have to get enough sleep and don’t stay up late the night before.

Getting enough sleep is one of the most important keys to maintaining good health. Your body and your health are your most important vehicles to success. You don’t want to be the richest person in the graveyard.

Thus, take good care of your health and make sure you get enough sleep each day. Remember, success is a marathon, not a sprint. If you want to go farther, you need to get enough rest.

2. Build a Productive Morning Ritual

A ritual is simply your daily routine. At the beginning when you first started to wake up early, you will feel uncomfortable and sleepy and this is very normal. After a few days, you will slowly get used to it and wake up early is not going to be a big deal to you anymore.

In addition, you want to make sure you know what you want to do with the extra hours you have each morning. It means that you have to create a schedule for your morning ritual.

If you have no idea what to do and you just wake up early, trust me, you will feel sleepy and tired, and you will just fall back to sleep. This is why you need to give your mind clear instructions of what to do.

Consciously plan your morning, turn it into your routine, and then develop it into your ritual or habit. Here are some examples of what you can do:

• Wake up at 530am.
• Drink 500ml or 2 glasses of water.
• Wash up and brush teeth.
• Do some simple exercise and stretching.
• Write down affirmations, goals, and plan for the day
• Read for 30 minutes.
• Take a morning shower.
• Take your breakfast.

Of course, the above are just some suggestions of what you can include as your morning ritual. What you need to do is to take a piece of paper and write down all the activities you want to include as your morning ritual.

Do this right now and make sure the items you listed are as specific as possible. The more specific they are, the easier you can execute because you know exactly what it is that you need to do.

Once you have listed down your morning schedule, commit and stick to it. It may be challenging at the beginning, but as you go through it day after day, you will turn it into your morning ritual and it can be one of your most productive hours of the day.

You can also follow Robin Sharma’s 20/20/20 Formula:

• 20 minutes to exercise,
• 20 minutes to read and learn,
• 20 minutes to plan and review your goals.

3. Manage Your Energy Level

If you feel tired and lack motivation throughout the day, you have an energy management issue.

Time management is really all about managing your energy. You cannot be productive and motivated when you don’t have the energy. Think about it, if you are feeling sleepy and tired, how can you focus on your work?

If you want to produce outstanding work and perform at your best, you must make sure you are at your peak energy state all the time.

When you have the energy and are feeling motivated, it will be easier for you to get into the flow and perform at your optimal level.

Here’s a powerful technique on how to manage your energy throughout your day – take power naps.

Do you know that extraordinary people such as Leonardo Da Vinci, John F. Kennedy, Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Edison, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, etc., took short naps in their day?

Power naps are great at restoring your energy and focus. And the best part is that you just need to do it for about 15 to 30 minutes. Anything more than that will make you fall into a deep sleep mode that makes you feel groggy when you wake up.

Most people feel sleepy in the afternoon, usually after lunch. And this is the best time for you to take a power nap.

Your energy level is just like your mobile phone’s battery. It is fully charged in the morning when you first wake up. And as you go through the day, you use your energy to make decisions and to do things.

Hence, you have to recharge your energy and replenish it. And you can do this by taking power naps.

4. Give yourself a purpose and something to look forward to

One key reason to maintain your motivation is through giving yourself a purpose and something to look forward to.

For instance, if you love to play golf, you will look forward to it. You will wake up early and prepare yourself for the game. The thing is that you are giving yourself an interesting purpose to wake up early.

Without this purpose, you will find it difficult to wake up and maintain your drive throughout the day.

So, what are the things are you are looking forward to doing? Is it a good breakfast? Is it to have a fun time with your children?

The point is to find an interesting purpose to maintain your drive and keep you going.

5. Keep your eye on the reward

What do you want to achieve? Set a daily goal and keep your eye on it. Once you have achieved your goal and made progress, celebrate and have fun.

You want to keep your eye on your goal and the reward. Life will be boring if you don’t have a clear goal to pursue. This is why it is important to have goals in life.

You want to wake up feeling driven and can’t wait to live the dream life you desire.

Thus, develop a reward system to motivate you to keep going.

If you want to learn more about how to set goals and achieve them, use my Goal Setting Formula.

Conclusion

Waking up early each day is not compulsory to building the successful life you want. However, if you choose to get up early and make it your habit, use these 5 techniques mentioned above to help you in developing the habit.