How To Wake Up Early And Still Be Productive

Getting up early seems like a serious problem most people are having in today’s world. Do you have this problem?

If you are not a morning person and you are productive being a night owl, that is alright, there’s no right or wrong.

You can still try to change your routine to the morning and see if it works for you.

Why Do You Want To Wake Up Early?

There are many benefits to rising early. And most of the advantages are proven. Such as:

• In 2008, Texas University did a research. Those who claimed were the early riser scored higher GPA than those who said they prefer to work as a night owl.

• It is said that you can have the most productivity when you wake up early.

Productivity is just like an energy bar. When you wake up, it is full. And as you go through the day working on your things, you use up the energy.

This is why most people get tired when they get back to their home after the long hour work.

• Studies have shown that people who wake up early tend to have better mental health.

They are more positive and more optimistic. One of the reasons is because that when you arise early, you have more time to plan and to beat the early rush.

You will be able to go through your day in a better mood and the whole day becomes better. Furthermore, you can enjoy the cool breeze of the morning air.

Some people may argue and said that they are more productive and able to focus better at night than in the morning.

There’s nothing wrong with that. As long as you know your working style, it will be fine.

If you have never tried out waking up early, you may want to try out. Who knows if it works better for you?

When I said wake up early, I’m not referring to waking up 5 minutes or 10 minutes earlier. I’m referring to drastic change in your lifestyle.

Have you ever imagined what would happened if you are able to wake up 2 hours earlier and be productive?

If you can get up 2 hours earlier each day, you will have additional 730 hours in a year. And that is equivalent to 30.4 days in a year. Meaning, you have an extra 1 month to live than normal people have in a year.

Don’t that sound interesting and how it can change your life?

You Have To Beat The Resistance

Even though there are many benefits of waking up early, most people find it difficult and challenging to get up early.

Some don’t prefer to wake up early, but they have no choice because they need to send their kids to the school and get to work on beat, not to mention about beating the congestion when commute.

If you are serious about getting up early like most successful people do, this will be the right place for you to learn how to do it.

Getting up early is a skill. You need to learn how to do it until you adopt it as your habit.

It will be extremely difficult in the beginning if you use to wake up at 7am and want to train yourself to get up at 6am.

Just like the train, it takes a lot of energy to move and it started slow. However, once it has moved and built up the momentum, nothing can stop it.

The same principle applies when you are trying to create a new habit of waking up early.

It may be difficult in the beginning. But once you have turned it into your habit, waking up early will be easy and you can do it without much resistance.

How To Wake Up Early

Commit yourself if you really want to get up early. Wake up early is a skill. You can practice it and train it until you master in it.

Adopt it as a habit and you will have no problem getting up early. Below are some of the effective tips to wake up early and be productive…

1. Sleep Early

This is one of the most underrated and most ignored tips to get up early. If you want to wake up early and still be productive, you have to sleep early.

The worst thing that can happen is that you get up early and feel tired the whole day. It will affect your energy and you won’t have the motivation to do your work.

One thing you have to know that when you try to get up early than you use to, you may feel tired in the beginning because your body doesn’t get use to it yet.

Your body needs to adjust to suit the situation. So don’t worry if you feel tired and no energy in the beginning phase.

However, tired because of having not enough sleep is a totally different story. On average, a normal person requires 6 to 7 hours of sleep.

If you want to get up at 5am, try to get to bed at 11pm. Of course, there are exceptions for people who can take it and sleep less and still be productive.

You have to understand your body’s condition and how many hours of sleep you need. Get the optimum hours of sleep and you will get the optimum productivity throughout the day.

2. Put Your Alarm Further Away

Don’t put your alarm next to you where you can hit the snooze and still lay on your bed. You will never want to get up from your warm and comfy bed this way.

So put your alarm somewhere you cannot reach while you are still on your bed. Put it somewhere you need to get up from your bed to switch off the alarm.

You want to put yourself in a situation where you need to get up. Most people are able wake up early. The problem is that they hit the snooze button and continue to sleep.

Hence, you definitely want to force yourself to get up to switch off the alarm.

3. Get An Annoying Alarm

I believe you have seen YouTube videos or someone shared in Facebook of using an annoying alarm to get them up.

Do you know that there is something called “Sonic Bomb Super Shaker Alarm Clock”? It is an alarm clock that will shake you out of your bed, like an earthquake.

I have never used that before. You may want to try out if you seriously find it difficult and cannot get yourself out of the bed.

Basically, you can just use an ordinary alarm. Just choose a louder and more annoying alarm tone will do.

Another thing you can try out is to use inspirational songs as your alarm tone. Some people used the “Eye of The Tiger” as their alarm tone and find it powerful.

They get motivated when they hear the song. And they will automatically jump out of their bed.

The key here is to be creative and try out different alarm tone and see which one works best for you.

4. Don’t Snooze

If you always snooze your alarm and continue to sleep, don’t worry, there is a solution for you.

There is an App called “Step Out of Bed” where it takes you a lot of steps to switch off your alarm. Another similar App would be “Alarmy”.

You may feel annoying at times because you need to go through more than 10 steps to turn off your alarm on your phone.

The good news is that most people who used the App found it very effective. You may want to try out.

5. Have a Reason To Jump Out Of Your Bed

Apart from using all the tools, you need to have a great reason for you to jump out of your bed. Why do you want to wake up each day?

Some people may feel this is a stupid question. But if you think about it, those who find it hard to answer the question are the ones that having issue to get up early.

You will definitely jump out of your bed if it is your graduation day or your wedding day. Most likely you are so excited that you don’t even sleep the night before.

This is the kind of excitement and enthusiasm that you need to get up early and still be productive.

If you hate your job, it will never help you to get up early. On the other hand, if you love your work, you will be able to wake up early and feel more energetic for it.

The reason is that when you are passionate and love what you do, you will be looking forward to it.

6. Get Quality Sleep

I’m sure there are times that you sleep for long hours, and after you wake up you feel tired. And there are also times when you sleep less, but you feel energetic and fresh after that.

Quality of your sleep is important. If your neighbors are noisy and you keep awake because of the noise, you may feel tired and sleepy the next day. Your sleep has been disturbed.

So how do you get quality sleep? Here are some suggestions you can try out:

• Set a routine to slowly shut off your body before sleep. For instance, before you sleep each day, you can read a book, shower, drinking warm milk, listen to relaxing music, etc.

• A complete dimmed and dark bedroom. If it is bright, your body may suppress the hormone melatonin. So turn off the TV, computer and switch off all the lights.

• Don’t drink coffee or caffeinated drinks at night. And don’t eat heavy foods before you sleep. Or else your body will go into overtime work mood.

• Get the most comfortable temperature. Doctors suggested the temperature for sleep to be around 18 to 22 degree Celsius. However, everyone’s body is different. Check out what temperatures are best for you.

7. Get Fresh And Stay Productive

There’s no point if you can wake up early but don’t feel energetic and awake. So once you got up, you need to do something that will make you fresh and ready to take on the world.

Drink coffee. This is one of the most common ways people get awake and stay awake. They drink a cup of coffee in the morning to kick start their day.

Eat healthy breakfast. You have fast for the whole night and it is a brilliant idea to stuff your body with healthy and nutritious food in the morning.

Don’t underestimate what a breakfast can do for your health, your productivity and your life.

As the word suggest, it is to “break the fasting”. Whatever you put into your mouth will affect your level of productivity. So eat nutritious food.

Exercise and workout. In fact, most successful people will exercise and workout early in the morning. Researches have shown that when you exercise, your body will release endorphins, which will make you feel positive.

And not only that, when you stretch your muscle, your tissue will absorb more oxygen and make you feel fresh and awake.

Write your gratitude list. It is said that if you write down your gratitude list each morning, you will feel more grateful and be more at peace.

When you are grateful for the things you have, you will have more confidence. Like what Chris Winfield said, it is a complete mind-shift and totally life-changing.

Review your goals. Another great thing you can do to kick start your day and make you feel awake is to review your goals.

Your goals are able to motivate you and drive you. And if you remind yourself about your goals, you can better focus on what you need to get done for the day.

Additional read: 8 Ways How To Start Your Day Great

The Conclusion

There are many ways how to wake up early and be productive. The problem with most people is not on the “how-to” get up early part, it is more to the “why” part.

Why do you want to get up early?

You can have a ton of creative ideas to get up early. Some of my friends who are in sales, they give morning call to each other to make sure they are awake.

Some put themselves on the line and get together for early breakfast and whoever is late has to pay the bill.

As you can see, there are many ways that can help you get up early. The question is whether do you want to do it and why?

When you have a strong and emotion reason support you to wake up early, nothing can stop you.

These 7 tips I shared above are effective if you are willing to use them. You don’t have to apply all the 7 tips into your life to make a drastic change right away. You can do it step by step and go slow on it.

Living a successful and a great life is a journey. So just enjoy the change and feel the excitement.

One last word, most people who are able to wake up early tend to have more time to act on their dreams. Remember, if you wake up 2 hours earlier each day, you have an unfair advantage of extra 1 month a year compare to ordinary people.

So use that early morning time wise and use it to transform your life for the better. Do share with me what you think about this.