The Key to Taking Control of Your Day: Rise earlier and gain an advantage over the rest
Originally published at humanplus.substack.com
Try and guess how many times, on average, you hit the snooze button on your alarm every morning. Got it? Now multiply that by the number of mornings you’ve been doing that. More than likely it’s been an ongoing habit for years now. By getting in an extra 10 minutes of sleep (which, if we’re being honest, does next to nothing for us) twice a week for 10 years, the result is 173 hours (or just over a week) of lost time. The number just keeps going up depending on the length and frequency of your precious Z’s.
If the solution seems obvious, that’s because it is: rise earlier (if you’re rolling your eyes now, just hear me out.) Oftentimes, the most effective solutions are the simplest ones. Now, I won’t go on a long tirade about how waking up at 5 AM is the most optimal time for peak human performance, nor will I promise you that your productivity levels will instantly increase by 500% if you do so (trust me, I’ve tried it.) Everyone’s biological clock is different, so listening to your body is the best manner to go about this. For a general suggestion, however, I recommend rising no later than 8 AM. Any later than this and the hustle-and-bustle of the world begins to take shape.
Tip #1: I have found that the easiest way to get accustomed to rising earlier is to do it gradually. Wake up five minutes earlier each day and by the end of the first week, you’ll have added over half an hour of useable time to your day. This method has proven to be invaluable to my morning routine. Again, baby steps.
Tip #2: Avoid checking your phone as soon as you wake up. Before your brain is even fully adjusted to the sensations of waking up, you’re already bombarding it with sensory and digital information. What might begin as checking group chats turns into checking e-mail, then Instagram, then Facebook, then Reddit, then watching YouTube videos. Before you know it, you’ve already spent an hour still laying in bed having done nothing productive. In my experience, the best way to combat this is by placing your phone across the room before you go to sleep. In doing so, you’re forced to take action and get yourself up.
Tip #3: Set goals for yourself. When you have something to wake up to then it makes doing so so much easier. Maybe you want to get a workout in at the gym before it gets crowded, or go on an early morning walk, or just have a hot beverage and sit in the calm presence of nature. Whatever it may be, it helps to have a motivator. Eventually, you might even be waking up early just for the sake of it.
Tip #4: Finally, this one should be the most obvious: go to sleep earlier. Waking up at 5, 6, or 7 AM won’t be very beneficial if you’ve only slept 4 hours to get there. To wake up early, you need to sleep early. The CDC recommendation for adults is at least seven hours each night¹, so do with that information what you will.
There’s a quote by Richard Whately that I love:
“Lose an hour in the morning and you’ll spend the rest of the day looking for it.”
I’ve always said that life is precious, so it’s a worthwhile endeavor to live it as richly as possible. For reasons I cannot fathom, the idea of the negligence of rest is so romanticized in our culture today. Such an idea is dangerous, for it encourages a life of deliberate inaction and passivity. While these are not negative routes in themselves (as Taoism says), settling for less and not enjoying the fullness of existence is a miserable way to live. The act of rising earlier is the personification of excitement, joy, and anticipation towards a new beginning.
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Additional Resources
- An excellent video on sleep by Matt D’Avella, one of the best creators out there on the topic of self-development.
- An article about the relationship between sleep and goal-setting.
- A quote by the Dalai Lama about setting positive intentions upon waking up.
- An excellent Reddit thread on one user’s experience and reasoning for early rising.
Social Media
Works Cited
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017). CDC — How Much Sleep Do I Need? CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/how_much_sleep.html
