Last Monday’s post How to Become an Early Bird obviously struck a chord with many people. That post has generated more links than I can count, sending more new traffic to this site than any other post or article I’ve ever written. And traffic logs indicate that the increase was decentralized (not attributable to a mention in any major source).
You can get an idea of what that post did for StevePavlina.com’s Alexa traffic (note the huge spike in late May 2005). Alexa isn’t very accurate, but it’s good enough to see general trends.
Last Monday I did a Google search on “how to become an early riser” (in quotes). Returned zero results. Now look at how many results it returns.
OK, so this was an installation. But why? Getting up early is a relatively benign topic, isn’t it? At least I thought it was at the time I posted it.
Since this seems to be a topic of interest, although I don’t fully understand why, I thought I’d make a follow-up post to add more details.
First, on the subject of going to bed when you’re sleepy… doing it correctly requires a mix of awareness and common sense.
If you do stimulating activities before bed, you can stay up later and avoid sleep for a while. In college I used to play poker games that lasted until dawn, and then we used to go out for breakfast. I can easily go to bed later than usual if I work, go out with friends, or do other stimulating activities.
But this is not what I meant by noticing when you are sleepy. I mentioned the test of not being able to read more than a couple of pages of text without losing concentration. This doesn’t mean waiting until you’re about to drop from exhaustion.
The onset of sleepiness I’m referring to is when your brain starts releasing hormones to knock you out. This is different from just being tired. You actually feel like you’re falling asleep. But for this to happen, you need to create the right conditions for it to happen. This means giving yourself some downtime before bed. I find that reading is a great way to relax before bed. Some people say that reading in bed is a bad idea… that you should only sleep in bed. I’ve never had a problem with that though, as when I’m too sleepy to continue reading, I can put the book down and fall asleep. But read in a chair if you prefer.
Another test you can use is this. Ask yourself, “If I were to go to bed now, how quickly could I fall asleep?” If you think it would take you longer than 15 minutes to fall asleep, I say go ahead and stay awake.
Once you establish a fixed wake-up time, it can take a bit of practice to perfect the proper range of bedtimes for you. At first, you may see big swings, staying up too late one night and going to bed too early another night. But eventually you’ll get an idea of when you can go to bed and fall asleep right away while waking up refreshed the next day.
As a safety measure to avoid staying up too late, set a deadline for going to bed and even if you’re not very sleepy, go to bed at that time no matter what. I have a good idea of the minimum amount of sleep I need. 6.5 hours a night is sustainable for me, but I can do 5 hours in a pinch and be fine as long as I don’t do it every night. The most I sleep is 7.5 hours. Before I started waking up at a set time every morning, I used to sleep for 8-9 hours, sometimes even 10 hours if I was really tired.
If you consume caffeine during the day, it is likely to disrupt your sleep cycles. So the original post assumes you’re not taking drugs to stay awake. If you are addicted to caffeine, break the addiction first. Don’t expect natural sleepiness to occur at the right time if you’re messing with your brain chemistry.
The idea of the original post was to explain how to develop the habit of getting up early. So the advice is aimed at creating the habit. Once the habit is established, it runs more subconsciously. You may be doing stimulating activities like working or playing video games, and you’ll know when it’s time to go to bed, even if it’s a different time each night. The sleepiness test is important for developing the habit, but more subtle cues will show up later.
You can always sleep in once in a while if you need to. If I stay up until 3 am, I won’t get up at 5 am the next day. But I’ll be back to my normal routine the next day.
I recommend getting up at the same time for 30 days straight to set the habit, but after that you’ll be so conditioned to wake up at the same time that it’s hard to fall asleep. I decided to sleep in late one Saturday morning and didn’t set my alarm, but woke up automatically at 4:58 am. Then I tried to sleep, but I was wide awake and couldn’t go back to sleep. Oh good. Once the habit is established, it is not difficult to get up, assuming you go to bed at the beginning of sleep.
If you have children, adapt as necessary. My children are 5 and 1 years old. Sometimes they wake me up in the middle of the night; my daughter has been in the habit of doing this lately, going to the bedroom to tell my wife and me about her dreams or sometimes just to chat. . And I know what it’s like when there’s a baby waking up every few hours. So if you are in that situation, I tell you that the rule is to sleep when you can. Babies aren’t very good at sticking to schedules. 🙂
If you can’t get out of bed when your alarm goes off, it’s likely due to a lack of self-discipline. If you have enough self-discipline, you will get out of bed no matter what. Motivation can also help, but motivation is short-lived and may only last a few days. Discipline is like a muscle. The more you build it, the more you can trust it. Everyone has some discipline (can you hold your breath?), but not everyone develops it. There are many ways to develop discipline – I have written a whole chapter on this topic in my next book. But basically it’s about taking on small challenges, conquering them, and gradually progressing to bigger ones. It’s like progressive weight training. As your self-discipline strengthens, a challenge like getting out of bed at a certain time will eventually become trivially easy. But if your self-discipline has atrophied, it can seem like an almost insurmountable obstacle.
Why get up early?
I would say the main reason is that you will have a lot more time to do things that are more interesting than sleep.
Again, I have gained 10-15 hours per week doing this. That extra time is very noticeable. By 6:30 am, I’ve worked out, showered, had breakfast, and am at my desk ready to go to work. I can put in many hours each day of productive work, and I’m usually done with work by 5:00 pm (and that includes personal “work” like email, paying bills, picking up my daughter from preschool, etc.). This gives me 5-6 hours of discretionary time each night for family, hobbies, Toastmasters, reading, journaling, etc. And best of all, I still have energy during this time. Having time for everything that is important to me makes me feel very balanced, relaxed and optimistic.
Think about what you could do with that extra time. Even an extra 30 minutes a day is enough to exercise every day, read a book or two every month, keep a blog, meditate every day, cook healthy food, learn to play a musical instrument, etc. A small amount of overtime each day adds up to significant amounts over the course of a year. 30 minutes a day is 182.5 hours in a year. That’s over a month of full-time work (40 hours per week). Double it if you save 60 minutes a day and triple it if you save 90 minutes a day. For me, the saving was about 90 minutes/day. That’s like getting a free bonus year every decade. I’m using this time to do things that I didn’t have the time or energy to do before. It is wonderful. 🙂