How to Become an Early Riser - Part II
May 31st, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
Email this article to a friend
Last Monday’s post How to Become an Early Riser 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 written. And the traffic logs indicate that the surge was decentralized (not attributable to a mention in any one major source).
You can get an idea of what that post did for StevePavlina.com’s traffic at Alexa (note the big spike at the end of May 2005). Alexa isn’t very accurate, but it’s good enough for noting general trends.
Last Monday I did a Google search on “how to become an early riser” (in quotes). It returned zero results. Now look at how many results it returns.
OK, so this was an instalanche. 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 appears to be a topic of interest, even though I don’t fully understand why, I figured I’d do a follow up post to add some more detail.
First, on the subject of going to bed when you’re sleepy… to do this correctly requires a mixture of awareness and common sense.
If you’re doing stimulating activities before bed, you’ll be able to stay up later and stave off sleepiness for a while. In college I used to participate in poker games that went until dawn, and then we’d often go out to breakfast afterwards. I can easily stay up later than my normal range of bed times if I work, go out with friends, or do other stimulating activities.
But this isn’t what I meant by noticing when you’re sleepy. I mentioned the test of not being able to read more than a couple 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 yourself getting drowsy. But in order for this to happen, you need to create the right conditions for it to occur. This means giving yourself some downtime before bedtime. I find that reading is a great way to wind down before bed. Some people say reading in bed is a bad idea… that you should only sleep in bed. I’ve never had a problem with it though, since when I’m too sleepy to keep reading, I can just put the book down and go to sleep. 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 more than 15 minutes to fall asleep, I say go ahead and stay up.
Once you set a fixed awakening time, it may take a bit of practice to hone in on the right range of bedtimes for you. In the beginning you may see some huge oscillations, staying awake too late one night and going to bed too early another night. But eventually you’ll get a feel for when you can go to bed and fall asleep right away while allowing yourself to wake up refreshed the next day.
As a failsafe to keep yourself from staying up too late, give yourself a bedtime deadline, and even if you aren’t totally sleepy, go to bed by that time no matter what. I have a good idea of the minimum amount of sleep I need. 6.5 hours per night is sustainable for me, but I can do 5 hours in a pinch and be OK as long as I don’t do it every night. The maximum I ever sleep is 7.5 hours. Before I started waking up at a fixed time each morning, I’d often sleep 8-9 hours, sometimes even 10 hours if I was really tired.
If you consume caffeine during the day, it’s likely to mess with your sleep cycles. So the original post assumes you aren’t drugging yourself to stay awake. If you’re addicted to caffeine, then break the addiction first. Don’t expect natural sleepiness to occur at the right time if you’re screwing with your brain chemistry.
The idea of the original post was to explain how to develop the habit of arising early. So the advice is geared towards creating the habit. Once the habit is established, it runs more subconsciously. You can be doing stimulating activities like work or playing video games, and you’ll just know when it’s time for you to go to bed, even though it may be a different time each night. The sleepiness test is important for developing the habit, but subtler signals will take over afterwards.
You can always sleep in late now and then if you need to. If I stay up until 3am, I’m not going to get up at 5am the next morning. But I’ll return to my usual routine the next day.
I recommend getting up at the same time for 30 days straight to lock in the habit, but after that you’ll be so conditioned to waking up at the same time that it will be hard to sleep in. I decided to sleep in late one Saturday morning and didn’t set my alarm, but I woke up automatically at 4:58 am. Then I tried to sleep in, but I was wide awake and couldn’t fall back asleep again. Oh well. Once the habit is established, it isn’t hard at all to get up, assuming you’re going to bed at the onset of sleepiness.
If you have kids, adapt as needed. My kids are ages 5 and 1. Sometimes they wake me up in the middle of the night — my daughter is in the habit of doing this lately, popping into 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’re in that situation, I say that the rule is to sleep when you can. Babies aren’t very good at sticking to schedules. 
If you can’t get yourself out of bed when your alarm goes off, this is likely due to a lack of self-discipline. If you have enough self-discipline, you’ll 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 rely on it. Everyone has some discipline (can you hold your breath?), but not everyone develops it. There are a lot of ways to build discipline – you can read the whole six-part series on self-discipline to learn how. Basically it comes down to taking on little challenges, conquering them, and gradually progressing to bigger ones. It’s like progressive weight training. As your self-discipline gets stronger, 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 an almost insurmountable hurdle.
Why get up early?
I’d say the main reason is that you’ll have a lot more time to do things that are more interesting than sleeping.
Again, I’ve gained about 10-15 hours per week doing this. That extra time is very noticeable. By 6:30am, I’ve already exercised, showered, had breakfast, and I’m at my desk ready to go to work. I can put in a lot of 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 every evening for family, leisure activities, Toastmasters, reading, journaling, etc. And best of all, I still have energy during this time. Having time for everything that’s 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 per day is enough to exercise daily, read a book or two each month, maintain a blog, meditate daily, cook healthy food, learn a musical instrument, etc. A small amount of extra time 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 more than a month of working full-time (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 savings 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 previously didn’t have the time and energy to do. It’s wonderful.
Read the original: How to Become an Early Riser
For help getting up with an alarm, read: How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off
And if you really want to take sleep to the next level (less than 3 hours per day), read: Polyphasic Sleep
May 31st, 2005 at 6:03 am
Please talk more about building discipline! It is my main challenge at the moment…
May 31st, 2005 at 6:08 am
Add me to the long list of people that commented, posted or otherwise sent people your way. I didn’t read your original post until early today, but I have already blogged on it. (http://www.kevineikenberry.com/blogs/2005/05/how-to-be-early-riser.asp ).
Good content warrants great traffic and thoughtful commentary.
Thanks for generating both. Well Done!
Kevin
May 31st, 2005 at 6:20 am
Steve,
I caught onto your first article from a link, and I’m absolutely glad that I did.
This series has definitely given me the “kick” I needed. I’ve been following the regime for the past week, and I have noticed an increase in my productivity. I’m more alert throughout the day, which is definitely a bonus.
Thanks for writing such an informative article. Looking forward to many more…
May 31st, 2005 at 6:44 am
[…] sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning… Update on 2005-05-31 - How to Become an Early Riser - Part II T […]
May 31st, 2005 at 8:16 am
Steve - I’ve saved both of your posts, and now that Memorial Day holiday is over and I’m back in the groove, it’s definitely time to start getting up at 5 AM. There’s so much to do with my time, the extra minutes will definitely help. Thanks for showing us all the way!
May 31st, 2005 at 8:30 am
Thanks for the clarifications. I’m not sure how easy it is to go back to the same routine the next day if your break the habit. The only way to get up at six in the morning after a night out dancing until two or three in the morning is to not go to bed at all.
As you mentioned, that’s what you and your poker buddies did when you played until dawn. But that was a while ago.
And so I did in my twenties. Work late, dinner with a girlfriend, out to a nightclub, stay up all night talking just the two of us, then straight to work at nine am.
How does carousing/dancing/poker fit into the early-mrning scheme post-30?
I guess it doesn’t.
May 31st, 2005 at 1:12 pm
what about the food factor. doesn’t the amount of food consumed and timing of the dinner in relation to sleeping time have any effect on amount, quality and ability of sleeping ?
I agree with your ideas , but think that food also has some influence. 3 hrs before your bedtime and keeping only 70% food and 10% water is better proposition than eating 100% (of cource these are rough estimates and can not be precise). This can get tricky, as too little might wake you up in the night and too much might make it difficult to fall sleep.
similarly water. Not driniking lotsa water before sleep helps, as uninterrupted sleep is better than interrupted one.
any thoughts ??
May 31st, 2005 at 3:59 pm
Diet is certainly a factor in sleep. I’ve found that on my (vegan) diet, it’s not much of an issue though, so I think it may have more to do with the consumption of animal products late at night because animal foods require much more energy to digest than plant foods. Most of the time I don’t eat after 7pm, so my last meal is normally at least 3-4 hours before bedtime.
I do find that eating a heavy dinner works well for me if I’m going to do weight training the next morning. If I eat too lightly at the previous dinner, my morning workouts aren’t as strong. But my version of a heavy dinner is maybe 500 calories.
May 31st, 2005 at 5:48 pm
Another vote for the self-discipline building!!
May 31st, 2005 at 6:41 pm
How to Become an Early Riser - Part II
How to Become an Early Riser - Part II » Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog
I recommend getting up at the same time for 30 days straight to lock in the habit, but after that you’ll be so conditioned to waking up at the same time that it …
June 1st, 2005 at 12:12 am
Wow Steve, who would have ever thought that “how to become an early riser” would be a “tipping point” article. You have written much more insightful stuff, it’s really interesting that this was what took off. I think you have really stumbled upon something here…
June 1st, 2005 at 1:37 am
Like Nickey, I would also like to hear more about building self discipline.
I’ve told myself I will get up at 5:00 every day for the past month and it’s only actually happened a few times. The strategy you propose sounds like it would work but I just can’t get out of bed!
June 1st, 2005 at 3:54 pm
Part I almost convinced me to do it. I hesitate, though, because I’m already chronically sleep deprived due to my partner keeping me up for hours past my bedtime. (He doesn’t need to be at work at 8 a.m. like me…)
What do you think about partnering up to build motivation for tasks like working out, or changing your sleeping patterns? You’ve mentioned that self-discipline is more reliable than motivation, which would leave me to think that having a gym buddy would increase motivation but decease self-discipline, making it harder to perform whatever task it is on days your partner isn’t available.
So, would talking my partner into getting up at 5 a.m. with me help at all? It wouldn’t even mean, necessarily, that we’d go to bed at the same time, since we most likely have slightly different sleep needs. Especially because he doesn’t avoid afternoon caffeiene like I do. (Have you noticed how many comments you got on your caffeine post? Yikes.)
Looking forward to your book, by the way.
June 1st, 2005 at 4:13 pm
I think getting a partner is a great idea. That won’t hurt your self-discipline. Remember that the goal is to take action. Whether you use self-discipline or motivation doesn’t matter so much — they both lead to action.
My wife and I have often partnered on changes, and this only increases the chance of success. For example, we both decided to try going vegan in January 1997, and the habit stuck. We cooked interesting new meals together, so neither of us were going it alone.
June 2nd, 2005 at 5:58 am
These articles fit right in with my new attempt at finally organizing my time to fit everything in that’s important to me. The “getting out of bed” thing has always been a bone of contention for me, and various fixes never cement themselves into my routine. (My routine tends to consist of snoozing the alarm 3 times before actually getting up for the day - that’s over 30 minutes of wasted time right there!).
I will be incorporating my sleep/waking times into my new “30-Day Plan” for forming new habits, now. Thanks for writing these articles - you probably saved me years!
June 2nd, 2005 at 7:19 am
Waking up in the morning
Steve Pavlina has an excellent article on “How to Become an Early Riser“, which I really identify with. In my early 20’s I was also a night owl, frequently working through the night into the next day, probably just because I had the…
June 2nd, 2005 at 2:49 pm
Partnering in order to make a change really works. You must also discuss what happens in case of failure - so a small failure doesn’t become a large one.
June 2nd, 2005 at 7:55 pm
thank you
June 2nd, 2005 at 10:08 pm
this post is a Godsend to my sleeping in problem. will try it out and see if it works for me
June 3rd, 2005 at 1:05 am
These “early riser” posts contain a subtle insight about sleepiness. The hormones released when the body is prepared to sleep can affect the ability to focus more than the ability to stay awake; for those accustomed to continual distractions in their lives, I suspect that insomnia is a common affliction.
I remember many times that sleep has been directly preceded by a distinct “wandering” of focus, different from the usual ADD I encounter during the day. In a sense, the transition from conscious thought to sleep could be represented as a growing lack of concentration, all the way to unconsciousness.
Steve talks about self-discipline in another post at this weblog; the link below didn’t appear to be in the article above.
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/passion-vs-self-discipline/
June 3rd, 2005 at 5:39 am
I have to admit to being another person in need of the ’self-discipline’ angle, so hope you might offer us all something on this sometime soon!
June 3rd, 2005 at 11:31 am
You don’t need self-discipline to not turn off the alarm. Just put it on the other side of the room so you have to get up to turn it off. I learned this back in highschool 6 or 7 years ago and it has never failed.
June 3rd, 2005 at 12:14 pm
Self-discipline is totally tied to self-esteem. If you don’t like yourself, it’s hard to build patterns that help you.
June 3rd, 2005 at 6:15 pm
Thanks Steve,
I too admit to sleeping “less and less” these days; and, it’s not due to overwork or stress. I’ve found there’s just too much other cool stuff I could be going! In fact, the more I accomplish - be it little OR big - the more energy I have. At the end of a day when I’ve checked a lot off, I experience a paradox: I “did” a lot, but I’m not as tired as those days when I hardly get anything done…
June 4th, 2005 at 6:58 am
“You don’t need self-discipline to not turn off the alarm. Just put it on the other side of the room so you have to get up to turn it off. I learned this back in highschool 6 or 7 years ago and it has never failed.”
I’ve been much better with this in the past couple years, but I used to have my alarm on the other side of the room, and I’d often stumble over to hit the snooze and be back asleep in less than 10 seconds. If it becomes a routine, the habit is just as strong as the good ones this article suggests developing.
June 4th, 2005 at 7:43 am
How about some help for those of us who want to become late risers?
June 4th, 2005 at 9:44 am
On the issue of catnaps and energy, I’ve always been prone to avoid being late to office meetings. So often I’m the first one to arrive for a meeting. As it turns out, sometimes I’ll close my eyes and relax in the 5-15 minute runup to the meeting. After years of this I learned that research has found that brief periods of relaxation lead to renewed energy, and to stress reduction; I had inadvertantly been benefitting from early arrivals to meetings. Try this — does it work for you? (This can be a legitimate way of taking a break!)
By the way, I’m one of those disgusting folks who’s naturally
inclined to be an early riser. So what works for me might not work for those with a rather opposite disposition.
June 4th, 2005 at 10:05 am
I have recently been diagnosed with a condition called “hyper-somnolence”. I was originally being tested for Narcolepsy, but they found my symptoms didn’t fit all of the conditions for clinical narcolepsy.
What happened with me, is that starting in early high-school, I would sleep through my first few classes of the day. Sure, I’d get out of bed and be in class by 7am, but then I’d face plant on the desk and be out until about 11am. At night, I’d be in bed between 10 and 11, but I would suffer this every morning. Weekends I slept until I woke up or until my step-mother’s screaming about my laziness could no longer be ignored.
I went off to college, and I did my best to schedule my classes around my need to sleep, and of course college life, as anyone who has been knows, bed-time seems to be a non-standard thing. 2am seemed to be my cutoff, which never helps.
Now that I’m a working adult, I try to be in bed between 10pm and midnight, and try to guage it by how tired I am, but no matter what I could not be out of bed in the morning in time to be in the office. It finally got so bad that I was falling asleep at the wheel in the morning driving into the office. I finally broke down and went to see a doctor. In the weeks leading up to this, I had COMPLETELY given up caffeine. Up to that point, it was not unusual for me to go through 1 gallon+ of diet pepsi in a day. No joke. Of course I had been going through a very stressful situation at a previous employer, dr. had placed me on lexapro, which in turn I gained a bunch of weight, and my sleep situation made it difficult for my gym habits, so I stopped going….(blah blah blah)
Point it, they put me through a sleep study, and found that even if I went to bed at a reasonable time (10pm the day of my test) and fall asleep in a reasonable time frame, and get a solid 8 hours of sleep, the following morning would still be problematic. They had me do a nap study where they woke me up at 6am, made me stay up for 1.5 hours, then had me lay down to take a nap. The first time I fell asleep in under 2 minutes. This is bad. According to their tests, something is out of whack of one falls asleep in under 5 minutes in a nap study of this sort. I did naps throughout the day following that pattern, and only on my last nap did it take over 5 minutes to fall asleep, and that was at 4:30 in the afternoon. Yikes.
So…now that I’ve hijacked your blog
….
They have me on provigil, which is a non-jittering prescription stimulant. I take two doses of that, in the morning, and I’m prescribed by the doctor to dose up on caffeine as soon as my feet hit the floor. The idea is that it takes about an hour for provigil to hit it’s stride, and it stays in your system ~12 hours. Two staggered doses and your wakefulness should last throughout the day. The catch?
Getting out of bed is an absolute terror every morning. No joke. It takes just short of my wife physically kicking me out of bed in the am, and I’m still just *barely* getting to the office on time. The good news is that my time there, and at home, has become far more productive since I’ve taken up this regimine. I would still like to mimic you and be up at 5am instead of 7:30, and get back to the gym. I’m usually very good about my exercise habits, and being 20lb over my prime SUCKS. I’m weaning myself off of the lexapro, which is a nightware. Google on “lexapro withdrawal” sometime. Once I’m off the lexapro completely I’ll see how things go. I’m already dropping weight, and I haven’t been going to the gym yet.
I should take it up with my doctor, but I wonder if there will ever be a way for me to get over that first moment when the alarm goes off. As it stands, it goes off 5 times before I actually hear it. Apparently my body is trained to hit the snooze button before my brain ever registers that it went off. It is really that bad with me. Even having a diagnosed medical condition it bothers me that I have to put up with this. It is good to have someone tell you that all those years of your step-mother b***ing at you (couldn’t find another appropriate word, even though I hate swearing!) about how lazy you are were defunct, and that you aren’t lazy, you’re sick. I am for the first time in my life feeling what it is like to be fully awake during the day. It’s pretty awesome.
So…yeah. Anyone out there hyper-somnolent and an early riser?
June 4th, 2005 at 10:40 am
I suspect one reason it’s hard to be an early riser is that it’s hard to go to bed early. And it may be hard to go to bed early if you have the nagging feeling that you have not accomplished much during the day. So rather than going to bed early, and feeling guillty as an underachiever, you stay up late (though not to achieve anything, other than watching TV or doing generally unproductive stuff) so that there is no guilt with going to bed (hey’ it’s past midnight, of course I have to go to bed).
Rising early may give you that one hour or so to do something, and so give you the sense of accomplishment (which raises your self-esteem, and which ups your ability to have self-discipline, which makes it easier to go to be early, and thus to rise early…)
June 4th, 2005 at 10:44 am
Discipline has never been a problem for me; I got my engineering degree at the top of my class, and kicked my smoking habit without blinking.
But getting up in the morning is really hard, mainly because I don’t think clearly at this point. If I was conscious enough to think it over, I wouldn’t take “just 10 minutes more” (which evolves into 30-40 min’s), but my mind is just not thinking clearly enough, so I go back to sleep, because sleeping seems like the best thing in the world at this point.
How do you train subconscious discipline?
June 4th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
@Arran: For me it’s a matter of committing to myself that no matter what, I’m going to get up when the alarm goes off. No mental negotiating. I give myself this intention when I go to bed and visualize myself turning off the alarm and getting up immediately. The first few days it might be hard if you’re still groggy when the alarm goes off. When I was first trying to adopt this habit, there were days when I woke up late and never remembered the alarm going off, but my wife told me I had shut it off, rolled over, and gone back to sleep.
So I know what you mean by being in that half-conscious state where you can’t think clearly enough to know you want to get up. I’d say the key for me was visualizing myself getting up in advance. I even practiced it physically. I’d lie in bed after dinner, set the alarm for two minutes hence, and then practice getting up immediately as soon as it went off. This seemed an effective way of showing my subconscious what to do. And it worked.
June 4th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
To some of us being an early riser is a curse. For the last 15 years or so I’ve been unable to sleep in. My body has a devastatingly accurate internal clock. I would love to sleep in till noon some day! I’m up and about by 6AM every day like clockwork.
But in support of the discussion I do get lots of things done during the day. I have many hobbies, play two instruments, speak two languages, have three (unused) bachelor degrees, I’ve had time to teach myself and excel in my current profession (software development), I’ve traveled the extensively, and I have a wonderful family life and a new baby boy that I would do anything for.
I attribute a lot of this life-progress to my inquisitive mind, but also to the extra time I have to get everything done. But enough already, I want to sleep in!
June 4th, 2005 at 7:09 pm
[…] e to become an early riser and see how I like it. But I have never been a morning person. read more | digg story This en […]
June 4th, 2005 at 7:28 pm
I am seriously in danger of losing a job I love because of my serious problem with being tardy - which is because I can’t get up. Your post is a lifesaver! Thanks!
June 5th, 2005 at 1:37 am
[…] an Early Riser - Part II � Steve Pavlina%u2019s Personal Development Blog
How to Become an Early Riser - Part II � Steve Pavlina%u2019s Person […]
June 5th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
Hi, I really enjoyed reading your article and i find it very interesting. As a muslim we have to pray to God 5 times a day, and one of the prayers is earlier in the morning, so this was interesting for me too, because I already get up round about 4:30am everyday, and im used to it now and can get up easily, and your right, if you have too much sleep your tired, and if you have less, and wake up early your energetic, im energetic when i wake up to pray! And then there is so much time to do things, and learn, etc. So i wake up, remember God, do some of my important tasks, then off to college, and learning. It amazing how some times i sleep very little hours, but im so energetic when i get up, and people are shocked! (ie. how do you sleep so little!?)
June 6th, 2005 at 12:12 am
[…] ent events Part I Part II I’m trying to implement this routine ATM. It’ […]
June 6th, 2005 at 11:42 am
Yes, your approach is so true. I, also, changed my sleeping habits in the same way. For me, though, necessity was the mother of invention. I began a job — as a high school teacher — on the far opposite end of my city. It took me nearly 2 hours to get there, and I HAD to arrive at 7, my first class was at 7:30. So I changed my patterns overnight, from someone who struggled to get to a 9am job on time to someone who consistently woke up at 4:30 every morning, ready to walk out the door at 5:30.
The biggest key, really, is just to get up the first time the alarm goes off. No questions. It sucks, yes, but you get over it fast. For me, I had to spend about 5 minutes standing around staring at stuff before I really woke up, but then I was up.
Another thing that helped me was getting everything ready the night before — showered, clothes layed out, bag and lunch packed, coffee ground and in the coffee maker, waiting to be turned on. That way, I could shuffle into my clothes and get the coffee going right away - once you do those things (admittedly, in a zombie-like way sometimes), you’re almost entirely woken up. Plus, since my bags were packed and ready to go, I could spend the rest of my time in the morning eating breakfast (I even got used to doing that at 5 in the morning) and reading. So much more pleasant!!
I assume a lot of people looking at this are in the situation I once was in — struggling to wake up in time for work seems to get harder every day, so how could it possibly be easier to get up earlier?? Well, it IS harder everyday if you lay in bed and keep hitting the snooze. The KEY is to just get up the first time the alarm goes off. Tell yourself that you HAVE to…that, say, you’ll have a class full of high school seniors waiting in the hallway if you don’t get your ass up. After about a week of adjustment, though, waking up early is SO much easier than you ever thought it would be. You’ll do it automatically, and you really do feel better!
June 7th, 2005 at 8:20 pm
Ok, so I have a couple comments.
First, I would love to get up early consistently, so I’m going to try this. I’m not so convinced of the extra time I’ll be able to take advantage of though, because the main reason I sleep late is because I’m up all night working on projects. Because I keep my mind active, I’m not feeling sleepy any earlier, and I usually get by on 5 hours of sleep a night, with one night of 10 hours sleep each week. If I’m going to get up earlier, my solution will have to involve mental discipline at the time of waking, as our author has himself indicated, and rely on discipline to go to sleep as well.
Arthur, I already keep an alarm on the other side of the room. This works for me just as well as having it right next to the bed. I think I could actually make it downstairs, go to the bathroom, and go back upstairs to bed without completely waking up, so across the room is no great feat. Thanks for your mom’s great wisdom from your youth, but I’ve already tried it, and sorry it doesn’t work for everyone, but I’m glad it does for you. Or does it? Why are you reading this if your problem’s solved?
Can’t wait to try this. Thanks!
June 9th, 2005 at 12:10 pm
[…] y decade.” After reading both articles, I’m thinking about trying it. Part I Part II No Comments yet » […]
June 10th, 2005 at 6:00 am
Funny that I just found your post as I tried to become an early riser myself this very week. I managed to get up at 5:30 only on four out of five days but your ideas on self-discipline gave me a little new energy…
June 10th, 2005 at 10:36 am
Anybody else find it funny that this entry was posted at 3:15 am?
June 10th, 2005 at 10:40 am
@Clarknova: I’ve already commented on this earlier. I often write posts in batches and set them to appear on certain dates. You’ll find that every post this week showed up at 3:00am.
June 12th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
Hi Steve, i wake up everyday about 4:15am (and have been getting up v.early for long time) but i got some problems, please can you answer these:
(1) When i get up i still feel, sometime tired, but mostly sleepy.
(2) I have problem sleeping, i developed this habit, (this is gonna sound weird) that im afraid when im going to sleep, i keep thinking about that period when im passing into unconciounsness, and i dunno i cant get to sleep.
(3) i think too much (i duno, i just be planning what im going to do in the future) and end up going sleep really late (like 3am)
thanx, id appreciate if you can help me!!
June 13th, 2005 at 11:38 am
Great stuff! What about the benefits of a mid-day siesta? I think this is an area that we overworked American’s don’t sufficiently appreciate, even taking 15-30 minutes downtime (napping or just laying down and zoning out) in the middle of the day can revitalized your energy tremendously.
June 14th, 2005 at 9:44 am
Thanks for the article. I am glad to see it. For me going to bed is not a difficult thing so far. I can go to sleep almost anytime. I am a Muslim and its obligatory for a Muslim to pray five times a day. First prayer time (we call it Fajr) starts almost an hour before sunrise and ends at the sun rise. The last prayer time starts about an hour and a half after sunset and you can do it until time of Fajr, though the earlier the better.
My problem is I can easily get up before sunrise to pray Fajr but after praying I go to bed again. Most of the time I wake up naturally but wait for the alarm though I feel my rest is fulfilled. Almost everyday I promise to myself not to sleep again after Fajr prayer but I tried in vain.
Would you please suggest some ways so that I can start my day as soon as I wake up. I heard that it is not encouraged in Islam to go to sleep again after Fajr if you do not need the sleep badly.
June 14th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
There’s two interrelated reasons people tend to recommend not eating just before bed. One is that the digestive system tends to work better when vertical so if you lie down to go to sleep then that can stop your digestive system working so effectively. The other is that if there’s any kind of problem with digestion (be it poor diet or illness) then it can cause sufficient discomfort to interfere with sleep. If everything is working fine it’s not a problem but if not then a late meal is likely to cause trouble.
June 15th, 2005 at 9:07 am
Hi Steve
Excellent series of articles, and really motivating. I have been applying your technique to be able to become an early riser, and its already working ! I hope I will not have to make the “effort” that I currently am, to sustain this over a period of time.
My bit for the publicity of this excellent article is available here :
http://www.livejournal.com/users/abhinav/10213.html
June 15th, 2005 at 10:44 am
Just wanted to say thank you, this makes a lot of sense and will be my next step in discipline.
June 16th, 2005 at 7:31 am
My problem is that I am working at a job where I have to be at work at 7:00am - and for most of my life I’ve always started work at 8:30am - 9:00am., so I am having a very difficult time 1) getting up at 6am; 2) feeling awake and productive during the day and 3) having to take a nap when I get home from work around 4pm - I just HATE the idea that I have to take a nap - associating it with “getting old” - lol.
I have been struggling for about 3 months now since I started this new job and was wondering how long it will take before I feel “normal” during the day without having to take a nap when I get home from work. I don’t have any problems getting to sleep - and I do go to bed when I am sleepy.
I haven’t tried getting up at 6:00am on the weekends - even tho I normally don’t sleep past 7 or 7:30 at the latest - and don’t feel tired at all on the weekends - but maybe that would help.
Thanks for your article - very helpful!
June 16th, 2005 at 10:28 am
Beautiful followup.
I also eat mostly vegan, and I find that it gives me a major advantage over my meat-eating brothers and sisters as far as energy levels. Diet is so important!
June 17th, 2005 at 10:12 am
I am self employed so Self disipline and rising early is very important to stay on top of things. I have struggled very hard with waking up early. I know that over the course of time I have lost thousands of dollars and alot of time with my family beacause I work later as a result of starting late. Again I woke up late this morning and got online to see what I could find about Rising Early. I am going to Apply what I have learned this morning to my sleeping patterns. I know it will be painful at first but the pain of knowing I have not used my time wisely is even worse. Thanks for your post.
June 18th, 2005 at 4:20 am
As you mentioned, I put in quite a few searches for the discussed topic before I read this, and it always returned irrelevant data.
I have submitted your link in my ‘friends and family’ website, so you can imagine how impressed I am with your work.
Thank you.
June 20th, 2005 at 6:19 am
I read the information on sleep and I think your terrific. It was very insightful and helpful. Thank you!
June 28th, 2005 at 7:02 am
Hey steve~ Nice piece of article.
Im having trouble sleeping at nite and now I can’t wait to try out your method tonite.
July 1st, 2005 at 1:24 am
Hi Steve. I liked your article. I was not looking for advice on this topic but when I read it i realised that it was just what I wanted. well, now u have written the second part u might as well write the 3rd and tell us a few practical tips on how to implement your advice — like for instance ‘keeping a break off time for viewing TV’, ‘finding out the things that are keeping u awake most nights — like friends, TV, internet, games etc.’. also I would like to know if u have any interesting links on the topic that u had just touched upon — SELF-DISCIPLINE.
thanks
abuaasiya.
July 3rd, 2005 at 8:35 pm
A Zen teacher once said, when asked what Zen was…
“When the bell rings, get up.”
Learning to do as you describe here, Steve, just get up without dialogue will lead to much more than extra time in the day. How much energy could we all save if when we had something that needed to be done, we simply did it, without a story, a debate. That’s what you learn in a Zen center and is the main thing that interested me in your “method”.
Practice getting up at whatever time, as you write here, and (once you are up and on your feet - not while getting up) let yourself know that this is your response to life. When something needs to be done, do it. We wear ourselves down with “story” in everything we do. Value and become mindful of those moments when we just live, nothing more. Realize how many moments you have like that in a day.
Perhaps the idea that it trains you in this other sense may help some of us who have a hard time getting up. It helped me. But then again, I couldn’t sleep in…. people were ringing bells outside my door.
July 7th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
Obvious to me that camworld.com is generating your traffic.
July 10th, 2005 at 5:56 pm
I recently started a home based business and have “moved mountains” and the one thing that is standing in my way for moving to the next level is the fact that I don’t get out of bed. I plan, I set goals, at the moment I am trying NLP. And, I am going to give your suggestions a go. I will get up at 6.00 am every morning for the next 30 days.
July 12th, 2005 at 7:22 am
Ok, you are not going to like this (apologies if someone else has already posted this but too many posts to read them all).
Your body sets it’s clock by the pineal gland. This pulses, literally like a clock. It measures the light to your eyes and decides whether it is day or night.
In old women, the pineal gland can become calcified and no-longer work. This is why old ladies often wander about at night.
Here is the bad news. Sitting in front of a computer screen feeding light into your eyes is not going to tell youe pineal gland that it is time to sleep.
I recommend switching off the PC an hour before bedtime (I know it hurts). Dim the lights the room. Reading is good. Use a reading lamp rather than illuminating the whole room.
Also, do you snore? Disturbing your own sleep (even though you may not know it) may cause you to be sleepy in the morning.
Sleep apnoea which is related to snoring may even cause you to stop breathing for short periods which can lead to heart failure, as well as making you sleepy due to oxygen starvation during the night.
Your doctor can give you a simple heart monitor to test if you suffer from this.
July 12th, 2005 at 7:30 am
Here’s another one. Get an old bell-type clockwork alarm clock.
Fix a cotton reel bobbin to the key at the back.
Get two pieces of string, tie them both to a brick.
Put the brick on top of your wardrobe, near the edge.
Tie one piece of the string string to the corner of your duvet
Wrap the other piece around the cotton reel on your alarm clock.
Now when the alarm clock goes off, the key on the back will rotate causing the cotton reel to wind the string in. The brick will fall off the wardrobe causing your duvet to be pulled off you.
Similar devices can be constructed with buckets of water etc if you just absolutely have to get up and don’t have time for a shower.
July 12th, 2005 at 6:19 pm
This is a very interesting approach and I look forward to trying it. I have never figured out when my body wants to be awake. I’m usually most awake very early in the morning and very late at night, but I’m exhausted the rest of the time.
I’d like to know what kinds of “tests” for being really ready for bed other people have. I can fall asleep within a couple of minutes any time any where. But I have never drifted off while reading a book, no matter how late I stay up reading.
Maybe movies. I’ve fallen alseep while watching movies before. Maybe when I’m too tired to read the subtitles on a foreign film I’m ready for bed.
July 13th, 2005 at 9:47 am
Do you recommend taking power naps during the 30 day habit forming period??? I have had great success waking up at 5:30 each morning, but generally by 12:30 I experience a lull in my energy and alertness. I wonder if a nap would be advisable or not? I have not permitted myself to take naps thus far, but have had to look deep into my cabinets to locate my abandoned coffepot and have been using caffeine to get me through. What do you recommend? Will these dramatic drops in energy levels eventually balance out as the body grows accustomed to staying awake? Looking forward to hearing your response.
July 15th, 2005 at 10:08 am
Great information! I can’t wait to go to bed tonight to try this out!
July 15th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
Dear Steve-
Will you help me? Your method does not work for me. I make myself get up at 6 every day, and by 11-12 my eyes are drooping. I lull in and out of conciousness but I keep control. By 2 I am once again fully awake. I remain fully awake until well past 12. Is tehre any way to get rid of this?
Thanks
July 18th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
Steve, i saw a doctor a couple weeks ago and he basically explained exactly what you have written in these parts that i’ve just read today.
Your self discovered method is actually the advice a professional should give people with getting up in the morning. My doctor has some qualifications in psycology etc.
as for me im still working on it :/
its 5:30am..
July 20th, 2005 at 7:20 am
Becoming More Productive By Getting Up Earlier
In a rare fit of self-discipline, I finally decided bite the bullet and start getting up early (before 6:00). So, for the last two weeks, I’ve been getting up around 5:30 and working for a couple of hours first thing in the morning. It’s been great f…
July 22nd, 2005 at 10:09 am
So Steve.. where’s that article on Self-discipline?
Knuckled down to it yet?
July 22nd, 2005 at 11:10 am
@Ali: The six-part self-discipline series was posted many weeks ago:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/self-discipline/
July 23rd, 2005 at 9:45 am
Steve, thanks for putting the time into writing these articles. Let me ask a question. I find myself torn between wanting to stay up late at night (3 or 4 AM) and wanting to get up early to get things done during the day. It’s now about 1:45 PM EST, and I’ve been awake since 12:00 PM yesterday, going on 24 hours I guess. I guess part of my problem is that I was laid off recently, and I’m looking for work, but I have no “real” reason to wake up. Except that I need to find a job to pay the bills, and soon. But I can’t do it. I’ve been in this cycle for about 6 months now, I think it’s finally getting to me.
So my question is : At 28 years old, how do I end the desire to stay up all hours of the night? I know I could just go lay in bed, but the desire to stay awake is very real. The desire to not want to waste the next day sleeping is real too, though. grrrrrrrrrrrrr I’m not even making any sense probably. I’m such a mess from not having any work to do. I need self-discipline! [/rant]
::smokes cigarette::
July 23rd, 2005 at 11:52 pm
Steve Pivlani’s ” how to be an early riser” is, I find a good article.
In his second part, he has written that even if he slept at 3:30am he woke up at 5:00 am, this is very much a non-scientific habit.
July 24th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Steve, you offer some great advice here, however I’d love to hear any more advice you have to offer on the subject of not being able to get out of bed in the morning. I simply am not capable of conscious thought at that time of day, and all my self-discipline seems to abandon me every morning. I’ve even missed exciting outings that I wanted to attend, simply because I couldn’t fight off sleep (therefore, motivation doesn’t help any more or less than self-discipline).
I have recently conquered my inability to go to bed at night and fall asleep (using many methods you describe here, though I discovered them on my own), but it has been a bitter success since I STILL can’t get up in the morning. This now means that I sleep about 9-12 hours every night.
I am going to use your technique of “practicing”, by going down for a nap and setting the alarm clock for a couple minutes later. This is the most realistic, sound advice I’ve heard yet (for me), and I hope that it will help me forge a new habit of getting up with the clock. I am afraid though that even after a shower and dressing, I will find myself back in bed within the hour (I think somebody else mentioned this problem too!). In all other respects, I have always had strong self-discipline, but I can’t seem to shake sleep for a good hour or two after waking, and I seem to have no control over my thoughts and actions during that time. I’ve been this way since I was a small child, and it’s frustrating. It’s especially frustrating to be successfully self-disciplined in so many other areas of my life, but to meet with continual failure every morning. It’s wearing down my confidence in myself, and I have to fix it soon.
I think that making a very long morning routine may help me, along with the “practicing”. If I can get past the first 2 hours and still be awake, then my chances of staying that way are good. The problem is that it’s hard to come up with stuff to do that will keep me awake for that long. I love to read a novel with a cup of coffee every morning (it’s my absolute favourite thing to do after getting up) , but experience has proven that if I’m too tired, reading turns into a nap on the couch, and the coffee goes cold.
Do you have any other advice? I’d sure love to hear it!
August 17th, 2005 at 10:42 am
MAN I REALLY, REALLY, WANT TO WAKE UP EARLIER…. UT I CANT… I FELL TIRED AND COLD WHEN I SET MY ALARM.. I JUST TURN IT OFF AND GO BACK TO SLEEP… I DO WAKE UP EARLY ON THE ODD OCCASION BUT I WNAT TO DO IT MORE FREQUENTLY… I HOPE YOUR METHODS WORK… AS I ASLWAYS WAKE UP CLSE TO NOON.. I HATE IT !!!