

Ask HN: How do you become a morning person?  - kzisme

I&#x27;ve always been a night owl and enjoy being up late. I have a bad habit of not going to bed until I&#x27;m tired, so that leads to me not sleeping until late. Any ideas?
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cafard
Have a child. You are more or less guaranteed a dozen years of early wake-up
calls.

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IanDrake
I've tried to shift my clock too. My biggest problem is that my restful
dreaming phase of sleep doesn't seem to offset from the time I go to sleep,
but just happens around 5-8AM. That means my alarm goes off while I'm dreaming
and all I want to do is go back to sleep.

On a recent trip to Cali (3 hour time shift) I had the best sleep ever and
during the time of night that I needed. Perhaps I should just move to the west
coast, because nothing else has ever worked so well.

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coralreef
wouldn't you just adapt to the difference eventually?

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IanDrake
I wonder the same thing.

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svennek
I was a nightowl before (going to bed after 01 and getting out of bed around
09), but decided to change it.

The basic point is, the body needs enough (consistent) sleep.

I go to bed between 22 and 23 now, and get out of bed before 06 everyday (yes,
that includes weekends as my body likes the consistency) with a success rate
somewhere in the nineties (percent).

Also exercising helps getting your body more capable (whenever I drop it a few
days in a row "to save time" my productivity drops due to being tired)

And a morning light (basically a clock radio connected to a STRONG lightbulb
that turns up your light half an hour before you should wake) really works. I
regularly wake up when the light turns on (half an hour early) and when I
sleep away from home, I have a hard time getting out of bed consistently.

Lastly, make sure you leave the bed as soon as you are awake, "resting" in bed
for a few minutes before getting up is a sure-fire way to oversleep (as you
fall asleep again)

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dack
My wife and I have been going to bed a 9 and waking up at 5 for a few weeks
now. We do all our "project work" in the morning before our day jobs, and are
pretty exhausted by night time. If you shift 1hr a day until you get to this
type of rhythm, then eventually it won't really feel any different than your
normal schedule.

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beat
I'm trying to shift my habits around myself. Going from the problem/solution
perspective, my problem is that I need to work in time for my startup around
my dayjob hours. If I wait until evening to work on startup, I'm already tired
and it's conflicting with life stuff. So I'm trying to have at least two hours
a day before dayjob starts.

The blocker is that I often just drone late at night, surfing/shopping or
watching tv. It's not _productive_ time. So I'm kind of forcing myself to go
to bed early, 11pm at the latest, and using a silent alarm (Fitbit Force) to
get myself up and avoid the snooze button.

The hardest part has been dealing with when life forces me to stay up late
anyway, not breaking the habit.

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d64f396930663ee
Start exercising. I found my quality of sleep increased dramatically once I
did this, and even though I was still going to bed at 2 or 3 AM at first, it
somehow made shifting to a more reasonable hour much easier once I was
actually sleeping eight hours a night.

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rachelandrew
I am a retrained night owl. I used to work in the theatre which meant I worked
funny hours, long shifts (often doing a matinee, an evening show then going to
another theatre to do a night changeover, getting to bed at 6am then sleeping
all day. When I started working on the web I would work late and generally not
have great sleep patterns.

I retrained myself by starting to go to the gym or for a run really early (at
about 6am) every morning. I just did that consistently until my body learned
to have a pattern and I'm now very much a morning person, I usually get up at
about 5am. The trick is to be consistent especially in the 6 months or so it
takes to retrain your habits.

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dllthomas
There's no perfect solution; people are wired differently. The following may
help:

1) Have something to do in the morning, get out of bed and do it.

2) Eat something early on in the day.

3) Reduce caffeine intake generally, and especially after ~noon.

4) Reduce your interaction with screens in the evening 4a) Use something like
Redshift or Flux, for when that fails

5) Try to stick to a regular schedule. If you're always getting up at the same
time, getting up gets easier.

Don't push yourself _too_ hard, though. Some people _are_ just wired such that
it's not going to be easy, and fatigue does a lot of harm.

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ariejan
I was like that myself 6 months ago. I had some cool stuff to work on, and
would to it in the evening, getting to bed late, tired the next day.

I changed it by planning small chunks of work for each morning, getting up at
5. Doing a bit of work before the rest of the family wakes up. Than at 22:00
you're feeling tired and you go to bed.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but after a few days you don't want to do
it any other way.

Read more about my experience at [http://ariejan.net/2013/05/21/early-
birds/](http://ariejan.net/2013/05/21/early-birds/)

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centdev
I was in a similar situation. For me the best time to push code into
production was late night (between 1-2am). And with kids, I was still getting
up 6:30am. Even on the weekends when I try to stay away from computers, I
usually couldn't go to sleep until 2am anyway. Over time I just became wired
like this until I made it a point to go to sleep 15 mins earlier than the
previous week whether I felt tired or not. Now I go to usually around 11:30pm
and although I find myself waking up without an alarm clock at 5am, I still
have an opportunity to get extra sleep if I need to.

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japhyr
Stop using an alarm clock, if you use one. Having an alarm clock lets you
think you can keep your body up as long as you want, and then wake up when you
want to. Getting rid of the alarm clock also lets you get up out of bed the
first time you wake up, rather than drifting back to sleep and waiting for the
alarm.

If you ditch the alarm clock, you will pay attention to the quality of your
sleep. You might end up going to sleep a little earlier, and waking up
earlier.

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pknight
I've given myself some rules so I don't go overboard staying up late, like not
doing anything work related after 3am or computer games after a certain time.
When I don't follow these I generally get up later and later until I'm on a
truly unworkable schedule. I find it's pretty easy to go to bed a little later
each day, it's much harder to go to bed earlier, at least for me.

The other solution is to plan stuff early in the morning.

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Veus
Whats wrong with being a nightowl? If that is your natural rythem then why
change?

The only reason I can see for changing is due to lifestyle changes (kids
e.t.c).

~~~
kzisme
I feel like i waste most of my day in bed and in the upcoming semester I will
have earlier classes and a more restricted schedule.

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cupofjoakim
Start working out. You get tired earlier and I find it easier to focus on the
tasks I have since I started.

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gembird
next time when you go to bed, just sleep at 22 and wake up at 6, the important
thing is try to sleep early and just forget about your god damn projects

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jaseemabid
Throw the laptop out of the window.

