

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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pushnell
I finally managed to do this almost a year ago. Really, this comes down to
understanding (and accepting) that your body is built for adaptation. The more
steadily you feed it regular inputs, the more it will embrace those inputs and
come to expect them.

\- Force yourself to wake up at the same time every day -- no sleeping in on
weekends.

\- You should know roughly how much sleep you need in a night, and arrange
your life so that you can get in bed X + 1 hours before the time you want to
wake up.

If you can't do these two things at least 90% of your days, you won't succeed.
Later (2-3 months later), once you've established your pattern and are well
adapted to it, you'll have a bit more flexibility with your schedule and still
be able to maintain it.

A few things that helped me accomplish these goals:

\- Exercise (cardio) first thing in the morning. You will find yourself
getting sleepy much earlier in the day. Don't exercise at night, as the
endorphins can take several hours to disperse and will keep you awake until
then. After about three weeks of morning cardio, your body will begin to adapt
the timing of your energy cycles and you will find yourself springing out of
bed ready to run. I have used this to my advantage to replace my "night owl"
tendencies with "morning person" tendencies on the days off from the gym. I
also find it more productive, as my mind is fully rested.

\- Melatonin. Presumably, you're staring at a screen of some sort many hours a
day like most people on HN. Blue light inhibits natural melatonin production,
so to compensate, take a melatonin supplement 1-2 hours before you intend to
actually fall asleep. (You should experiment to find out what the lowest dose
is for you which still helps you fall asleep.) Also, turn off as many room
lights as you can at that time, and dim any screens you're viewing.

Like I said, it can take a few weeks to initially shift your schedule, and a
few months to fully adapt to it, but it can be done if you're dedicated. Best
of luck.

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gregorymichael
Bought this $7 alarm clock [1]. I set it for 7:30, on a stand just outside my
bathroom, twenty feet from my bedroom. It's loud, and I'm terrified that my
neighbors hate me. I _bolt_ out of bed, run across the kitchen, fumble to turn
it off, then stand there and debate with myself on what to do next.

The shower is closer, easier. 80% of the time I get in, then stand under the
hot water for 15 minutes until I gain consciousness. After a few months, I
start waking up a few minutes before my alarm goes off.

1\. [http://www.amazon.com/Sharp-SPC800-Quartz-Analog-
Silver/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Sharp-SPC800-Quartz-Analog-
Silver/dp/B004ZKXY7C/)

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joeldidit
Take bioforte resveratrol. That's what worked for me. I'd wake up at the time
I wanted to wake up and would take it. After a few days I would always wake up
at that time. Also, the thing about resveratrol is that it will give you
(clean) energy during the day that will be capped off by feeling tired at
night when it's time to go to bed. It has a great normalizing/regulatory
effect. You can use Melatonin at night in the beginning, but you probably
won't need it permanently.

That said, I went right back to being a night owl. There is something about
working late at night into the early morning. Something peaceful, something
serene, something that causes me to be more productive than ever. Being a
morning person didn't even come close.

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CyberFonic
I use a trick I learnt from a rotating shift worker. He didn't use the word
'hack' but that's what it is.

If you find it hard to fall asleep in order to wake up at the desired time,
then just skip a sleep cycle. That is, stay awake until you are no more than
10 to 9 hours from when you have to wake up next. The extra hour or two
compensates for the missed sleep. Make sure the bedroom is dark, cool and
quiet. I need an alarm to wake me up, when it goes off, get up.

Same trick also works for me when adjusting for jet lag. Trying to sleep when
you don't feel like it is hard. Staying awake an extra couple of hours when
you getting groggy is a bit easier. But don't drink coffee, etc.

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Skoofoo
You may be getting too much light at night, which inhibits the amount of
melatonin you generate. Try taking melatonin supplements.
[http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin](http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin)

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dvdand
Here are a few things that work for me:

\- Exercise in the evening. Helps work off the excess energy. \- Eat early and
light dinner. \- Wind down activities early & unplug after dinner so that your
body has a chance to relax. \- Set an alarm and don't snooze it. Better yet,
restrict the number of snooze (most alarms on smartphones allow you to do
that). And set a follow up alarm for your next activity that is soon after the
first alarm. This will help with getting a schedule going.

All the best.

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mrjatx
Force yourself to do it a few times, and make sure that you wake up and get
straight to doing your tasks. 11AM will come by and you'll have completed an
obscene amount of things and realize that you're not even ready for lunch yet.
That's a great feeling. Sure, it's possible at night, but I think one of the
major things is the lack of distractions in the early morning. News is slow,
reddit/hn is slow, it's more difficult to distract yourself when nobody else
is awake.

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kitsune_
Military routine, no kidding. I am an owl and during my mandatory service I
woke up at 6am every morning and was so tired during the day that I usually
fell immediately asleep when I entered a troup transport and sat down.
Physical exercise and long work days (you are basically on duty from 6am until
you go to bed at 11pm) were probably the main reasons for my transformation.

Of course I am writing this at 0.30 am, so it didn't last :)

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amarraja
I was the same, and I'm not exactly a morning person at the moment, but I am a
lot better. The two main things which are mentioned here are exercise and
sleep well.

For the first, I went for resistance training as cardio bores me too much. For
the sleep, I just started to eat well (more veg, less pizza) and my body
seemed to get into a better rhythm. There were possibly more factors involved,
but I guess I'll never know.

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Pinatubo
Copious amounts of caffeine. I actually bought a very nice espresso machine
with high quality coffee as a motivation to get up early, and it worked.

Also, I've been experimenting with f.lux to shift my screen to be more red
than blue after sunset. Supposedly the blue tint on screens reminds the body
of sunlight and makes you more awake. I don't know if it works yet, though.

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alexkus
My night owl status was cured by having children. I no longer have a choice
about what time I wake up.

Semi-seriously though, there's nothing like having to fit something immovable
into your schedule for sorting things like this out.

~~~
SheepSlapper
That was my trick too, except it was moving in with my girlfriend instead of
having a kid (knock on wood). She gets up at 6, and after 45 minutes of her
stomping around getting ready for work there's no way I'm getting any more
sleep. So I've just embraced it, and now I'm getting up at (around) 6 too.

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timjahn
Have a kid.

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31reasons
Set a different time zone for your residence. I set mine -3 hours from local
time. For me the experiment failed though :)

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pasbesoin
When my environment allows me to get quiet time earlier in the evening, I can
naturally shift. All the more so if the morning also offers quiet time to
myself.

If my evening is noisy, I end up waiting until it quiets down to "unwind"; I
find I typically need a couple of hours of peace and quiet. The exception
would be when busy and particularly _positive_ circumstances have me quite
tired at the end of the day, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

If my morning kicks off immediately into unpleasant circumstances -- work is
fine, but attempting to work _despite_ a bunch of crap is not -- then I find
myself staying up later perhaps out of avoidance; I'm not entirely ready to
wake up and put myself through that.

TL;DR: I love mornings -- when I can face them rested and not full of crap.
_Work_ is not crap, but crappy work is crap.

