
Waking up early, 10 tips that worked for me - therod
http://rodrigohaenggi.com/posts/waking-up-early-10-tips-that-work/
======
petercooper
_The most important step is to get up._

It's the best approach when sane-me wakes up first, but usually a totally
different personality wakes up first. It can justify almost anything in its
effort to stay in bed. Kinda creepy actually, it's what I'd imagine having a
multiple personality disorder is like. It's not even a _voice_ , I am not "me"
when I wake up :-)

~~~
napoleoncomplex
One neat app I've discovered lately that helps me with this tremendously is
Sleep as Android[1]. It has a "CAPTCHA" mode for alarms, where you have to do
some additional task to wake up. It has a few choices for the task, but the
most amazing one is QR Code scanning. You "teach" the phone a QR code of your
choice, and when the alarm goes off you have to scan the code to turn it off.
The use case is printing a QR code on a piece of paper and sticking it in the
kitchen/bathroom/whatever room that requires you getting up and walking. A
simple, yet (to me) a mind-blowing feature for an alarm.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid.sleep&hl=en)

~~~
mvgoogler
That's pretty cool.

My low-tech version is putting the alarm clock on the other side of the room
:-)

~~~
napoleoncomplex
It's what I did before, the problem was that the point of the app is sleep-
tracking and waking you up at the optimal time in your sleep cycle. This
requires the phone being somewhere on the bed so it can register your
movement. The negative side-effect of this is of course being able to turn off
the alarm with your eyes more or less closed by blindly grabbing at the phone
conveniently placed at arm's reach.

------
thehammer
I stopped using an alarm clock about a year ago, and it's been one of the most
positive, life-altering changes I've experienced. I'm not tired when I wake
up, and I have consistent energy through the day. It was a surprisingly easy
transition after doing two things: leaving the blinds open so I get lots of
natural sunlight in the morning, and eating breakfast within half an hour of
waking up.

It's somewhat scary at first, going without an alarm, but I discovered after
doing the above two things that I was tending to wake up before my alarm, and
ready to start my day. After a few weeks, I decided to give it a go, and have
been off the alarm for a year. In fact, I think now that having an alarm was
much more stressful and got in the way of getting a good night's rest, despite
the fact that I now wake up earlier.

Getting to sleep at a decent hour helps, and waking up early leaves me tired
at night. I avoid caffeine after noon and tried to avoid sitting in front of a
computer screen during the last half hour before sleep. But I credit the early
meal and sunlight most.

~~~
T-hawk
Heartily second everything there. I stopped using an alarm clock for workdays
many years ago. Waking up naturally is the best ending to sleep. The time is
pretty stable, except roughly once a week, I'll remain asleep 30 to 60 minutes
longer. If that happens, it was _necessary_ , and waking up earlier to a
blaring alarm would have left me zombied for the day. I do have a job where
the arrival time is flexible; anytime up to about 10:30 is okay and my boss
does the same. That is by design not luck, I wouldn't take a job where that
was not true.

So yes, kill the alarm. (I will use it for an early flight or medical
appointment, things that can't give way by an hour, but absolutely not for the
daily commute.) It really does create stress.

------
grecy
11\. Get enough exercise.

I find when I'm getting regular exercise, I open my eyes in the morning and
I'm awake and ready to go. It's the opposite when I've been lazing around for
a few weeks not doing my physical activity.

~~~
AJ007
My uncensored opinion is that the original article is garbage. Waking up early
isn't about what you do in the morning, its about what you do the night before
(or fail to do.)

Forcing yourself to wake up early for the sake of waking up early is
destructive as it means your body has not gotten enough sleep yet. Your going
to either have impeded judgement capability, diminished work energy or both. A
lot of people pretend this doesn't happen to them; they under perform for
years or sometimes their whole life.

Being a business owner associating with a lot of people with the worst
sleeping schedules imaginable I have a pretty good idea what causes serious
sleep problems.

That said, most average people can fix their sleep problems just through being
active.

Here are a few things that are a really big deal:

1\. Wind down work hours before your ready.

2\. Shut off most of your lights. Especially the horrid blue lights that so
many electronics emit.

3\. Don't do drugs. Yeah, if your snorting cocaine on the weekends expect to
have some problems sleeping for the rest of the week.

4\. Be on a regularly eating schedule. My sleep disruptions go hand in hand
with meal disruptions.

I travel to trade shows and have 24 hour days. When I go back home, my sleep
schedule goes back on track within 48 hours. This is coming from someone who,
over half a decade ago, spent years attempting to stop a 26 hour day cycle
(meaning your sleep plus awake time always ads up to over 24 hours a day
resulting in no predictable sleep pattern.)

~~~
m_for_monkey
_3\. Don't do drugs._

Most importantly, do not consume caffeine. No coffee, no tea!

~~~
cowkingdeluxe
Green tea has a lot less caffeine than black tea.

~~~
dhugiaskmak
This is not necessarily true. In particular: "2. Black and green tea
manufactured from leaf from the same bushes on the same day will have
virtually the same caffeine levels (within +/- 0.3%)"

[http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/caffeine-and-tea-myth-
and...](http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/caffeine-and-tea-myth-and-
reality.html)

~~~
cowkingdeluxe
Didn't know that, I stand corrected. Thanks!

------
RyanMcGreal
> 2 Don’t listen to that voice in your head. You know, the one that always
> tells you: “Just 10 more minutes of sleep won’t hurt right? We will
> definitely get up after that.”

I listen to that voice every day. My alarm goes off at 4:30 AM, I doze for
another ten minutes, and then I get up promptly at 4:40 AM. YMMV, but for me,
that last ten minutes makes the difference between staggering out of bed
feeling ill and half-zonked, and rising awake and alert.

~~~
ctdonath
YMMV indeed. If I do that, forget it. The most awake I'll be when getting up
is when that first alarm goes off; any subsequent "snooze" just gets repeated
until "too late" hits. I may be staggering out of bed feeling ill and half-
zonked, but I'm UP.

Best way I find to fight the "snooze button" effect is to have a reason to get
up. Make sure there is no way to rationalize another 10 minutes. I have to be
out by X:Y0AM, and must do P D & Q before, and any delay will screw that up -
so I have to get up when the alarm goes off, no matter how much I hate the
fact DST means it's just as dark out as when I went to bed.

Once up, the next step is JUICE. A shot of sugar, in a healthy format, to
stimulate blood sugar levels and get energy going. That's enough to get the
rest of the process going.

Toddlers help. Get 'em to bed so they'll get up when you want to get up.
Nothing is more irresistible than 2.5' of "Da Da! Milk!"

Final tip: don't care. Doesn't matter whether you want to get up or not, just
friggin' do it. Between this and other issues, I've largely eradicated the "I
do/dont' want to" mindset: I don't care, it doesn't matter what I want, just
do it because it has to be done.

------
libraryatnight
I find that I have an easier time getting out of bed if I get up when I wake
naturally. I almost always wake about 30 minutes before my alarm goes off. In
the past I just went back to sleep, but when 30 minutes went by I felt groggy
and sluggish.

Hopping out of bed right when I wake up, even if it costs me 30 - 45 minutes
of extra sleep, makes it so much easier.

My fiance has been using this alarm application where she inputs the time
she's going to bed and it shows best and worst times within the sleep cycle to
be woken, it works well. I have a feeling this is what I'm doing on my own by
getting up when I wake up.

------
benwr
I have tried nearly all of these, and the only thing that consistently works
for me is forcing myself to go to bed by midnight, and preferably at 23:00.

On nights when I get less than seven and a half hours of sleep, it's like I'm
a different person immediately after waking up: I don't care what my future or
previous self wants. I only want to go back to sleep.

On nights when I give myself eight or more hours to sleep, I will wake up on
time without any external prompt (including the alarm). It's a lot easier to
be rational about time at the end of a day than it is at the beginning.

~~~
Periodic
This is what works best for me when I need to get up. I have the problem that
there are always a million more things I want to do before I go to bed. If I
let myself do them I will be wide awake and focused until I hit a wall and
have to go to bed, but this time will be about 2 hours after I should I have
gone to bed and the next day I'll be terribly groggy if I get up at the normal
time.

The most important thing for me is not giving in to staying up late. My brain
wants to do it, but I have to say no.

~~~
jonstjohn
For me the night-time is the only quiet time to get work done (full-time job,
family), but I still need to get up about 5:40 AM. I aim to get to sleep by
10:30 but usually work up until that point. I know I sometimes suffer when
trying to fall to sleep, but I guess it's a trade-off I'm willing to make.

------
randallsquared
_It took me a month of living with withdrawal symptoms and headaches to get
over the addiction._

Let me just point out that this is totally not normal. I drink 10-15 (20-oz)
cups of coffee a week, in addition to caffeinated sodas, and when I'd go off
caffeine for a few weeks (as I used to do regularly), I'd have 2-3 days of
feeling depressed from normal, and a very mild but persistent headache over
the first 1-2 days of it. If someone has _caffeine_ withdrawal symptoms for a
month, I'd think something else is wrong.

~~~
npsimons
I take issue with his "coffee = bad" assertion as well. Maybe he was just
drinking _too much_ coffee. I know I was getting chest pains when I used to
drink way too much, so I quit for a couple of years. Now I'm back to one
french pressed cup everyday, although I don't need it, and I finish it well
before noon. A little bit of good coffee goes a long way, and although no
definitive link to good health has been found yet, medical research is looking
into it because of correlations that have been found (just google "health
benefits of coffee").

~~~
deathhand
Actually it has been found to battle Alzheimer's disease.
[http://epicentre.massey.ac.nz/EJC/Stuff/PastPapers/Papers_20...](http://epicentre.massey.ac.nz/EJC/Stuff/PastPapers/Papers_2007/Maia_2002_caffeine.pdf)

------
parbo
You only need one tip: get a kid. Won't help with productivity though.

~~~
wtracy
How about a cat? There is no snooze button on a cat that wants to be fed. :-)

~~~
eliben
Are you comparing the amount of attention cats need with the amount children
need (particularly infants & toddlers)? You are so going to have a wakeup call
one day :)

~~~
richieb
Hmmm.,... two kids, eight cats..... Kids are easier.

~~~
eliben
What age are the kids?

~~~
richieb
Now the kids are 24 and 20 :)... But they slept more at night than the
cats....

------
rubergly
Compared to articles on sites that Lifehacker that boast claims like "10 Ways
to Perfect Your Sleep Cycle!"; I really love the honesty of articles written
like this with the perspective of "it worked for me; I'd recommend it, but
your mileage may vary".

------
pumblechook
The best tip: challenge your basic assumptions about sleep and experiment to
find what works for you.

I've found that hitting the general 1.5 hour sleep cycle pattern works for me
(i.e. the amount of sleep you get is a multiple of 1.5) much better than
anything else in terms of actually getting up and feeling well rested.

It is extremely difficult for me to get up and go to bed at the same time
every day (not to mention unnecessarily inconvenient), but if I can get
exactly 6 hours of sleep every night (or 7.5 if I'm feeling particularly
tired), I can wake up easily at any time and feel well rested.

------
AleksanderK
For me, at least, rationalizations and planning don't work when it comes to
forming new habits. I just have to jump into it. With sleeping, I set my alarm
clock at 4:30 and got up. First couple of days were tough, but eventually my
internal clock shifted.

Having said that, you should have a good reason for waking up early aside from
"I want to be one of those guys that get up super early; they seem to do so
much work before I even open my eyes." For me, it was a couple of reasons: \-
doing my morning power walk before all the traffic (so I can put in my earbuds
and crank up the noise) \- getting stuff done before everyone else wakes up
and messages/emails/calls... start \- prepping most of my food for the day so
that I save more time \- avoiding evenings when I have to do a lot of work so
I can focus more on reading/learning

It also helps if you're tough on yourself. I know I won't achieve what I want
by irregular sleeping schedule and spoiling myself. And if there is ever a
late night I still get up at the same time; I just take a caffeine pill later
in the day.

~~~
toumhi
If I could count the number of hours I spent in my life half awake in my bed -
it would fill many holidays <sigh>

I've tried a number of times to rise early, but I've never managed to do it
consistently. When considering to get up, I can't convince myself that i HAVE
to get up, since I can do what I want to do later anyways.

It seems that, on my own, the reasons are not strong enough for me to get up:
the only thing that worked was when I had a commitment with a group of friends
to swim at 7AM with them.

------
mistercow
> You won’t take my word for it? You are not so smart has a great writeup
> about the effects of coffee. Go read it now!

Yes, a "great writeup" that makes a ton of controversial assertions which are,
at best, tenuously supported by a smattering of cherry-picked studies
interspersed between non-academic articles.

I'm not impressed.

------
HeyLaughingBoy
The problem I have with a lot of "self-improvement" (?) tips like these is
that I find it hard to believe that they are necessary.

You need to start getting up earlier? Go to bed early enough to get the sleep
you need and when your alarm goes off the next day, just get out of bed. No
tricks, special techniques needed. Don't hit snooze. Don't delude yourself
into "I'll just rest my eyes for a minute." Don't justify staying in bed for
another 15 minutes because you set the alarm early. Just get the hell out of
bed. And stick to doing it until it becomes a habit.

Is it really that hard for most people? It's just self discipline.

~~~
EvilTerran
"... when your alarm goes off the next day, _just_ get out of bed ... _Just_
get the hell out of bed ... It's _just_ self discipline."

[http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/10/07/just_is_a_fourletter...](http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/10/07/just_is_a_fourletter_word/)

<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JustIsaDangerousWord>

[http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2003/08/cant_you_just_...](http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2003/08/cant_you_just_redux.html)

Or, for a more specific counterpoint,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3828794>

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Um, yeah. Whatever.

We're talking about getting out of bed without procrastinating. If it's
difficult, you either haven't had enough sleep or you're being lazy. Getting
enough sleep may be difficult, but it's typically not an insurmountable
problem. Being lazy is even easier to fix.

~~~
EvilTerran
_"Being lazy is even easier to fix."_

Really? Please, do describe your fix for laziness, if it's so easy.

Saying "just be less lazy" is exactly the same as saying "just exert more
willpower", and neither is even remotely useful to people whose problems
you're belittling as being "just laziness / poor willpower". No therapist
would say that to any client for any problem, as they know it would, at best,
be completely useless. It's an insult - "you're lazy / weak-willed!" -
masquerading as advice.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I'm not a therapist. I just know myself well enough to know when I'm being
lazy and I stop it.

------
seeingfurther
Why is there a seemingly endless stream of articles about how to 'get up
early' and be productive? I've yet to see an article espousing late night
productivity. <sigh> nightowls get no love!

------
david_shaw
I wrote a web application to help me with this very issue in late 2010. It's
actually become fairly popular thanks to sites like HN and reddit, and
recently passed the 100k Facebook "like" mark--a big achievement for me
personally.

The URL is <http://sleepyti.me> and it's totally free.

 _Disclaimer:_ Sorry for plugging my own project, but it seemed too relevant
to this discussion to ignore.

------
xanados
There is actually a straightforward tip that is fairly reliable. Take
melatonin 30 minutes before you need to go to sleep in order to wake up on
time. This stops you from staying up too late because it softly commits you to
only being up for another 30 minutes.

------
Boxer
Here are some tips that have worked for _me_ :

* Keep the coffee machine in the bedroom. Before going to bed, load it up with water and coffee put the alarm clock next to it. Also have a cup and some milk next to it. Next morning, when the clock goes off, you're going to have to walk over there anyway so you might as well turn on the coffee machine. Now you can go back to dozing off but after a few minutes, the scent and prospect of the readily available coffee should make getting up much easier, plus you can sip the coffee in bed.

* Count to ten, and get up on ten.

* Take melatonin the night before to go to sleep on time in the first place.

* Log your sleeping hours to get an idea of what irregular or overlong sleep is costing you in terms of time.

------
eshvk
I successfully hacked my sleep schedule around 5 years ago. I used to think I
was a night owl basically working till 3 in the morning and waking up at noon,
then, I realized I was basically not being productive enough doing that. I
used a combination of two things:

1\. Sleep exactly 7 hours a night at the exact same time (+/- delta) and wake
up at the same time.

2\. Use the same awful alarm that wakes me up. The alarm doesn't sound
alarming, its just that when I hear it, I have to wake up because it is tied
with so many memories of waking up in the morning for exams. In fact after
switching to an iPhone which doesn't have the same alarm, I have found it
(slightly) difficult to wake up.

------
saraid216
This didn't seem like tips to wake up early so much as they were tips to stay
awake after waking up early.

I have no issues with getting out of bed and getting productive when I wake
up; the issue has been waking up at all.

------
jerrya
You may not want to literally jump out of bed.

Most heart attacks occur in the morning.

~~~
tomjen3
Isn't that because those who die in their sleep aren't discovered until the
morning?

------
evo_9
Buy a Zeo. It really works.

Long/short it monitors your sleep state and wakes you during the best time.
I've never in my entire life been a morning person; I recently had enough
struggling with my startup and took a fulltime job and decided to be the early
guy. Have been to work 7:30 or early without issue for nearly two months.

And most shocking, I feel great, fully awake and don't have any tiredness.
Great product.

<http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/>

~~~
nob
There is an app on the AppStore that claims to do something similar using only
built-in phone hardware (accelerometer). Anybody got any experience with it?
Seems like some reviewers claims that the readings are bogus. Is the
accelerometer on the iPhone sensitive enough to register movements as claimed
by the app? [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sleep-cycle-alarm-
clock/id320...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sleep-cycle-alarm-
clock/id320606217?mt=8)

~~~
cowpewter
I use Sleep Cycle when I absolutely _need_ to be up at a certain time. I also
like the no-alarm mode just for tracking sleep. When you first run it, they
have a calibration mode where it makes a noise when it detects motion, so you
can roll around in bed and listen for where you need to place it.

It probably depends on your mattress how well it works. If you've got a foam
mattress or one of those ones with commercials of dropping bowling balls next
wine glass towers, then yeah, maybe your phone won't pick it up. But it seems
to work well enough with my cheap mattress.

In the morning, I can definitely see spikes on the graph for times I know I
woke up to pee, so it's definitely detecting something. I don't know about
those reviews that say they still get graphs with it left on the dresser; I've
not tried that test.

------
loeg
I've been experimenting with waking up at 5am to go running. So far, it's been
great. I feel much more productive when I have some time to myself at work in
the morning.

The hardest thing is coping with friends whose schedules are offset so much
from mine. For me, waking up this early means I need to go to bed around
8-9pm. So, I don't wake up this early every day. For those with trouble
sleeping so early, I find melatonin useful for sleeping earlier.

------
MadWombat
Why would you want to wake up at 5AM in the first place? If all you want is a
few more hours of time, why not stay up a few hours later?

------
vishaldpatel
Something that has worked for me is to have an alarm that I actually like
waking up to. Shitty alarms make for the most annoying things in the world
when you're trying to sleep. But something nice... we all have our
preferences... I like wind chimes, or progressive music - stuff that picks up,
rather than starting off with a bang.

~~~
StuffMaster
I found a morning talk radio show that I liked, and set it to a low volume.
Sometimes I actually listened to it while sleeping! Awake or asleep, it caused
my brain to wake up a bit.

------
rahim
I tried just jumping out of bed and getting going, but it ended up with me
failing more often than not. What works for me is to ease into waking up with
a set, autopilot-type routine, something you can do without even thinking
about it. Wake up, get out of bed right away, walk to the bathroom, start the
shower, get in.

------
tashian
I set the thermostat so that it starts to become uncomfortably warm in bed
right around the time I want to get up.

------
chousuke
I've found sleepyti.me to work for me. After a while of paying attention to
sleeping for a preset duration instead of waking up at a preset time it became
kind of automatic, and nowadays I wake up before the alarm (often just a
minute or a half before) but I still set it out of habit.

------
why-el
I have had enough experience with this and the only lesson I had is this: I
wake up early in the morning when I need to. Got a meeting, get up for it.
Nothing to do, well enjoy your three and a half hour movie you watched last
night and catch some sleep.

------
zeroonetwothree
Why is waking up early even a desirable goal?

The problem with doing it consistently is that it works great until that one
Friday night when you stay up till 3 AM, which screws up your schedule for the
next week.

------
richieb
What coffee is not bad!?!?!? Want to learn to get up early? Move to the
suburbs and get 1 hour+ commute. I wake up most days just before my alarm goes
off..... and I used be a night person.

------
amymattson
I figured out how much water to drink right before bed so that I wake up
naturally 7.5-8 hours later. There's no ignoring a full bladder, and once I'm
out of bed I'm up for the day.

------
macabhay
59\. Don't eat in the 2 hours before bedtime. If you do, your body will
initially use its energy to digest your meal instead of to nourish your body.

This one is big - simple change, drastic results.

~~~
mrtunes
yes but contrary advice says that a small snack is ok because hunger pangs
disrupt your sleep.

------
nik_0_0
Interesting to see the "consecutive" days motivational tool come up again.
I've been struggling with this recently and will have to give that a shot.

------
gnubardt
Going to sleep when you're tired and waking up at the same time everyday
sounds great but how does the occasional late night affect this?

~~~
SatvikBeri
Having done this, I still wake up at the same time, but may take naps (5-40
mins) during the day. It's not that I'm trying to avoid sleeping in-I just
_can't_ , having gotten so used to the habit of waking up at 6 AM every single
day.

~~~
freshfey
I work with therod and I basically do the same. Normally I do 1x 20min nap
after lunch. If it was a rough night, with little sleep - one nap at 9am and
one around 3/4pm.

------
poppysan
If I want to wake up refreshed, I just don't eat or drink anything about 9-10
hours before I want to wake. Works for me every time!

------
jamesbritt
My Jedi mind hack is to smile.

You may have to force yourself at first. :)

It's become a habit, and it changes my mood so that I _want_ to get up and
about.

------
foobarian
The SERVER approach: Super Early Rise, Very Early Retirement! Got to go to bed
early.

------
ix_
I put my alarm across the room next to a glass of water and a ritalin tablet.

------
therobot24
these 10 tips can be replaced with one:

1) Feed cat(s) wet-food in the morning

the cat(s) will not let you sleep until you get up to feed them...guaranteed.

if you don't have a cat

1) place obnoxious alarm out of range

------
ttk1
that website looks familiar, yep that's it, zachholman.com

------
AznHisoka
Become a farmer and sleep at 8 and wake up at 5. Not modern zombie clown.

~~~
randomdata
As a grain farmer, it is rare to see much happen around this farm before 11AM.
Except, perhaps, repair some downed equipment. You pretty much always need the
morning sunshine to dry up the fields from the overnight dew before they are
ready to be worked in again.

~~~
AznHisoka
what is a farmer doing posting in HN?

------
soofaloofa
Have children.

------
yummybear
1) Have kids.

------
WayneDB
This is all I need:

[http://www.amazon.com/EcoTeas-Organic-Yerba-
Loose-5-Pound/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/EcoTeas-Organic-Yerba-
Loose-5-Pound/dp/B0012BSLWU)

and

[http://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Ancients-Bombilla-
Strainerstraw...](http://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Ancients-Bombilla-
Strainerstraw-Pack/dp/B003XUHIMC)

~~~
blhack
I've been drinking this brand for quite a long time, and it's about $10
cheaper: [http://www.amazon.com/Rosamonte-Traditional-Yerba-
Mate/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Rosamonte-Traditional-Yerba-
Mate/dp/B001L7V9B0/ref=sr_1_1?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1334169626&sr=1-1)

It's surprising to me that yerba is _just_ starting to catch on in the US.

You should try it some time with a little bit of milk and peppermint syrup.
It's heavenly :).

------
gilbertj99
The fuck is wrong with you people?

