6 Proven Tips For Getting up Early

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

Getting up early in the morning is difficult. If you've ever tried getting up at 5 or 6 a.m. to start your day productively, you know how challenging it can be. Usually your alarm clock goes off and all you want to do is hit the snooze button to go back to bed.

But with a little practice and some good techniques, it is quite possible to be able to get up early every morning easily.

In this article we will see:

• What are the benefits of getting up early in the morning?
• How to get up early?
• What to do when you wake up?
• Do you have to get up early to be successful?

The benefits of getting up early

You have more time for yourself

When you get up early in the morning, you can take your time. There is nothing worse than waking up in a hurry and starting the day feeling good. By getting up early, you start the day at your own pace. You are more serene and calm. You also have more time to prepare and organize what you encounter in the best conditions for the day.

Waking up early also means having a special time in which you can do things for yourself. You can read, meditate, play sports, write ... in short, do all those things that you do not usually do because you are interrupted by those around you, because you lack time or because you feel that there are things more urgent to do.

You are more productive

Morning is the best time to “eat your frog” - in other words, to accomplish your challenging and important tasks. This is when you have the most energy and when you are most alert and alert. This is also when you are calm and can concentrate fully on your work without fear of being interrupted.

By using the first few hours of your day to work on things that make a real difference to you, you are not only investing your energy in the best possible way but you are sure to have a productive day.

Personally, when I wake up at 6:30 a.m., I write an article until 9:00 a.m. This is my most important job, it is the one that I take care to accomplish before everything else. It ensures that I have a productive day no matter what happens next. I can be unproductive in the afternoon, deal with unforeseen events, learn bad news ... my day will still be a success because I will have advanced on what is most important to me from the first hours of the day.

You gain momentum for the day

When you start your day early to accomplish your important tasks, you want a sense of productivity and satisfaction that goes with you throughout the day. You get extra boost to get the rest of your day off.

How to get up early?

Go to bed early

It might sound obvious, but if you want to get up early, you need to go to bed early first.

The problem is, going to bed early is often difficult. Usually we are active before sleeping. We watch a series or a movie, we hang out on social networks, we play a game, we chat ... and we don't feel like going to bed.

We allow ourselves some variation, we watch a few more videos on YouTube, we chat a little longer on WhatsApp, we try to pass a few more levels on our favorite game ... results we go to bed late. And when it comes time to wake up early the next day, it's difficult because you haven't slept long enough.

If you want to get up early, then you need to optimize the hours leading up to bedtime. You have to do less stimulating things. Things that make it easier to fall asleep, not activities that boost your dopamine.

To do this, read a book, listen to a podcast, listen to music, meditate ... in short, do something that signals your brain that it is almost time to sleep. You'll fall asleep sooner, and you'll find it easier to get up early the next day.

Find a good reason to wake up early

If you want to get up early but don't know why you're doing it, there's a good chance you'll fall back asleep every time your alarm goes off. So you must have a strong enough reason to get out of bed. Something that gives you energy and motivation.

Do you want to get up early to exercise and stay healthy?

Is it to meditate and feel more connected and present?

Do you have a project that is close to your heart and that you want to accomplish in the morning?

Whatever the reason, it has to be stronger than your urge to stay warm in bed in the morning. Once you find it, it will be easier to get up early.

Make waking up inevitable

If you are prone to hitting the snooze key when waking up, you may need some drastic solutions to wake up. Here are some ideas that should help you.

Place your alarm clock away from you to force yourself to get up to turn it off.

If that's not enough, choose an alarm clock that prevents you from going back to sleep.

You can also find a partner who gets up early and message them by the time you wake up early and if you don't, you have a pledge.

In the same vein, Thomas Franck programs the following tweet every day on Buffer to force himself to get up early in the morning:

It's 6:10 and I'm not up because I'm lazy! Reply to this tweet to earn $ 5 (provided my alarm was okay). Limited to 5 people.

If he doesn't wake up at 6:00 am to unsent, that tweet is automatically posted and he is forced to pay his followers for not getting up on time.

With these few techniques you will be forced to wake up early in the morning even if you tend to fall asleep again as soon as you hear your alarm clock.

Create pleasant conditions

It is much easier to get up early when you make it easier to wake up. For this you just need to create the perfect conditions when you wake up. You can for example:

Program your coffee machine to make coffee for you when you wake up. This way you will be greeted by a good smell of coffee when you get out of bed and all you have to do is pour yourself a cup. To do this, buy a programmable coffee machine (aff) which will prepare a coffee for you at the time you want or take a traditional coffee machine and plug it into a digital programmable outlet (aff)

• Prepare your yoga mat so that when you wake up you just have to start your session
• Pack your sports gear and put it on display.
• Clean and tidy your desk the night before so that when you wake up in the morning you have an organized space to work and start your day productively.
• Prepare your tasks for the day the night before so you know exactly what to work on when you wake up

Create a routine

Creating a routine makes waking up much easier. If you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, you will program your body and your brain. It will be easier for you to lie down and get up. Sometimes you will even notice that you wake up a few minutes before you wake up because you intuitively know when it is time to get up.

Optimize your diet

Your diet determines the quality of your sleep. If you eat a large meal and / or drink a lot (water / alcohol) right before bed, your sleep will not be optimal. No matter how early you go to bed and follow all of the tips you've read so far, it will still be hard for you to get up.

To remedy this, optimize your diet:

• Avoid large meals before sleeping
• Drink little or no alcohol
• Don't drink too much water to avoid getting up too often during the night to go to the bathroom
• Don't drink coffee after 2 p.m.

By following these tips, you will sleep better and have less trouble getting up early in the morning.

What to do when you wake up?

The first hours of the day are the most beneficial. These are the ones where you have the most energy and focus. So you have to use them intelligently while doing important things.

The important things are those that are most beneficial in the long run. They are the ones that make you progress and move forward. But paradoxically, they are also those that we tend to neglect in favor of urgent tasks.

So take advantage of the quiet of the morning when no one is up yet to invest in you and do things that are beneficial to you in the long term:

• Meditate to keep your mind alive
• Exercise to maintain your body
• Read to enrich yourself
• Write to articulate your ideas
• Take training

After 9 am the atmosphere of the day changes. The moment of tranquility gives way to the noise and agitation of the day. You start to be in demand, you receive new emails, you get called, new urgent things emerge ... you are in the heat of the moment and tend to prioritize urgent things. This makes it much more difficult to take care of these important things.

By blocking out the early hours of the day for yourself, you make your personal development inevitable.

Do you have to get up early to be successful?

We have just seen the benefits of getting up early, how to get up early and what to do when you wake up, but we haven't yet talked about the relationship between success and the act of getting up early.

Yet there are countless articles, books, videos, lectures ... which explain why it is important to get up early in the morning for a successful life.

Still, I don't think waking up early in the morning is a component of success. It may sound counterintuitive, especially for an article that deals with "how to get up early", but it is true.

We really like to take successful people as an example and explain their success by getting up early. But when you look at the other end of the spectrum, you see that there are just as many late risers who have been successful too. Among them are for example:

• Warren Buffet investor and American billionaire
• Mark Zuckerberg founder of Facebook
• Winston Churchill former Prime Minister of England
• Gustave Flaubert writer
• Simone de Beauvoir writer
• Alexis Ohanian founder of Reddit
• Pharrell Williams musician and philanthropist
• Karl Lagerfeld fashion designer
• J.R.R. Tolkien author of Lord of the Rings
• And the list goes on and on.

Wake up time is not what defines your success, it is what you do when you are awake that defines it.

The most important thing is knowing your pace and knowing when YOU are most productive.

If you feel that your most productive hours are in the morning, I encourage you to apply the advice I have given you in this article. Get up early and make the most of this time of day. But if you find that you are more inspired, motivated and creative in the evening then going to bed late and getting up late will make a much better use of your time.