sidelanes.com

Having recently completed Nanowrimo, I decided to do this blog post on how to wake up early in the morning. For those of you who don’t know, Nanowrimo is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. It’s a feat I don’t think I would have accomplished had I not learned how to become an early riser.

Here are five tips:

1. Decide to wake up earlier – This is the decision that drives you out of your comfortable bed and into the cold morning air. You’ve got to decide to do it and stick to that decision. I like to do meditations on decisions like this, it can sometimes help me stay serious about it.

2. Have a goal that you’re working on – When you have a goal or a purpose, you have something to do. It helps to have something to look forward to when you’re making yourself leave your cozy bed. In my case I used writing a Novel as my goal. I broke it down further by trying to get 2000 words every day.

*3. Get up when you wake up – This is the big trick for me because I like to make things as easy as possible. Most people have natural times when they wake up in the morning. They wake up and usually go to the bathroom and then go back to sleep. If you are like this, use it to your advantage.

Pick a time, say after 3:00 in the morning. If you wake up naturally at this time, stay up. Don’t go back to bed. Do this for several nights in a row. If you feel tired the next day, it’s usually psychological and you can push through it. Eventually you’ll stop feeling tired and waking up early will come naturally.

4. Put out your clothes for the next day – This is a good idea because it’s usually dark in the morning and turning on the light will wake a significant other. Not having to dig around in your closet and drawers for clothes, allows you to put more mental focus on getting going in the morning.

5. Set your alarm clock – This one sounds obvious right? Well, if you do all of the above things then the alarm clock is just a backup. Ideally you will wake up before the alarm clock and turn it off before it starts to blare at you.

So that’s how I woke up early for the month of November, which allowed me to get my project done. I highly recommend these five tips, with a special emphasis on number three. If you follow them one by one, you’ll have a pretty strong handle on how to wake up early in the morning.