Waking up early for dummies

10.01.2023

I've already made a post of my sleeping tips. If you're someone (without insomnia or other sleeping disorders) who just wants to wake up early with no extra fluff, this is better post for you: 3 points I think are the most important.

Be consistent 🕗

When you're fixing your sleep schedule you really want to be consistent about what time you wake up. If you want to wake up 8 am, wake up at 8 am every single day. Even on weekends. Really hammer it to your brain that there is a specific time you need to wake up and it will eventually learn it.

When you've done this for a while and are confident about waking up early, you can sleep in later on weekends occasionally. But definitely not in the start.

Sunrise alarm clock 🌅

I can't exaggerate how much of a difference this makes. Want to wake up at 8 am? Start slowly dimming on lights at 7:30 am and waking at 8 am becomes 10x more easy. It's like going from hard mode to easy mode. You can buy sunrise alarm clocks from pretty much everywhere nowadays.

Note that I'm writing this from Finland where natural sunlight is pretty much non-existent. The need for this might change depending on where you live. But then again, you should be using blackout curtains anyway so it doesn't really matter.

No screens before bed 📱

I'd argue that this is the most important one, and probably the most difficult one for most people. If you want to wake up at 8 am, sleep 8 hours so you need to be asleep by 12 am. Turn of all screens 1 hour before bed time. It's boring, but really necessary for a good quality sleep. This server 2 purposes:

Stops any simulation from your devices. No simulation → you're bored → you realize you're tired → you actually want to go to sleep
Blue light blocks melatonin. Melatonin is the hormone which makes you feel sleepy (all lights mess with melatonin but blue light is the worst)

Shut down your phone or put it on silent, and throw it into a cabinet or somewhere out of sight. This also prevents you from using it first thing in the morning (you should wake up properly before you start scrolling TikTok)