Did you know that your morning is a strong indicator of how productive you are throughout the day? Waking up earlier in the morning may be the difference between an unproductive day and a day when you are able to write 10,000 words. The logic behind it is that when you wake up, you have more willpower. When you wake up, there are less excuses. You have less to do at 7 am than you have to do at 7 pm. If you are wondering how you can increase your productivity, you should also wonder how you can wake up earlier.
Before I continue, it is still important to get the right amount of sleep. Based on scientific studies, 6.5 to 7.5 hours of sleep every day will lead to a longer, healthier, and more productive life. If you are sleeping below 6.5 hours, then you are not getting enough sleep. However, if you are sleeping for 8 hours, then you are getting too much sleep (yes, there is such a thing). That means you only want to sleep in between the 6.5 to 7.5 hour range. This is where waking up earlier comes in.
The first thing you need to do to wake up earlier is to create a schedule that you are committed to implement. If you get to bed at 11 pm, then you need to commit yourself to waking up in between 5:30 am and 6:30 am. That does not sound like a lot of sleep, but that is because most people sleep longer than the recommended amount of sleep.
Now that you have the schedule in place, you need to have motives. How are you going to benefit by waking up earlier? If you can’t think of a benefit, then you will continue sleeping for 10 hours. We need to have a reason to get up every day, but having a strong motive will make you want to get up quicker every single day. Some strong motives could be getting work done faster, publishing more books in a shorter amount of time, doing the work now so you can spend more time with your family later in the day when everyone wakes up, and so on. Those are the types of motives that get you out of bed faster and allow you to be more productive throughout the day.
One of the easiest ways to wake up earlier is a two step strategy. Most people get the first step right, but almost everyone messes up the second part. The first part is setting an alarm clock. Everyone seems to do that. The second part which almost everyone messes up is leaving the alarm clock out of reach. If you can click the snooze button on your alarm clock while in bed, then the alarm clock is too close to your bed. Keeping it further away will force you to get up in order to turn off the alarm clock (which gets very annoying after a while).
If you want to be productive, what you do when you wake up will play a big role in how productive you are for the day. If you wake up and go straight to TV, then your day is not going to be very productive one. However, if you wake up and start the day off by writing some blog posts, then you are going to have a very productive day.
You have more control over your productivity than you think. What you do in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. By setting a good tone in the beginning of the day, you will be able to get more work done throughout the rest of the day. What are your thoughts on waking up earlier, and do you have any other advice about sleep? Please share your thoughts and advice below.
Hi Marc, goodmorning. I’m an early bird with a biological built-in alarm clock. Only if i have to travel early I set the alarm, but yet I’m up before it goes off. I start my day with devotional time (prayer, bible reading, walking)
I think the amount of sleep one needs also depends on one’s age, activities and biological system. Some of us are early birds others night owls. Let nature have its course, time and work permitting.
You’ve got an awesome built-in alarm clock. I don’t think we should give too much control to nature having its own course because based on experience, I like waking up at 7 am much more than waking up at 10 am. The alarm clocks forces you out of bed, but I believe it is good to let nature have its course once per week. I haven’t tested this much, but my guess is that if you let nature have its course once per week and set the alarm for the same time for the other days of the week, your natural alarm clock may eventually wake you up when your alarm would go off. I recently let the natural alarm clock wake me up, and I woke up at 8 am which was close to 7 am. The amount of sleep we need is a very interesting topic of discussion.
I woke up early and almost hit snooze then remembered i wanted to read this post! Now I’m up:) Maybe I’ll schedule an AM read each day to get me up! Thanks:)
My pleasure Meg. If you establish a daily ritual for yourself in the morning (in this case, reading an article every morning), it will be easier for you to get up every day.
Good advice I also advocate an alarm with a gentler more relaxing sound to ease you into the day.
Interesting idea Justin. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good alarm? I’m going to look through my iPhone’s alarms for a more soothing one to start the day.
This blog is fantastic. I usually wake up between 4:30 and 5 a.m. every morning, especially on weekends.
That’s really good, but what time do you get to bed. If you get to bed early in the night, then you have a nice schedule, but if you went to bed at midnight every day, that kind of schedule must be very tough.