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.
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