What’s the hardest part of waking up before sunrise?
It’s hardly a secret that I have never been what you’d call a morning person. I always believed that it was genetic, a characteristic to be struggled with and accepted.
Sure, large doses of caffeine and large motivational factors (gotta catch a 6am flight!) could provide a short term burst of early morning activity, but it was begrudged and ever so fleeting.
My current work has posed an interesting challege in the early morning situation. I have to leave my place before 7am every morning. Ouch. To put that in context, 7am has always been my “first alarm” time. It’d be fair to expect another 30-45 minutes of alarm-snooze cycle on top of that. So this has been a struggle, compounded by the lack of drinkable coffee accessable from work – my usual crutch throughout the day. I’ve been struggling, but suddenly, I’m finding it not so bad.
I’m seeing the sunrise through eyes that arn’t bleary or cranky at the world for daring to demand my attention this early.
I’d never have thought it possible, but there it is. So then, how!?!
Incredibly (to me at least), it’s quite simple.
Firstly, lose the crutch. Quit caffeine. I’ve written about it previously. While my motivation wasn’t to make getting up easier (I actually expected it to make my mornings harder and more miserable, permenantly), that’s probably been the best outcome so far. I can wake up, get up and not be in that foggy, caffeine craving but deprived state. That’s actually a pretty cool feeling. Not having the fog seems much better than being chemically extracted from it. Who knew.
As a side note, I still drink coffee. I guess you’d now call me a social coffee consumer. Usually 1 – 3 cups per week, as opposed to before lunch on any given day.
The second change has been a fair bit harder for me. Maybe not for everyone, but definitely for me.
Go to bed early enough to get the right amount of sleep for you.
I have no idea what that means for you, but for me it means getting in to bed by 10:30 to wake up a bit before 6. For someone who could count on one hand the number of pre-midnight bedtimes in the last 8 or 9 years, it took some getting used to. Cutting out the caffeine certainly helped because instead of feeling a bit tired and instinctively having an espresso so I could stay up a bit longer and do something (work, play or otherwise), I’d go to bed. Being tired actually meant getting ready for bed. There were a few other things to get used to though.
I had to make my bedtime independant. If it’s my bedtime, I go to bed. That means wrapping up whatever I am working on earlier. Sometimes going to sleep while Ellen’s still up with lights on. Sending visitors home earlier than I used to. Whatever. The thing that isn’t going to change is the time I have to get up in the morning. So if I want to feel good in the moming, I have to actively make the call to go to sleep.
It’s been a challenge, but I think it’s worth it.