5 tips to wake up earlier 🌅

Nicolas Dommanget
5 min readAug 5, 2020

Because getting up early shouldn’t be a problem, here are 5 tips for getting up early.

Unsplash: Dawid Zawiła

Introduction

Did you ever think of waking up earlier to realize more things? Waking up earlier is a good idea to improve productivity as at 5 a.m there is less noise, stress and you can get more concentrated.

But you have to be able to stand up. Waking up at 5 a.m is not easy, if you aren’t used to it. You will find you any excuses or reasons to stay in bed.

I had the same problem when I tried to wake up earlier, then I’ve made a “Morning routine” and set up some habits and tips.

So today, I am going to share with you my 5 best tips to wake up earlier. ⚡️

1. Get yourself a purpose to wake up early 🎯

Waking up earlier is useless if you don’t have any aim. However, with a little bit of motivation, you can easily get one.

Do you do difficult things in life for no good reason? Chances are you won’t. It’s the same with the alarm clock.

Why would you want to get up at this hour?

There is a lot of reason to wake up early…

Example:

  • Work on a project
  • Take time for yourself
  • Doing sport (Running, training, …)
  • Be quiet
  • Learn new things
  • Getting out of your comfort zone

You need to find your own target. Then when you will have found it everything will go so much easier. Your goal is going to motivate you into waking you up earlier. You just have to keep it in your mind.

Unsplash: Clark Tibbs

2. Do something 💪

If you wake up at 5 a.m, you need to have something to work on. Otherwise, you will fall in laziness and come back to your bed.

To counteract that, we can set up a morning routine. It will have two benefits, get busy doing something, prepare a successful day.

How to organize my morning routine?

There are a lot of different ways to organize it, so the “perfect morning routine” doesn’t exist. One piece of advice I can give you is: do what you enjoy and what prepares you for your day.

An example of a morning routine would be:

  • Sport (Running, training, …)
  • Eating
  • Taking a shower
  • Relaxing (Meditate, …)

As you can see, I gave only 4 steps. That’s enough, don’t try to overdo it. Otherwise, you might run out of breath and not be able to keep up the length.

3. Get enough sleep 😴

We might not mention this point because it makes so much sense… To get up early in good conditions, you’ll need to sleep enough. In conclusion, going to bed early.

It can be a sacrifice for your social life but if your intention is really to get up early, it’s worth it.

What is “enough sleep”?

First, sleeping time is not the same as bedtime. Just because you’re in bed for eight hours doesn’t mean you slept for eight hours.

For almost everyone, we need to sleep 8 hours by night. So if you want to wake up at 5 a.m, you will need to sleep at 10 p.m. As we said, bedtime isn’t sleeping time. Therefore, you need to estimate how long it takes you to fall asleep and add it to your bedtime. Example: In my case, I need 30 minutes. Thus, I am going to bed at 9.30 pm.

Avoid noises

As your brain is working every time, you need to reduce its exposition to noises (such as phone or screen) before and during your night.

Be sure to disconnect from screens an hour before sleeping. You can replace it by reading a book, relaxing, …

An important point is making you sure that you will not be disturbed while sleeping. Close your windows if your neighborhood is noisy, turn your phone on “Do not disturb” mode, …

Unsplash: Coen Staal

4. Waking up comfy 😎

A lot of times I went back to bed because I was cold, it was messy, my day was unprepared. Waking up should not be an ordeal, so you need to ensure to get comfortable when you wake up.

To ensure to get comfy when getting, you can organize your things like setting the heat or prepare your breakfast the day before.

Avoids all frustrations, e.g. dishes from two days ago, dirty laundry, doing annoying things

By having a cozy and nice wake-up, your morning routine will be a delight to realize! 👌

5. Let's be friend with your alarm clock! ⏰

Before we talk about the alarm, we need to set the record straight… Your phone can’t be your alarm clock. Why? It’s a gateway to procrastination, there’s a good chance you’ll get lost in the notifications after you wake up.

Use your phone as late as possible

One of the goals of getting up early is to avoid noises. It will be stupid to add noises from social networks in our great routine.

So, let your phone away and use it only when you need it. Your brain will have less to worry about and you’ll save your energy for more important things.

Choose the right alarm

As we aren’t using our phone, we might use an alarm clock. In my case, I use a smartwatch and it works great (On the plus side, it vibrates on the wrist and only wakes you up…).

Your choice of alarm can be based on several points, if it wakes you up calmly or if you wish to be woken up suddenly. Feel free to try several.

Conclusion

Waking up early is a habit. You need to train and take care of it. Don’t forget the fact that it will not be easy every day, don’t be too strict or too lax.

You can find my other articles and follow me here. Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something new today 🚀

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Nicolas Dommanget

Software engineer @mailjet the day, side projects the night.