Mar 242014
 

When your alarm goes off do you hit the snooze button or do you jump out of bed right away?

If you happen to be hitting the snooze button and find yourself getting up late and you’re un-happy about that then good news for you as you’re going to learn everything you need to know about being an early riser, so you can achieve success and find the time to complete your goals.

Reasons To Wake Up Early

First things first, why would you actually want to get up early in the morning? Well, there is a number of benefits of waking up early and they happen to be:

  • Increased Productivity – Perhaps the biggest benefit of rising early is the fact that you can get more done. It’s simple maths really, if you wake up at 5am each morning and go to bed at 10pm, you’re going to be able to achieve much more than the person who goes to bed at 10pm and gets up at 9am.
  • Exercise – We all know that exercise is very important but many people don’t do it and one of the most common excuses for why is simply because they don’t have the time to do it, waking up early then leaves no excuse for not exercising as you can get in a nice morning workout which will also leave you pumped up and ready to face the rest of the day.
  • Decreased Stress – A lot of people who have decided to start waking up early have found that doing so has lowered their stress levels. This is because you end up accomplishing more during the day so you end up with less psychological clutter and also because many end up using their extra time to meditate and think and numerous studies have shown that meditating can greatly reduce your stress levels and improve your levels of alertness.
  • Creativity – Many people who have creative pursuits such as writing and art, find that they are much more creative in the morning and because of that they organize their day so that their creative work gets done right at the beginning of the day.

 Successful People Who Are Early Risers

Now that you know the benefits of rising early, it’s interesting to take some look at successful people from both the past and present, so you can see where waking up early can get you.

  • Jack Dorsey – Co-founder of Twitter and Founder and CEO of Square, Jack Dorsey gets up at 5:30 am each morning in order to meditate and go for a six mile jog.
  • Brett Yormak – CEO of the Brooklyn Nets, Brett is up at 3:30 each morning so he can get into the office by 4:40 at which time he sends out emails in order to motivate his team.
  • Bob Iger – Bob Iger is the CEO of Disney and he is up at 4:30 each morning and uses those extra hours to read, exercise, listen to music, check his email and watch TV.
  • Paul Polman – Polman is the CEO of Unilever and he is up at 6am each morning so he can run on his treadmill and think about the work day ahead of him.
  • Steve Reineumnd – Former CEO of PepsiCo, Steve Reinemund would be up at 5am each morning so he could go and do a 5 mile run as he knew he wouldn’t have time to do it otherwise.
  • Irwin Simon – Irwin Simon is the founder and CEO of Hain Celestial Group and he makes sure he is up at 5am each morning so that he can check his emails and call operations in Europe and Asia. He also uses his morning time to pray, take his dogs for a walk and exercise, all before his kids get up. Irwin says “I have always been an early riser. As you can see, I accomplish a lot in four hours and now feel pumped for the remainder of the day.”
  • George Bush Sr and George Bush Jr – While in office George Bush Sr would be up at 4am each morning to go running and he would be in the office at 6am and he wouldn’t sleep until 2am. His son, George Bush Jr also had a similar sleep schedule and he made sure to be in the office each morning by 6:45am and he often held meetings at this time.
  • Tim Cook – Apple CEO Tim Cook is up each morning at 4:30 so he can get some work done and send some emails and by 5am he can be found in the gym working out.
  • Ernest Hemmingway Ernest felt that he did his best writing early in the morning and for that reason he got up at 6am each morning and didn’t stop writing until noon.
  • Benjamin Franklin – Franklin used to get up at 5am each morning and he used that time to wash, dress and plan his work for the day. One of the most famous quotes on waking up early actually comes from Benjamin Franklin, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

11 Methods For Waking Up Early

So, you now know the benefits of waking up early and have taken a look at some of the most successful risers and you too want to join the super successful early riser club, but how do you go about doing it?

By using the following 11 strategies of course!

1. Start Small

Many people when deciding to start waking up early make too drastic of a change, they may wake up at 8am and decide to start waking up at 5am. The thing is though they aren’t able to stick to it because it’s just too much of a shock to the body. Instead what you want to do is to start nice and slow and make small gradual changes. So, if you do wake up at 8am and want to start waking up at 5am what you should do is wake up 15 minutes earlier so 7:45am and stick with that for three days or so, as to allow your body to adjust to that and keep on reducing it by 15 minutes until you are waking up at 5am.

2. Put Your Alarm Across The Other Side Of The Room

When you’re alarm goes off in the morning, if it’s right next you then as you know it’s very tempting to turn it off, without even thinking about it really. By putting your alarm across the other side of the room though, you actually have to get up to turn it off and once you’re up out of bed you’re more likely to stay up.

3. Condition Yourself To Get Out of Bed As Soon As Your Alarm Goes Off

One of the best ways to make sure you get up on time is to condition yourself to get out of bed as soon as your alarm goes off. To do this what you need to do is during the day when you’re wide awake you need to go to your bedroom and set your alarm for a few minutes ahead and then you need to jump into bed and pretend that you’re asleep and as soon as your alarm goes off you need to turn it off straight away and then jump out of bed and then you repeat. The whole point of doing this is to make the whole process of getting out of bed automatic that you don’t even think about it, you just hear the alarm go off and you jump out of bed. It’s going to take some time to fully condition yourself to do this and you will want to practise it 10 times each day until you’re able to do it.

4. Go To Bed Earlier

You need to make sure you’re getting enough sleep each day in order to function. There’s no point really getting up early in the morning if you’re going to be super tried the whole day. What you should do then is to make sure you go to bed earlier as if you go to bed earlier than it’s going to be much easier to get up earlier. The best thing to do is if you want to wake up an hour earlier then go to bed an hour earlier. Also make sure that even if you’re not tired that you still go to bed, as you need to train your mind and body to adjust to your new sleeping schedule.

5. Make a Good Breakfast

If you have a yummy breakfast to look forward to then it’s much easier to get out of bed on time.

6. Have a Morning Routine

A lot of people will get up earlier but they won’t do anything with that extra time and because of that they’ll end up going back to bed out of pure boredom. What you should do then is make sure that you have a morning routine, as having one will serve as a sort of trigger to your body and mind that now is the time to wake up.

7. Have Something To Look Forward To

Before you go to sleep you should think about what you’d like to do that next morning. You might think about writing, meditating or reading. Whatever it is doesn’t really matter; all that matters is that it excites you, so when you wake up you can’t help but jump out of bed.

8. Have a Bedtime Routine

I already said above about having a morning routine in order to signal to your body that it’s time to wake up but it’s also important to have a bedtime routine in order to signal to your body that now is the time to go to sleep. Something that should be a part of your bedtime routine is to do something that relaxes and de-stresses you like meditation or yoga because if you go to bed stressed you’re going to find it hard to get to sleep.

9. Keep Track Of Your Accomplishments

The whole point of waking up early is so you can get more done, a good way then to keep yourself waking up early is to track what you’ve been able to accomplish with your extra hours.

10. Stay Away From The Late Night Drink

You should make sure that you don’t drink alcohol before you go to bed because by drinking alcohol shortly before hitting the sack you’ll end up increasing your deep sleep cycle and losing out on your REM sleep and that means you’ll be tired in the morning, making it more likely you’ll hit the snooze button. REM sleep is also needed for proper learning and memory functioning, so avoid the late night drink at all costs.

11. Just Do It

Getting up in the morning is a habit and like any other habit it requires discipline and commitment, you just have to get up and eventually overtime it will get easier and easier.

Now that you know how to wake up early, what are you going to do with your extra time? Let us know in the comments below!

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