How do you "become" a morning person?

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plumhill

plumhill

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Right now, one of my biggest weaknesses is the fact that I am absolutely not a morning person. And by "not a morning person" I don't mean "I don't like to get up in the morning." I quite literally cannot find any way to discipline myself to comfortably get up before 10 or 11 AM. In all other aspects of my life I'm pretty disciplined and regulated...but unless I set five alarms on my phone, program them so that they'll continue to ring 10 more times if I hit the snooze button, and then have my roommate bang on the door to turn off yet another alarm I slept through, I won't wake up. And I'm not exaggerating here :( I've missed a ton of meetings and morning classes because of this, and the times where I've been able to wake up early to get to something, I'm cranky and irritated for at least two hours post-waking up.

I've done everything from putting my phone in faraway parts of my bedroom, to making sure I get at least 7-8 hours of sleep the night before I have to wake up before 10 AM, to leaving a thermos of iced coffee by the bed so that I can hopefully ease up on ways to wake up.

Is there ANYTHING else I could be doing, because I'm running out of ideas and this is becoming ridiculous.
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I can empathize with you. For my first couple years of college, I scheduled almost all of my classes in the afternoon and overslept numerous times for classes and sometimes even meetings. For some early morning classes, I just stopped going and took my chances reading the book. Embarrassing to say the least!

This semester, I'm taking all classes before 12PM in order to get myself in the rhythm of getting up early on a daily basis. It starts with going to bed at a reasonable time, usually no later than 1AM. As a physician, you're going to be getting up early for the rest of your life, so I'd recommend forcing yourself into a schedule that requires you to get up early. It's actually nice waking up at 7AM and having a full day! Naps are also key, a 2 hr nap after class allows for the energy to hit the gym and get my homework done so I can go to sleep at a normal hour. You'll figure it out, just commit yourself to it.

Go to bed early, take naps during the day, Starbucks coffee (not after 6PM), and a can-do attitude.
 
plumhill said:
Right now, one of my biggest weaknesses is the fact that I am absolutely not a morning person. And by "not a morning person" I don't mean "I don't like to get up in the morning." I quite literally cannot find any way to discipline myself to comfortably get up before 10 or 11 AM. In all other aspects of my life I'm pretty disciplined and regulated...but unless I set five alarms on my phone, program them so that they'll continue to ring 10 more times if I hit the snooze button, and then have my roommate bang on the door to turn off yet another alarm I slept through, I won't wake up. And I'm not exaggerating here :( I've missed a ton of meetings and morning classes because of this, and the times where I've been able to wake up early to get to something, I'm cranky and irritated for at least two hours post-waking up.

I've done everything from putting my phone in faraway parts of my bedroom, to making sure I get at least 7-8 hours of sleep the night before I have to wake up before 10 AM, to leaving a thermos of iced coffee by the bed so that I can hopefully ease up on ways to wake up.

Is there ANYTHING else I could be doing, because I'm running out of ideas and this is becoming ridiculous.
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wow that is ridiculous. I'm not a morning person at all either, but if I have something I absolutely must do like go to work then I wake up lol. One piece of advice, don't hit the snooze button. Immediately after your alarm rings you open the covers let that nice cold air go through and get up and head to the bathroom. I like to get into a nice hot shower to help wake me up. Then a nice little bit of breakfast and boom, I'm awake!
 
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Going to bed at a good time is key, I believe, to getting up early. If you do this regularly your body will adjust so that it's easier to get up earlier. Also,as was mentioned above, DO NOT hit the snooze button. If you regularly hit the snooze button then you're training your brain that the alarm is just a minor interruption to your sleep rather than a signal that it's time to GET UP.

The key to becoming more of a morning person and actually doing WELL as a morning person is getting on a regular schedule where you are getting adequate sleep each night (generally 7-8 hours, but it varies depending on the person) while getting up early each day. It will probably not be super easy and will take discipline, but you CAN get yourself on more of a "morning person" schedule.
 
When I graduated college, my job pretty much forced me to be up by 6. Regardless of my habits in college, having to wake up at 6 on weekdays for two years has converted me to a bona fire morning person.
 
hiyaman said:
wow that is ridiculous. I'm not a morning person at all either, but if I have something I absolutely must do like go to work then I wake up lol.
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Yeah, I never really understand this. I hate morning with a passion, personally... I can honestly say that the worst part of LIFE is the alarm clock going off in the morning. It's never gotten easier for me and I still hate life at 6am every bit as much as I ever did. But I get out of bed.

I've met all of these people throughout my life who just can't seem to hang. My housemate in college actually had a firm bedtime for herself. We'd be working on our separate projects or whatever, and 10pm would roll around and she'd slam her book shut and announce that she was going to bed. I'd say, "Wow, are you done already?" And she'd say, "Not even close, but what can I do?! It's bedtime!"

Anyway, I have this colleague who literally cannot be awoken by his pager going off. This seems borderline pathologic to me, but whatever. He ended up buying this device that is basically a box that dramatically amplifies whatever sound occurs inside of it. So he puts his pager in there. It's like a jet plane taking off inside of his room. It pretty much guarantees that you will wake up terrified, in the midst of a serious adrenaline rush and in fight-or-flight mode. You should look into it.
 
I understand this completely. I have NEVER been a morning person since ...well.. the 9th grade. In university, it just got worse..sleep at 3/4/5am wake up around 12pm+.
But in the last two months I've been able to stably sleep at 11-1am each day and wake up 7-9am consistently (and feels great too)! What happened was I really screwed up my sleeping schedule and had some sort of insomnia the first week of school this semester. You can think of what I did as like being jetlagged. I pulled 3 all nighters for no reason what so ever in the first week and that made me extremely tired around 9pm and I would PASS out, wake up at 4am and repeat. After doing this for a few days, I managed to stay up until around 11pm each night and then literally just pass out in to a deep sleep and wake up WIDE awake at 6 haha.

I really liked this schedule because I wasn't tired when i went to class, and the day felt much longer. So I just tried to maintain it (that was easy though because screwing around with my circadian clock made me exhausted and I had no choice but to sleep at 11pm each night). Once you get into a regular pattern of waking up early it should become so much easier for you.

Not that this is the healthiest way though :p
 
I've always had to wake up before 6 or at 6.

I still hate it. Doesn't mean I'm not physically capable of being up though.
 
I don't consider myself a morning person either, but I have to get up early for work. If you plan to become a doctor, you'll likely have to condition yourself to be a morning person at some point. It's great that you're getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night, but how about going to bed a few hours earlier so that you're waking up at, say, 8 instead of 10?

In the end, it's going to take repetition for you body to grow accustomed to rising early in the morning. I believe it takes 3 weeks of practicing an activity for it to start becoming a habit.
 
If you want to have a schedule like that, one morning you'll just have to bite the bullet and wake up early. Get up at 7 and no matter what just go about your day. Try and keep yourself busy even with menial tasks, and by the end of the day you'll be sleepy enough to pass out at 10 or 11. Once I get set in waking up early, it's hard to even sleep in.

I like the feeling of getting the most of out of my day that comes along with waking up early. However, if it really doesn't work for you, that's ok too. I know lots of students who are very successful in school but do the majority of their work late at night. If you can get away with it, and don't have an early morning job/internship, then more power to you!
 
Hate the alarm? Press snooze to often?


Same here- I came up with an easy solution. Put the alarm far away (I put mine next to shower), so it is annoying enough to wake you up, and the long walk will get you up anyways. Besides the walk, by the time I'm where the alarm is, I'll just go ahead and jump in the shower and that gets me up really easily.

Also, as others said, as soon as you hear the alarm, just jump up. Once you're up, try doing jumping jacks or something (as your legs and calves hold a lot of blood and once you get those muscles moving, they "pump" blood to the rest of your body).
 
I like to keep my phone alarm close to my bed. As soon as I wake up, I check facebook in bed, and after about 5 or so minutes I am not sleepy enough to go back to sleep.
 
do-not-snooze-funny.jpg


I was that person who would say "5 more minutes" and then all of a sudden I pass out and have missed my 8am class. I am trying to get into a rhythm of not pressing snooze. I never had this issue with getting up at 6am for work, but I guess that is because If I am late, I get fired. So I need to have a similar mindset for class.
 
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It is self-discipline, plain and simple--a dying trait in our society, it seems.
 
Audiojb said:
do-not-snooze-funny.jpg


I was that person who would say "5 more minutes" and then all of a sudden I pass out and have missed my 8am class. I am trying to get into a rhythm of not pressing snooze. I never had this issue with getting up at 6am for work, but I guess that is because If I am late, I get fired. So I need to have a similar mindset for class.
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I was going to suggest sonicboom (an alarm clock that my brother uses), but those thumb tacks will definitely wake you up :D

On the other if you are handy, perhaps you can do something like this

[YOUTUBE]8zEH5GxPNO8[/YOUTUBE]
 
Also, in the interest of not being totally cynical, I'll provide my personal tip for alarm clocks: Put the clock on the other side of the room. That way, you have to get out of bed to shut it off. If that doesn't work then put it in another room with max volume.
 
This alarm clock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpX_SYq0ids&feature=related

Seriously, I have one. It changed my life. It's so loud and terrifying that you wake up with a huge rush of adrenaline and it's pretty much impossible to go back to sleep. Now I naturally wake up about 15 minutes before it goes off because I am so scared of hearing it.
 
People have mentioned the sonic boom alarm clock. That works well (terrible price at $40, but it's worth it if you have that much trouble getting up). If it's not the noise that wakes you up from the sonic boom (near impossible by the way-- at 113 decibels), then it's the immense vibrating either under your mattress, pillow, or on a solid object. Or even the flashing lights.

That alarm clock is a monster.
 
-stalking the pre-med forum for something to do-

I wonder if anyone else has this problem:
Even if I get between 7-9 hours of sleep before an early class, I will doze off in class if I don't have caffeine. It is to the point where I have a little mini-panic attack if I cannot get my hands on caffeine, because nothing is more embarrassing then falling asleep in a class of 6-20 people.

It started in high school. When I got to undergrad, I didn't drink coffee. Soda would not keep me awake. Powdered cappuchinos and hot chocolate did not work. So I started with the small energy drinks before moving on to coffee. Now I am on one a day, none on the weekends unless I am invited out to coffee. 2-3 if I am studying for a test or exam. Last semester, I felt pretty awake for my 10am english class, so I got a medium cappuchino. I was falling asleep by break. So I had to get a coffee to keep me going.

If I ever get into vet school, I have a feeling that I will be doomed.

When I worked fast food, I never needed caffeine to get me through the shift. Perhaps because I was on my feet and running around.

It is frustrating. I wish I could be a morning person without pumping myself full of caffeine.
 
It became a habit. It started way back since I was in 8th grade when my dad would always wake me up so I can make him coffee before he goes to work then I got used to it that even I found myself waking up too early even if I have the day off from school/work. If I slept in, I get cranky and hate myself for waking up late for the rest of the day.
 
they make a wake up pill that is caffeine coated in a time release capsule. You take it before you go to bed and 8 hours later caffeine starts entering your system. I wouldn't recommend it, but I don't drink caffeine. For some I am sure it is very helpful
 
It could be that you are trying to wake up at the wrong part of your sleep cycle. Not everyone needs 8 hours of sleep. If you try to get up during a deeper part of your sleep cycle (REM or the stanges surrounding it), you are not going to be a happy camper.

Try experimenting waking up after different intervals of sleep and see what works best for you. Could be that waking up at 6:30 AM for an 8:00 AM class might be easier than a more traditional 7:00 or 7:15 wake up.

I have no idea whether they work or not, but they do sell an iphone app that is supposed to monitor your body movement while you sleep and wake you up in the lighter phase of your sleep cycle so you will feel more refreshed and less groggy. But who know how well that actually works...
 
I think it's all what you train your body to do. I used to have a lot of trouble waking up early (not as bad as you), but I'd sleep in for an extra half hour - an hour by habit. Now upon waking, at the first inkling of consciousness, I've trained myself to say to myself, "no, you have to get up. get out. get out into the cold. now" instead of "oh geezus, pls another few minutes..." and physically lug myself out of bed. It was hard for the first week, then it got easier. Now I habitually get out of bed on time.

It's the same thing with WHEN you wake up. At first it will be hard to make yourself wake up early. But if you keep doing it, after a while your body will automatically get used to it. Every person's body has a sleep cycle, whether it's waking late and sleeping late or sleeping early and waking early, you just have to train yours.
 
sleep early, wake up early.
don't waste time watching tv or browsing the internet, just study and do extracurricular activities. hang out with friends on the weekend.
 
plumhill said:
Right now, one of my biggest weaknesses is the fact that I am absolutely not a morning person. And by "not a morning person" I don't mean "I don't like to get up in the morning." I quite literally cannot find any way to discipline myself to comfortably get up before 10 or 11 AM.
Click to expand...
I almost never get up comfortably. That's part of being an adult for many (most?) people. **** sucks. Get used to it. I'd love to sleep until 10am, but I can't.


You might want to get evaluated for a sleep disorder though, because that will confound things quite a bit.
 
If you aren't a morning person, you can but definitely don't have to become a morning person. Ramit at www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com suggests that old habits die hard and that you should utilize your ideal working time to gain the most out of your day. In practice, if you're most productive between 6 pm and 10 pm, study during that time. If, however, you absolutely must become a morning person, try waking up 30 minutes earlier every single day until you reach your target time. In high school, I was a biphasic sleeper and had no regrets. (E.g., I'd sleep after getting home from dance/cycling practice around 8 pm-11 pm, study from 11 pm-5 am, and sleep from 5 am-7 am.)
 
morning people are my heroes. i usually get back to my apartment when my roommate wakes up. but until i have to, i will continue being nocturnal. all the fun stuff happens at night anyway right?
 
vapor90 said:
morning people are my heroes. i usually get back to my apartment when my roommate wakes up. but until i have to, i will continue being nocturnal. all the fun stuff happens at night anyway right?
Click to expand...

sleep is fun...so yeah!
 
I honestly feel soooo much better and more prepared for the day waking up early that waking up at like 11am. I feel all groggy and more tired than if I were to wake up at 7am.
 
Also, try reserving one day to pay off your sleep debt. i.e.- I got less than 7 hours of sleep each night last week, and today I woke up at about 3:30PM.
 
I used to love all the party nights and sleeping at 4 am, well, things changed when I entered med school... All the classes begin early morning and afterwards I got used to it already. :)
 
I think the key is to try and wake up around the same time every morning (including weekends). If I have to wake up at 6 during the week and then try to sleep until 9 on weekends, the following Monday is miserable...

Practice makes perfect
 
plumhill said:
Right now, one of my biggest weaknesses is the fact that I am absolutely not a morning person. And by "not a morning person" I don't mean "I don't like to get up in the morning." I quite literally cannot find any way to discipline myself to comfortably get up before 10 or 11 AM. In all other aspects of my life I'm pretty disciplined and regulated...but unless I set five alarms on my phone, program them so that they'll continue to ring 10 more times if I hit the snooze button, and then have my roommate bang on the door to turn off yet another alarm I slept through, I won't wake up. And I'm not exaggerating here :( I've missed a ton of meetings and morning classes because of this, and the times where I've been able to wake up early to get to something, I'm cranky and irritated for at least two hours post-waking up.

I've done everything from putting my phone in faraway parts of my bedroom, to making sure I get at least 7-8 hours of sleep the night before I have to wake up before 10 AM, to leaving a thermos of iced coffee by the bed so that I can hopefully ease up on ways to wake up.

Is there ANYTHING else I could be doing, because I'm running out of ideas and this is becoming ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Fear is a great motivator. If you oversleep through rotations, you could end up repeating years of med school. At a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, and your choice of residency paths. You'll be lucky if you can sleep at all the first couple of months.
 
varsityblue said:
If you aren't a morning person, you can but definitely don't have to become a morning person. Ramit at www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com suggests that old habits die hard and that you should utilize your ideal working time to gain the most out of your day. In practice, if you're most productive between 6 pm and 10 pm, study during that time. If, however, you absolutely must become a morning person, try waking up 30 minutes earlier every single day until you reach your target time. In high school, I was a biphasic sleeper and had no regrets. (E.g., I'd sleep after getting home from dance/cycling practice around 8 pm-11 pm, study from 11 pm-5 am, and sleep from 5 am-7 am.)
Click to expand...

In medicine it doesn't matter what time you are most productive. You WILL be up and working early in this profession in most settings.
 
I am traditionally terrible at being recognizable as a human being in the mornings. Throughout college and even into med school, I would typically go to sleep at 2 in the morning and sleep until 9 or 10, at least. I got away with it in college due to scheduling, and in med school because of lack of required attendance.

Once med school hit, though, I did begin to start to wean myself onto mornings.

The trick is to find put an alarm some distance from you and make it so loud and loathsome that you'll wake up before it goes off to frantically turn it off.

Mine was a sped-up version of Raffi's Bananaphone set to blast from my computer's speakers.

Once you've got a mechanism, it just comes down to setting the habit. Whether I want to or not, I wake up pretty early now, even on weekends. Re-trained the brain, I guess.
 
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Your body is just programmed to sleep later and wake up later. There's not much we can do about our body's sleeping pattern. Drink coffee first thing in the morning if that's what will work.
 
Law2Doc said:
In medicine it doesn't matter what time you are most productive. You WILL be up and working early in this profession in most settings.
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x1000.

Probably have to get used to intermittant sleeping pattern as well.
 
What I have found works really well is to have a partner who is a morning person. She gets up around 7 and then blasts music and throws things at me until I'm awake.
 
Last semester I started running in the morning at 5:30. The fact that if I overslept meant my friendwoke up for nothing made me wake up most times. If one of us overslept the other would call. We did this even after studying organic till 2am. This semester 7:30 has become my sleep in wake up. 8-9 if hungover lol
 
plumhill said:
Is there ANYTHING else I could be doing, because I'm running out of ideas and this is becoming ridiculous.
Click to expand...

You could try one of these : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0WQM7e4LWw

It's an alarm clock that runs around your room and you would have to catch it to shut it off.

Also, make sure your total sleep time is a multiple of an hour and a half (6hrs or 7:30hrs total), I can't remember the exact details but you wake up feeling better at those peaks.
 
TheCheckmate said:
Also, make sure your total sleep time is a multiple of an hour and a half (6hrs or 7:30hrs total), I can't remember the exact details but you wake up feeling better at those peaks.
Click to expand...

The phases of your sleep last about 90 minutes. If you wake up after the phases are over, you will be less tired. If you wake up during any of the phases, you are bound to be more tired.

That is why I laugh at people who tell me to take a 20 minute nap if I am tired! I nap at 90 minute intervals. My body is pretty good at waking me up ~90 minutes or ~180 minutes when I nap. When I writing my thesis in undegrad, I would nap 90-180 minutes after dinner, study/work on my thesis until 1am-3am, then get up at 7 to be in class for 9. It worked pretty well for me.

It can be difficult to set an alarm to one of those intervals. Sometimes it may take me 30 minutes to fall asleep at night, and that would throw off whatever alarm I set.
 
If you have an iPhone try the sleep cycle app. It wakes you up during the lightest stage of your sleep. Also take an 8AM class where attendance is necessary to do well in the course.
 
Adding to the already amazing collection of crazy alarm clocks:

The Flying Alarm Clock

flying_alarm_clock.jpg


"The Flying Alarm Clock wakes you up with a loud shrieking alarm coupled with a little propeller-driven key that leaps off your nightstand. To turn off the horrible racket, you have to get out of bed and retrieve the key. The propeller flies the key high into the air and off into some dusty corner. You have to force your sleep addled brain into wakefulness, move your stiff legs and retrieve the key before the alarm goes off. By the time you've done so, you're awake enough at least to go make a pot of coffee."

Now if only there was a way to combine this with the sonic boom alarm clock & Clocky (the alarm clock that runs away)... Then I think you'd be set.

ps. watch the video on that website. that would get SO annoying.
 
These alarm clocks look awesome.... Also look like they would break easily.
 
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