Need tips for waking up early

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premedbrah

premedbrah

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Anyone have any solid advice/ techniques that they use to wake up early? I find that on the weekends I sleep in past 10 a.m. Granted I usually stay up until 12-1 a.m.

What has been your most effective method in building a early morning routine?

Thanks in advance 😀
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I wake up at 04:30-04:45 every morning. I go to bed around 9. I've been doing this for a while to where my body wakes me up. I no longer need a clock because my body has adjusted to this time. My advice is to stop staying up late and go to bed earlier. Your body will adjust. Pretty simple.
 
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Don't drink anything with caffeine, get in bed early, keep your phone out of reach, make it completely dark. If you can't fall asleep and you're tired in the morning, force yourself to stay awake.. You'll get in the cycle.
 
Adjust sleep schedule (ie go to bed earlier) in small increments daily, do not lie in bed when you are not tired, no naps in the late afternoon, exercise earlier, put your alarm clock far away from your bed (but where you can still hear it) to force you to have to physically get up and walk far to turn it off, don't use your bed for leisure activities (aside from sex; bed's good for sex, as is really any other setting), because your bed should really be for sleep (and sex), and start unwinding gradually as the evening comes (you want to be calm before bed, not just coming back from the gym or a party, unless those really exhaust you).
 
you people are not helping at all. OP, do you have smart phone? I don't know about samsung and other phones, but you can set multiple alarms on your iPhone. I have a new alarm set every 1 minute in case I accidentally hit "Ok" instead of snooze, there are other alarms to bother me. I tried this and it is very effective. Another tip is to set your alarm 30minutes earlier than the time you actually have to wake up. I'm heavy sleeper and despite the fact that my iPhone ringing nonstop no matter how much i hit snooze, I somehow manage to fight with the alarm for 15-30min before I give up.
 
Bottle said:
you people are not helping at all. OP, do you have smart phone? I don't know about samsung and other phones, but you can set multiple alarms on your iPhone. I have a new alarm set every 1 minute in case I accidentally hit "Ok" instead of snooze, there are other alarms to bother me. I tried this and it is very effective. Another tip is to set your alarm 30minutes earlier than the time you actually have to wake up. I'm heavy sleeper and despite the fact that my iPhone ringing nonstop no matter how much i hit snooze, I somehow manage to fight with the alarm for 15-30min before I give up.
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Oh, really?

It is not what you suggested, but to make a blanket statement like that is, honestly, also not helpful, and a bit presumptuous and arrogant.

Yes, your information helps for those that simply ignore alarms and oversleep.

But OP also mentioned that they stay awake until 12-1 am. They need help building a routine. I believe a few of the answer here, including my own, are very valid responses and techniques that address a potential problem, and do not simply fix the symptom of missing alarms (which the OP never stated they were doing).
 
Go to sleep earlier. Set up a loud alarm across the room from your bed so it forces you to get up. Several of my classmates also swear by those light boxes that are supposed to help treat Seasonal Affective Disorder (runs rampant in this city), they also help you wake up by mimicking daylight, if you have to wake up before dawn.
 
GomersGoToGround said:
Oh, really?

It is not what you suggested, but to make a blanket statement like that is, honestly, also not helpful, and a bit presumptuous and arrogant.

Yes, your information helps for those that simply ignore alarms and oversleep.

But OP also mentioned that they stay awake until 12-1 am. They need help building a routine. I believe a few of the answer here, including my own, are very valid responses and techniques that address a potential problem, and do not simply fix the symptom of missing alarms (which the OP never stated they were doing).
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What an astonishing critical thinking. Too bad we are not being interviewed.
 
Put your phone across the room, that way you have to physically get up to shut it off so you can't just mindlessly snooze.
 
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Hospitalized said:
Enjoying it in UG while I still can, I know it won't last. I don't need caffeine with 8-9, 6 I do.
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I need caffeine for my daily life. ☕☕☕☕

I just really really like coffee. Also I get a migraine if I don't have it. Yes I know that's not good.
 
I find that if you're used to staying up late, then going to bed earlier will just cause you to lie restless for a while. I find that it's helpful to go to sleep at your regular time and to get up at an early time, go through your day, and typically you'll be exhausted by night, and you'll be able to fall asleep quickly at an earlier time. Repeat that for as many nights as necessary.

For helping you actually get up in the morning, I would set an alarm on your cell and put it across the room so that you have to physically get up to grab it. I would also plan for some sort of pleasant activity, such as driving to a Dunkin Donuts for some early morning coffee/doughnuts, so that you will have something to do and to look forward to, since I find that if you have nothing to do after you wake up, and you're exhausted, you're probably going to go back to sleep.
 
I find that the hardest thing for me is just getting out of bed. To combat this, I either drink (at least) 8oz of water prior to falling asleep or right after waking up from my first alarm clock. Then my bladder usually forces me out of bed itself.
 
aprimenumber said:
I would also plan for some sort of pleasant activity, such as driving to a Dunkin Donuts for some early morning coffee/doughnuts, so that you will have something to do and to look forward to, since I find that if you have nothing to do after you wake up, and you're exhausted, you're probably going to go back to sleep.
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That's usually the key for me. Lately it's been waking up to manually brew coffee.
 
Lots of great answers and info in here. I'll try setting up my alarm clock a lot earlier and going to bed around 10 from now on!
 
Obviously going to bed on time is ideal.

Set multiple alarms, and make sure they have battery back-up so they'll still go off if you lose power. I have 3 alarm clocks in different corners of the room. I usually just use 1, but I'll use 2 or 3 depending on how bad it would be if I slept through something.

A while back I purchased a wake-up light. It's basically an alarm clock that gradually turns a light on and gradually gets louder over the course of ~30 minutes prior to the wake-up time you set. It's almost life changing - it's much nicer to wake up to birds chirping and a gentle light than the typical alarm clock. They're kind of expensive, but worth looking into.

There are a few phone apps out that track your movement during sleep, and wake up you at the optimal time. I haven't tried one but have heard good things. Worth checking out.

On days where I don't get enough sleep, my ritual is to roll over and take a 100mg caffeine pill right after waking up. I also enjoy taking a caffeine pill and then hitting snooze, which has you waking up 10 minutes later feeling great.
 
Gurby said:
On days where I don't get enough sleep, my ritual is to roll over and take a 100mg caffeine pill right after waking up. I also enjoy taking a caffeine pill and then hitting snooze, which has you waking up 10 minutes later feeling great.
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I hope you're serious, because I do the exact same thing.
 
1. Be consistent with the time you wake up and go to sleep.

2. Set your alarm somewhere that you need to physically get up to turn it off.

I can't imagine how EM guys do it w/o pharmaceutical help.
 
And here I am OP...no clock up on my own. Lol. and for someone to say 8-9 hours is key, that's not actually true/ we did a sleep study at our hospital and our study concluded that is not the quantity of hours, it's the quality of sleep. So indeed you could get enough rest even with only 4 hours. And I have so much caffeine in my system it's no longer used for staying awake...
 
If you're a coffee drinker, what helped me the most to adjust my sleep schedule was keeping a thermos of coffee right by bed the first few weeks.
 
Get up at the same time every day, even weekends. If I sleep in on Saturday and Sunday, then Monday is ugly. If I get up at the same time every morning for a week, I will start waking up naturally about one minute before the alarm goes off. 🙂

If you have to get up before sunrise and you don't have a roommate who would mind, plug a bedside lamp into a timer that will switch the light on when you should be getting up.

If I had unlimited funds, and a roommate who didn't mind, I'd have a coffee maker on a timer in my bedroom.
 
I think another method to do this, would be to adjust your time gradually. Shift your wake up time and bed time by 30 minutes one week and then another 30 minutes the next week or longer intervals (ie. two weeks at the same time) as necessary. Adjusting one's sleep cycle doesn't happen overnight. When I was in college I couldn't get myself up for 8:30 classes so I never scheduled them (unless they were PE), but after a while in the military, I can't even sleep past 7:30-8:00 AM even when I stay up late partying (which is a bit of an annoyance cause I'm a zombie the next day).
 
Look into bright light therapy for delayed sleep phase disorder. This will help you shift your circadian rhythm so your body clock wants to naturally go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier. You can either use outdoor light in the morning (if you are in a geographical location where spending 30 minutes outside in the morning in bright light is doable) or buy a bright light box that can emit 10,000 lux at least 18 inches. You do not need to obtain 10,000 lux of light to shift your body clock, but if you buy a light box that is dimmer than you will not need to sit uncomfortably close to receive the correct dosage. Check out this website for more info. http://www.brightenyourlife.info
 
I've found it helpful to establish a bed time routine for the 30-45 minutes prior to sleeping. I usually read a book and drink green or chamomile tea prior to bed during the week. This is especially helpful for me when I've got a million thoughts running through my head and just want to settle my mind prior to bed time.
 
prettyNURSEtoMD said:
I wake up at 04:30-04:45 every morning. I go to bed around 9. I've been doing this for a while to where my body wakes me up. I no longer need a clock because my body has adjusted to this time. My advice is to stop staying up late and go to bed earlier. Your body will adjust. Pretty simple.
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How do you resist the urge to fall back asleep? Whenever I try a schedule of 10-6, I always tend to be lethargic and just study while I'm sitting on my bed.
 
@YoungProdigy I honestly wake up at like 330 just my internal clock, it's like I'm afraid I overslept I don't know, but then I can go back to sleep for another hour. But come 4:45, and 5 is pushing it, but I'm wide awake. Plus I have to be at work at 0630. But only if I don't go to bed will I have trouble. So I go to sleep at 9. I stayed up until 11 one night for some reason -and it was hard as hell waking up at 5. And that's still 6 hours. But I don't need 8 hours. Just good quality sleep and I can go 4 hours.
 
premedbrah said:
Anyone have any solid advice/ techniques that they use to wake up early? I find that on the weekends I sleep in past 10 a.m. Granted I usually stay up until 12-1 a.m.

What has been your most effective method in building a early morning routine?

Thanks in advance 😀
Click to expand...
I am actually diagnosed with insomnia, or used to be. I used to wake up around 2 p.m. daily, sometimes 4 p.m. or later. Now I've been waking up between 5 and 8 a.m. regularly. My only advice...

1. SLEEP EARLIER.
2. Don't take naps during the day.
3. Get a prescription for sleeping medications if you still have trouble sleeping. Sleeping well on medications is better than sleep deprivation without them, in my opinion.
4. Also personally, I think you should always get enough sleep. What I mean by this is, you can't oversleep, so you should sleep as much as your body wants to. If I don't have to, I won't have an alarm set. Or my alarm is set for last minute so I get a lot of sleep. This morning I woke up at 6:30 a.m. I have no idea why I'm awake. My alarm doesn't ring for 4 more hours...
5. I also never consume any caffeine. Out of personal preference.
 
Edit.


1, 2, and 3.
Sounds reasonable.

4. I wouldn't over sleep. I like having one set time so that my body wakes me up a few minutes before my alarm. This is if I get 9 hours of sleep or 2. My body still wakes me up and I'm good to go.

5.
Blasphemy!!! 😡
 
Susanoo said:
I am actually diagnosed with insomnia, or used to be. I used to wake up around 2 p.m. daily, sometimes 4 p.m. or later. Now I've been waking up between 5 and 8 a.m. regularly. My only advice...

1. SLEEP EARLIER.
2. Don't take naps during the day.
3. Get a prescription for sleeping medications if you still have trouble sleeping. Sleeping well on medications is better than sleep deprivation without them, in my opinion.
4. Also personally, I think you should always get enough sleep. What I mean by this is, you can't oversleep, so you should sleep as much as your body wants to. If I don't have to, I won't have an alarm set. Or my alarm is set for last minute so I get a lot of sleep. This morning I woke up at 6:30 a.m. I have no idea why I'm awake. My alarm doesn't ring for 4 more hours...
5. I also never consume any caffeine. Out of personal preference.
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3 and 4 I am not a fan of. There is a tremendous amount of research about the harm caused by most prescription sleeping pills (hypnotics and benzo's) and no evidence that they improve sleep quality. There are much better alternative therapies like CBT or circadian related treatments. There is also a body of research in sleep medicine that is against sleeping for too long of a time period.

http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000850.full

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3500381/

http://archneur.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=206050

http://sociology.sdsu.edu/docs/Buxton_Marcelli_SSM_2010.pdf

Also, were diagnosed with insomnia or delayed-sleep-phase disorder? Generally with people sleeping until 2 or 4pm the diagnosis is the later.
 
ERK123, you're smart!
 
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Just sleep earlier. And refrain from electronics use at least an hour before sleepy time.
 
Incis0r said:
ERK123, where are you going to practice? I so badly want to make you my doctor right now.

Exaggeration aside, your post about Benzos has filled me with hope about the future of allopathic medicine. A close family member lost nearly a year of their life fighting Benzo withdrawal because ALL the doctors were unaware of the withdrawal effects. Specialists, GPs, everyone. Keep in mind, this is Boston, a mecca of healthcare. Every physician just kept suggesting to up the dosage. It was hell trying to get this family member off that demon (starts with an L and ends with pam).
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Lol Thanks for the complement 🙂 but I haven't started medical school yet. Also, I am going the DO route partially because I am dissatisfied by the the nonchalant attitudes the allopathic field has about pharmaceuticals that have never been rigorously studied. However, I am sure I will find this attitude among plenty of DO's as well. There are great and terrible doctors with both initials. I am very sorry to hear about your family member. He is certainly not alone, but I hope we can do much to ensure that less patients go through such a painfully unnecessary process that is primarily caused by physician incompetence.
 
ERK123 said:
Lol Thanks for the complement 🙂 but I haven't started medical school yet. Also, I am going the DO route partially because I am dissatisfied by the the nonchalant attitudes the allopathic field has about pharmaceuticals that have never been rigorously studied. However, I am sure I will find this attitude among plenty of DO's as well. There are great and terrible doctors with both initials. I am very sorry to hear about your family member. He is certainly not alone, but I hope we can do much to ensure that less patients go through such a painfully unnecessary process that is primarily caused by physician incompetence.
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Mm, I think that's doctors in general... or people in general. Alot of people are ignorant about what pharmacists actually do.
 
Give up the caffeine. Sleep way better, wake up fresh and early, and i feel like after 3 or 4 weeks you actually have more energy during the day.
 
Some good general sleep hygiene advice above. Also, I really like the sleep cycle app - it supposedly monitors your nighttime movements using your phone's accelerometer and sounds your alarm when you are supposedly only lightly sleeping anyway, so you don't wake up feeling groggy. I feel like it works and haven't needed coffee since I started using it - not that I was a heavy drinker before, but it was getting to be fairly regular. Placebo effect? Maybe. Probably. I'll take it.
 
eefen said:
Some good general sleep hygiene advice above. Also, I really like the sleep cycle app - it supposedly monitors your nighttime movements using your phone's accelerometer and sounds your alarm when you are supposedly only lightly sleeping anyway, so you don't wake up feeling groggy. I feel like it works and haven't needed coffee since I started using it - not that I was a heavy drinker before, but it was getting to be fairly regular. Placebo effect? Maybe. Probably. I'll take it.
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Placebo effects in a lot of sleep medicine are often times the best you are going to get.
 
I use an annoying song as my daily alarm and keep my phone charged across the room, both of which force me to actually get up and move. This keeps me from succumbing to the ever-sweet yet dangerous temptation of hitting snooze and falling back asleep.
 
I'm in a horrible situation right now. I have my genetics final right after the winter break and for some reason I'm having some serious sleeping problems. I think I have insomnia (although I don't think it's chronic because it doesn't happen every week) because normally when I get into bed at 11 or 12, I actually end up sleeping at 4 or 5 and this disturbs my entire schedule as I end up waking up late in the afternoon and wasting all that time, which could have been better utilized for study.

I don't know what to do....I've tried putting 2 alarm clocks but for some reason I still can't wake up (most of the time, I just end up snoozing the alarm and going back to bed)....I'm stuck in a horrible situation....and I think this can be quite a serious problem especially for a medical student.......any advice on how to get rid of this problem??
 
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