Here’s some math: if you wake up 30 minutes earlier every day for just one week, you will have an extra three and a half hours of productive time to get things done.
And another equation: If you wake up one hour earlier every day for just one week, you will have an extra seven hours of productive time to accomplish your goals.
And another: using one of the two above methods every day for a single month will give you either 15 or 30 extra hours of time alert and fully conscious — the equivalent of one or two whole days, respectively.
Fact: waking up earlier sucks. But, is waking up earlier worth the pain that it takes to develop the habit?
I’m going to say yes. The early morning is one of the few times productivity is easy, because there are no distractions and no excuses to procrastinate. Your willpower meter is also higher in the early hours of the day, which makes mornings the perfect time to take difficult actions toward your biggest goals and projects — a process that generally requires a lot of willpower and motivation. It is a keystone habit, positively affecting many other habits in your life and generally make you a more productive and healthy person. The habit of early rising will improve your discipline, a skill that all of us could use.
For most of us, it’s easy to say “I’m a night owl” and call it quits before we even start. But is that really how we want to go through life? Giving up before you even begin is not giving yourself the chance to simply try a new approach.
For waking up earlier: start small. Don’t start by waking up an hour, or even thirty minutes, earlier. Your body is a habit machine and jolting it like that with a large and sudden change will only be painful. Begin setting your alarm fifteen minutes earlier and getting up with it consistently for at least three days. Then, go another fifteen minutes. As with all habits, a gradual change is just as good as a rapid one and is much more sustainable.
It’s imperative that you also go to bed earlier. This is a no-brainer, but most fail to abide by it. Assuming that you need between seven and nine hours of sleep per night, if you slice thirty minutes to an hour of sleep off in the mornings then you need to add it back at night. For any nitpickers out there, yes, that means that you don’t actually have more net time in the day. However, you’re trading inefficient evening time for productive morning time. It is easy to procrastinate in the evening when you have exhaustion, rowdy friends and YouTube all vying for your attention. It is much more difficult to put off work in the morning when you’re freshly awoken, full of energy and sporting a nice buzz from your morning injection of caffeine.
Get out of bed right away. Too many times (and I know I’m not alone in this), I have either fallen back asleep after turning off my alarm off or have remained in bed for an extra twenty minutes dozing and contemplating the incredibly fascinating plaster swirls on my ceiling. Set your alarm to full volume and put it all the way across the room. I guarantee you’ll be motivated to get to it before you wake the slumbering bear that is your roommate. Or maybe take a bathroom break right after waking up to clear out your system and wash your face with cold water. Just make sure you are sitting up and out from under your sheets instantly. The first few seconds are vital. In summary, the snooze button is a deceptively seductive temptress and must be eliminated!
Turn off electronics for an hour before you sleep. Chemistry lesson: melatonin is the hormone that tells your body to get sleepy. Physics lesson: the kind of light emitted from the screens of our phones, laptops and tablets is called “blue light” and suppresses the hormone melatonin more than any other kind of light. Sleep lesson: if you don’t cut off screen time before bed, the blue light will flush out your melatonin and confuse your circadian rhythm. Just like you do when someone is giving you mixed signals, your body will be confused and frustrated. In response, it doesn’t go to sleep like you want it to. You aren’t meant to be a cyborg, and a little time off the screen could benefit you more than you think. You might even end up reading a book instead! How retro would that be?
For most college students, waking up early is up there on the “Avoid Like the Plague List” beside 8:30 a.m. classes, Economics 101 and terrifyingly-long research papers. Yet, in this case, there are tangible benefits to committing to this new habit. You will get more done, have more free time to enjoy your friends and hobbies and benefit from the knowledge that you set yourself to do something that most others have yet to even attempt.
Jack Dolinar is a Trinity sophomore. His column, “simplifying success,” will run on alternate Fridays.
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Jack Dolinar is a Trinity junior. His column runs on alternate Mondays.