How to Successfully Get Up at 5:00AM

Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 5:30 pm. 8 comments

There are a lot of articles on how to become a morning person on the web - particularly articles on how to get up at an obnoxiously early hour. Why so many articles on this topic? Because waking up early is such a useful skill! If you could get up at 5:00AM and get most of your work done by 10:00AM - eating breakfast included - imagine how productive you could become. Imagine how much free time you could have to spend with your family, engaging in hobbies you love, and everything else you enjoy.

I’ve been waking up at 5:00am for the longest time now, so I have a bit of background in this area. There are three main tips that I’ve found useful for getting myself up so early on a consistent basis:

1. Use multiple alarm clocks;
2. Have some compelling reasons to get up so early;
3. No strange foods or practices before bedtime.

1. Use multiple alarm clocks.

Most people set only one alarm clock; they keep it across the room, and when it buzzes in the morning they shuffle over, turn it off (or smash it on the ground…) and slink back into bed. Obviously that’s probably not the reaction they’re going for! But what if those people were to use three different alarm clocks, all spaced out around their room? As soon as they turn off one, they realize there’s two more to shut off. So they turn off the second and third clock, and what do you know? Those people feel wide awake and are ready for their morning cup of coffee!

I’ve used this method with a pretty good success rate. For me, getting up and moving around is a pivotal component of being able to successfully get out of bed at an early hour. If I trudge around to shut off one alarm clock, that’s not a lot of movement. But if I have to stomp around my room in a foggy daze to shut off three different alarm clocks, that gets me moving and my blood flowing. Try it out!

2. Have some compelling reasons to get up so early!

Let’s be honest here. If you have no real reasons to be getting up so early in the morning, then you’re better of sleeping in bed until 10:30am like the rest of the population.

Most early risers - including myself - generally get up so early because we’re more productive in the morning. By 11:00AM, I can knock out a good portion of my projects and get more accomplished than most people do in three days. I’m focused, I have goals, and those goals motivate me to get up. If you can’t give yourself two good reasons for waking up so early, why bother? You’d just be hitting your head against the wall over and over again when what little motivation you have runs dry.

3. No strange foods or practices before bedtime!

Some people can drink massive amounts of coffee before bed and be absolutely fine when trying to get to sleep. For other people, drinking one weak cup of coffee six hours before bedtime is enough to keep them up half of the night. Some people can exercise vigorously before hitting the sack; for others, that’s enough for them to be tossing and turning the entire night.

Your body is unique; your physiology is completely your own. What works for you might not work for anybody else, and what works for 99% of the population might have no effect on you.

The best thing you can do is cut out all strange foods and substances (alcohol, caffeine, spicy foods, gorging on ice cream) about two hours before you go to bed. Yeah, yeah, that’s a long time! But your body will totally thank you for it. Along those same lines, skip out on doing your Richard Simmons “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” exercise routine if you plan on going to bed immediately afterwords; that might cause nightmares when you finally do get to sleep. ;]

Test, get feedback, then test some more.

What works for you? In all honesty, no amount of blog articles, posts, tips, tricks, or advice can tell you the exact strategy that works best for you. Your best bet is to read all you can on getting up early, test out some of the tips you come across, and if what you tried doesn’t work, ditch it and try another tip. The worst thing that can happen? You have a night where you don’t get a wink of sleep.

But the best thing that can happen? You finally are able to get up constantly at 5:00AM, awake, alert, and ready to tackle all of your projects and goals for the day. Who’d want to pass up that kind of opportunity? Just imagine how productive your mornings will become.

Unsticking Sticky Goals

Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 1:00 am. 0 comments

How many times have you set a goal that you thought was absolutely amazing, only to stall out half way towards completion? For example, you may have decided to increase the amount of RSS subscribers to your website by 1,000 in two months, but it’s been a month and a half and you’ve only got 700 subscribers. What do you do? You don’t want to abandon your goal, but you aren’t necessarily satisfied with your current results. You know in your heart you can do better!

Situations like these are what I like to call “sticky goals“. You literally become stuck somewhere on your path towards goal completion - it’s almost like your goal needs an energy drink! In a situation where you have a sticky goal that is in desperate need of some CPR, I use a technique that’s fairly simple: I brainstorm ideas that I know could completely exceed my goal.

Brainstorm more ideas for above and beyond goal completion

Notice my choice of words - “completely exceed my goal”, “above and beyond goal completion”. The solutions you come up to complete your goals are directly proportional to the questions you ask yourself on how to complete said goals. For example, suppose you ask yourself “How can I squeeze two extra minutes in my day?” You’d tell yourself how easy of a question it is - you could leave two minutes later to work, wake up two minutes earlier, take two minutes off of your daily shower, and so on. Now suppose you ask yourself “How can I add fifteen minutes in my day?” It’s a tricker question, but I’m sure you could think of some great solutions. Finally, imagine asking yourself “How could I add an hour in my day?” Whoops! Now you’re pushing your mental capacity. An hour is a lot of time - it just doesn’t come from nowhere. You’ll have to do some out-of-the-box thinking. What activities could you cut corners and free up some extra time with? What can you completely cut out of your daily schedule?

Goal brainstorming falls into the same category. Too often a person will have a goal where they need to do out-of-the-box thinking, but they ask themselves simple questions. They want to add an hour to their day, but they instead ask themselves “How can I squeeze two extra minutes in my mornings?” These people will get solutions, of course, but the answers won’t lead to the desired outcome they were hoping for. You see small thinking all of the time with bloggers. They want to know “How can I get 1,000 visitors to my website?” but they’ll ask themselves “How can I get 10 new visitors to see my product?” Ask small questions, get small answers. Ask big questions, get big answers.

You can use this type of thinking in a variety of settings:

• You want to increase something by X amount (subscribers, sales)
• You want to make a product go above and beyond expectations (designing a website)
• You want to present something that people will be floored with (a presentation)

Don’t ask yourself how to merely complete the goal - ask yourself what you could do to make the goal an absolute, outright success if you had to complete your goal at all costs. Sometimes the best answers are created by flamboyant thinking. Part of the reason your goal is stalling out might very well be because you aren’t thinking big enough!