So I made some previous posts here that were well received. One was about how waking up early can change your life and the other was how to create meaningful morning routines and habits.

However what I haven't talked about is how to actually wake up earlier.

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Waking up early and living as a morning person can have an immense effect on how you feel, your focus, productivity and your overall quality of life.

Before I give you the run down on how you can become a morning person understand that it’s not a prerequisite for success, but it helps a lot.

What If You’re Not A Morning Person?

To be honest it is going to be quite difficult to become a natural morning person. Human beings seem to be divided into either early birds of night owls.

So by training yourself to wake up early you’re molding yourself into someone better suited for the needs of today’s world. You’ll learn to hate mornings less, rather than love them more.

Cultivate A Clear Reason

You have to understand why you are doing it in the first place, for any goal. Defining your reasoning for doing something gives you something to always fall back on in times of failure and frustration. This small philosophy goes beyond waking up earlier, remember this. I call it the resilience of purpose.

Are you going to wake up earlier so you’re not late all the time, or is it so you can fit in a workout in the earlier hours? Whatever your reason maybe be, define it. Without this reason understood the rest is fleeting.

The Effort Starts At Night

To successful transition from regularly waking up late, you have to view waking up as a process, this process starts from what you do the night before.

Clearly, you are going to want to try and sleep as early as possible so you are well rested enough to function properly the next day.

Be honest with yourself and try to determine how many hours you need to function optimally as a morning person. Self-experimentation is great for this. Use this number which will generally fall between 7-9 hours and adjust accordingly to the time you are going to sleep.

Incremental Change

Understand that you can not go from waking up at 11 every single morning to 6 am overnight. Maybe you’ll be successful the first time you do it, but trust me you’re not going to want to do this again.

It will de-motivate you and make the process seem like too much effort.

This drag and ‘effort’ can easily be masked by changing your lifestyle in an incremental manner. You don’t go from no exercise to lifting the heaviest weights possible overnight, right?

Unless you have an urgent need to start waking up early, try to aim for 30mins a week. Now, this may sound like nothing, but after two months that’s 4 hours.

That could be the difference of 11 am to 7 am. Be consistent, incrementally and this will make it an easy process.

Quality Of Sleep

Make sure that the night before you don’t expose yourself to too much light from your phone or laptop. Reading is going to be a much better way to make sure you fall asleep fast and go into a deep sleep.

The light from electronic devices prevents your brain from producing enough melatonin to allow deep sleep.

This may diminish and prolong your ability to be as well-rested as your body needs.

Hydrate before you sleep, take the time to meditate, avoid caffeine at night and try to create an environment which is as dark as possible.

Do NOT Snooze

I hope this one is obvious for you. If you are snoozing chances are you’re not sleeping early enough. So rather than continuously hitting the snooze button try to manage your time and get to bed a bit earlier.

For example, you could read a book before bed rather than watch TV. You know why you aren’t sleeping, so make the changes to correct this.

If you’re snoozing in the morning you’re giving yourself less time to do the above and making it harder to get the most out of the early hours.

Move Your Alarm From Your Bed

This one tactic is especially useful if you lack willpower. Get your phone, or alarm clock and move it somewhere in your room where you’ll be able to hear it, but in a place that is extremely hard to get to.

Set the alarm noise to something that irritates you. This is only necessary if you’re really struggling, but it works.

Use Power Naps To Your Advantage

Having short 20-30 minute naps is useful at first.

Waking up earlier may have you feeling tired after a meal in the early afternoon as you’re not used to it.

If you have time and you drink coffee during the day, have a nap the moment you drink your coffee and then let the caffeine wake you up.

Short naps have been proven to energize you. Studies suggest that humans are naturally inclined to nap during the day.

We see this all across Europe, otherwise known as a siesta. However try to avoid napping for longer than 1 hour, as it will take your body a while to fully wake up after this.

Treat Your Weekend Like A Weekday

This can be hard to avoid because of a night out, but completely letting your body oversleep may destroy your momentum.

You should be trying to keep to the same schedule you have during the week.

Biological humans are made for habit and routine. If you’re going to sleep in, that’s fine, but don’t let yourself oversleep.

The point I’m trying to make is that you should be sleeping enough and waking up early during the week meaning so that your weekends become ‘just another day.’

Take Away Message

Believe it or not, it’s actually quite exhilarating to watch your city wake up before your eyes. I usually try to get up at around 6 while it’s still a little bit dark. At this time there are hardly any people around and I witness everything around me sort of sprout to life.

Everything feels different in the early hours. Experience as much of the day as possible, we actually live during the day!

This is when the action happens.

I personally never understood why people make the commitment and have the discipline to become a morning person. I viewed it as a disadvantage because I would feel tired each time I rarely did so.

Most successful people preach being a morning person and I can see why.