Waking Up One Hour Early

Sun, Apr 1, 2018

In this blog post, I am going to share my experience on waking up one hour early. There will be some tips, some activities and also some drawbacks. I should mention that I got the inspiration from Barış Özcan’s Youtube video. He talks about a technique called Do not Break the Chain. You can find two calendars; a basic one and visually improved one to keep track your activities. If paper is already too old-fashion for you, there are lots of web and mobile applications, which shows your progress and reminds you on regular basis. Now introduction is done, let’s talk about my experience with one of them, which is Wake Up One Hour Early.

Wake Up Early

I am sure that you all saw and heard how most of the successful people wakes up early in the morning. Being an early bird does not make one an achiever by itself. Things work differently for each individual and you could not know if it works for you without trying. Firstly, i will share some basic tips that help me get out of the bed.

Tips on Getting out of the Bed

• This goes without saying I guess, going in to the bed early will definitely help you get up with less struggling.
• I believe the most of important one is to keep your phone or alarm clock really far away from the bed. In such a distance that it would force you to at least stand up to turn it off. After some time you will be happy (but firstly frustrated) that you don’t have that shinny light hurting your eyes before falling a sleep. Here is the best part: you will have a chance to think about your crazy plans and amazing dreams before falling a sleep. It is sad that nowadays we do not take some time to just stay and think or imagine. I think most of you will agree with me on this that we are always busy in cycle of computer, phone,computer, phone…
• Even if it is a little risky, you may not set an extra alarm. This will force your brain as you don’t have back ups.
• Don’t snooze, don’t think. Count to 3 and stand up. Do not give even a chance to your brain to trick you to stay in the bed a little more.
• Have some water nearby your bed. Drinking water should be the first thing you do after turning the alarm off.

What to Do

Now we are out of the bed, maybe even the sky is still dark. Look outside and see no light from other windows. That should make you feel proud. Drink some water if you have not done so. We do not have a lot of time(school or work in two hours) to take care of long activities. Let’s see what we can do:

• Have a nice breakfast. This is the most important part of waking up early for me. Earlier, I would just get out of the bed and leave the apartment. My breakfast would be some snacks until lunch time. I used to have breakfast every morning in elementary, secondary and high school. I don’t know why but apparently I abandoned that habit in university. I am really happy now that I started to have some healthy breakfast before starting my day. My body is happy, I am happy. There will be times that you would feel that you do not have appetite right after waking up. Believe me, just start preparing your breakfast. Meanwhile, your body would move and when the breakfast ready, you will be ready to have it, too.
• Take care of small stuff. I hate when I have to take care of small stuff after 11 hours of working and commuting. These little stuff could be paying bills, sending an e-mail, doing some dishes, cleaning the apartment and similar things. It is a joy doing all of these stuff in the morning when you don’t have time for something better to do.

The list above contains some solutions to the problems that I wanted fix. The next list is going to be the potential activities, which could be done in the morning ritual.

• Read a book. Thanks to my friend Sercan, I used to have the habit of reading novels. However, in the last two years or so I found myself reading just technical books. Firstly, I started to read some hard-copy book on the commute. Later, I decided to use that time to rest my mind and think (which I enjoy so much on trips). Now that I have some free time in the morning, I read the novels in a really quite environment.
• Cook. I haven’t been able to cook early in the morning. It is just an idea. Because being single and having to cook after a work day is really not easy. While you have energy in the morning, you could prepare some meal for the evening. You will thank yourself after coming back home that you don’t have to cook.
• Do exercise. This is another thing I would like to do. It could be simple home-exercising or going to a gym if you have one near by. I have the chance to go to gym in the morning, it is really close and I already pay for that, I couldn’t start doing it yet. It always helps feeling good to know your muscles are still there(you know what I mean if you have ever exercised).
• Take a shower. Was there any day you were so tired to take shower in the evening? And were you to lazy to wake up early? Of course, not me. It is a complaint from a friend. Summer is on the corner. What could be better and more refreshing than almost cold morning shower? Now you have the time. Every day.

Drawbacks

There should some reasons that everyone doesn’t give up on their sleeping time. I would be honest with you, it is not easy. In some mornings, I ask myself why I woke up. I do not want to eat, I am tired, and there is nothing to do except waiting the time to leave. Another problem is that opening your eyes in dark may not the best feeling on Earth. I feel more positive when there is already daylight when I woke up. This may or may not a problem depending on the time of the year and the location. As summer starts to show its face, the sky is blue earlier than the winter time. One more thing, in weekdays either you have school or work that you must wake up at some point. However; on the weekends, it is totally up to you to decide when you would like to start your day. I am not yet able to get up so early on the weekends. There are various reasons to fall a sleep late, also there is the need to recover your body on the weekends. Lastly and the most important trouble that you can encounter is feeling of being tired. Your body may need more time to rest and refresh itself, or you are used to get in to the bed in late hours. In the middle of the week, you will start to experience your energy drain faster, and you lose the time gained in the morning by not being able to do much in the evening. The key point point here is to be consistent so that your body will cooperate with you. If you sit at your desk all day, you should take some walks or even better exercise regularly. It will also help to watch out what you eat.

I tried to explain my journey with waking up early, and how it could help you to improve your daily life. One shouldn’t forget that there is no much pure good in anything. You should evaluate how it suits your schedule better. I would be glad to hear about your experience, ways to get more out of the extra free morning time, and of course how to overcome mentioned drawbacks.