Print this articleSelf-improvement blog for early risers - how to sleep well, wake up early and what to do then...
Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:16:46 +0100
Haven’t seen any posts here for a while? It’s because waking up early sometimes, well, doesn’t
work :-). I had to work late on pretty much every day over last couple of months and this
completely screwed up my wake up schedule. And since I was mostly writing my posts early in
the morning, this schedule change has put my blogging on hold for a while.
Work schedule is one common reason why you may never become an early riser, and
there are others...
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Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:16:46 +0100
How often do you hear people saying things like "I’ll start eating only healthy food from next
Monday", "I’ll start exercising on September 1st" etc? Did you note that many people want to change
their life on some special day like first day of the week or month? There is some magic in that
Day One and for some reason we think that if we start something on that specific day we have somehow
more chances to succeed...
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Sat, 22 Dec 2007 17:59:38 +0100
This smart simple tip was found in the list of
52 Proven Stress Reducers. What this tip means is that first of all you need at least two alarm
clocks (or get a dual alarm clock).
You will be using one alarm clock in a usual way – for waking up in the morning. But you will set
another alarm clock for the time when you have to go to bed. This alarm clock will act as a
reminder to ...
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Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:11:22 +0100
Amazon just announced and started selling new device –
Amazon Kindle -
revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, newspapers, magazines and
blogs to a crisp, high-resolution electronic paper display. How it’s related to waking
up early? This device reminded me about another great self-improvement tip which some
people often neglect and which you can use to advance in any area and not just to learn how to
wake up early. Everyone heard the phrase ‘Knowledge is power’ but not all people actually
get the meaning. And the tip is simple...
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Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:54:06 +0100
Okay, getting a pet BECAUSE you want to wake up early is a wrong thing. Do not do it. Never ever
get a pet unless you love pets and unless you know you can take care of them. Pets are like
kids – if you get one, you are held fully responsible for its health and life...
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Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:43:42 +0100
Why one big change is easier to implement than many small ones...
Finally, I’m back from vacation. Not only I’m well rested now but I’m full with fresh wake up
ideas. The idea I have to share today has emerged soon after vacation was over, and it was
time to get back on my early wake up schedule, which I temporarily gave up on. I had 3 hours
difference between my vacation wake up time and my "normal" early wake up time....
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Fri, 28 Sep 2007 23:53:44 +0200
Here comes the king of all tips. If you still fail to wake up early but haven’t lost the hope,
try this one...
When everything else fails, it’s time to get to serious military tactics. One known military tactic is called overwhelming force, or rapid dominance. It’s simple, yet it’s more powerful than any other tip. If you still wonder how can it be, here is the answer. Overwhelming force means using... Read full story
When everything else fails, it’s time to get to serious military tactics. One known military tactic is called overwhelming force, or rapid dominance. It’s simple, yet it’s more powerful than any other tip. If you still wonder how can it be, here is the answer. Overwhelming force means using... Read full story
Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:45:34 +0200
This is another "universal" tip that can help you in many situations when you need to learn a new
skill or get a new habit, and it may come to use if you want to learn how to wake up early. Think
of someone among your friends, relatives or just people you know who wakes up early. Talk to them,
ask them how they acquired this habit, what challenges they faced and how they overcame them, what
tools and techniques they use now or used in the past to develop early rising habit. You can even
ask to borrow their alarm clock :)
The mentor can help you not just giving advices or sharing his life experience... Read full story
The mentor can help you not just giving advices or sharing his life experience... Read full story
Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:04:28 +0200
Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:09:09 +0200
As it is 9/9 today, I thought it would be good to revamp and refresh my earlier article
about 9 Reasons to
Wake Up Early. Having good reasons to wake up and things to do in the morning is a half of success on the way to
becoming an early riser. I hope that among the listed reasons you’ll find those that can light a
burning desire within you. Here is the link to the article: 9 Reasons to Wake Up Early.
Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:05:48 +0200
Do not worry, this tip is not about waking up at 4 a.m., so keep reading...
When it comes to sleep, everyone prefers to sleep in a dark room. Our body’s clock is trained to sleep when it’s dark and we always fall asleep faster and relax better in the darkness. So if darkness helps you sleep better, what do you need to wake up? Right, you need light! As soon as you get up from the bed, expose yourself to a bright light (ideally - to sun light) and you won’t get back to bed. Light in the morning is good for two reasons... Read full story
When it comes to sleep, everyone prefers to sleep in a dark room. Our body’s clock is trained to sleep when it’s dark and we always fall asleep faster and relax better in the darkness. So if darkness helps you sleep better, what do you need to wake up? Right, you need light! As soon as you get up from the bed, expose yourself to a bright light (ideally - to sun light) and you won’t get back to bed. Light in the morning is good for two reasons... Read full story
Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:22:00 +0200
We continue our quest trying to find the best way on how to wake up early and do it consistently. Our
today's tip is about using alarm clocks. If
you search the web for "how to wake up early" or "alarm clocks" keyword combination you will
definitely find Vincent Cheung’s article
Alarm clocks are bad. How to wake up and feel better. This article has
got almost 3,000 diggs and a number of links for a reason. It includes the trick on how to wake up early that Vincent has successfully used for years and now shares with the readers of his blog. To
better understand how this trick works and why it works I recommend you first to check one of my previous posts
on
how sleep works...
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Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:25:28 +0200
My today’s tip is up as a guest post at Pick the Brain blog. It’s about sleeping less time by improving the quality of your sleep and changing your sleeping habits. Head there to read full story, as well as many other great articles on self-improvement, productivity and motivation.
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Thu, 30 Aug 2007 08:29:12 +0200
I’ve been reading Robin S. Sharma’s book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari – a wonderful story
full with insights and ancient wisdom on how to open your life to success and
happiness. One of my favorite authors writing on productivity and personal development
Brian Tracy said about this book:
“A fun, fascinating, fanciful adventure into the realms
of personal development, personal effectiveness, and individual happiness. It contains treasures
of wisdom that can enrich and enhance the life of every single person.”
One of the strategies known to the sages that Robin Sharma shares is the Ritual of Early Awakening...
Read full story Wed, 29 Aug 2007 01:59:58 +0200
This post is not like our usual posts. It's more of appreciation post to all the bloggers writing on the subject of Personal Development.
I've been recently tagged by Priscilla Palmer to contribute into Personal Development List with blogs and sites I like. It's a great collection of personal development resources so I suggest you add it to your booksmarks. I had to go through my huge collection of personal development links because there are so many great sites were already added to the list and I didn't want to duplicate them. After doing my part of the job, I figured out that my How to Wake Up Early blog has got included too! Thanks to Patricia for putting this list together. I've seen few similar lists before created by individuals, but the true power of this list is that it's created by hundreds of contributing bloggers, and it's already longer than any similar list I've run into before. So here it goes... Read full story
I've been recently tagged by Priscilla Palmer to contribute into Personal Development List with blogs and sites I like. It's a great collection of personal development resources so I suggest you add it to your booksmarks. I had to go through my huge collection of personal development links because there are so many great sites were already added to the list and I didn't want to duplicate them. After doing my part of the job, I figured out that my How to Wake Up Early blog has got included too! Thanks to Patricia for putting this list together. I've seen few similar lists before created by individuals, but the true power of this list is that it's created by hundreds of contributing bloggers, and it's already longer than any similar list I've run into before. So here it goes... Read full story
Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:00:56 +0200
One day I’ve decided that I should start running in the mornings to get back into shape. Two
weeks later, I was still thinking that it would be good to finally start doing it. Probably
from next week... Or better from the first day of next month... It continued this way for almost 2
months. Do you know how I finally managed to stop procrastinating it? I bought myself pair of
new running shoes and some sports wear and after that I simply couldn’t hold it any
longer. Investing in my new habit was the thing that actually pushed me out of endless
procrastination. You can use the same trick to help you start or resume your habit of
waking up early...
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Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:47:48 +0200
One of the primary reasons why most people fail to wake up early in the morning is that once
they wake up and turn off alarm clock they talk themselves into going back to bed again. It’s
amazing how many “good” reasons for sleeping another hour we may find once we wake up. The key here
is to stop rationalizing and let your body outrun your thoughts...
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Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:24:58 +0200
“Wake up and Smile? And what then?” – you’ll ask. That’s it! Just smile, and see
what happens. Kudos for this tip goes to Aaron Potts and his Today is that Day blog. In his recent post on 8 Tips on How to Get Out of Bed even When You Don’t Want To
he mentions this incredibly simple yet amazingly powerful tip. Yes, all you need is a big smile. Here is how it works and why...
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Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:29:12 +0200
To wake up early you should get a habit of
going to bed and waking up at the same time every day,
but… There is one exception to this rule. On some days you may not feel sleepy enough at the
time when you usually go to bed. This often happens if your day was calm and quiet and you
aren’t feeling tired. Or, in the opposite situation, you may be so excited about something
that happened to you today you simply can’t sleep...
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Tue, 07 Aug 2007 23:16:00 +0200
We talked before about giving a promise
to someone that you will wake up early. When given, such promise will hold you accountable, and
that’s exactly what you need to continue building your early rising habit day by day. There is one
more way to get the same result though. Wake up early at least once, and start telling people about it.
Matthew Stibbe from BadLanguage blog
recommends to boast widely about your new early-birdiness...
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Fri, 03 Aug 2007 23:37:36 +0200
We always have a better chance to succeed in things which we understand and where we know underlying
principles and laws, as opposed to things we do not understand. Let’s see how understanding sleep
mechanics can help you sleep better and wake up earlier. The principles of how sleep works are quite
simple (well, at basic level), yet many people have never heard about them. Here is your 5-minute
crash course on sleep mechanics...
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Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:31:58 +0200
Most of us used wake up call services in the hotels before, when reception calls you at the specific
time you’ve asked them for. But today’s technology went far beyond that so it’s time to re-evaluate old
wake up call service and see how it can help you wake up.Today’s wake up call service is
digitally
equipped, fully automated, highly customizable, reliable, inexpensive and takes minutes to setup
.
It’s amazing how many new ideas emerged in attempt to maximize the value of one phone call. In addition
to the call itself, you may get a number of additional features like listening to selected music or
customized voice message, daily news or weather forecast. You can "snooze" the call. You may choose to sync with selected events
in Calendar on your PC and the service will give you a reminder call at a required time...
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Fri, 27 Jul 2007 23:07:00 +0200
This early wake up trick was inspired by Jerry Seinfeld's productivity secret posted by Brad Isaac at LifeHacker.com, link to which I’ve run into while browsing Jim Gibbon’s blog (Thanks Jim!). I’ll quote Brad, because I probably won’t come up with a better explanation anyway. According to Brad, he once approached Jerry Seinfeld asking if he had any tips for a young comic.
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on
one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker...
Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:08:50 +0200
Another important how to wake up early strategy is based on creating positive associations
with waking up early and negative associations with not doing it. Every person on this planet
is driven by two things. The need to avoid pain, and the desire to gain pleasure – explains
Anthony Robbins in his most
popular
Personal Power program
.
If you do something, it’s because you associate a pleasure with it. If you don’t do something,
it’s because of pain and fear you link to it. By creating positive, pleasurable associations
with waking up early and severe pain associations with not doing it you can help build stronger habit that
works, consistently. Here is how you can do it...
Read full story
.
If you do something, it’s because you associate a pleasure with it. If you don’t do something,
it’s because of pain and fear you link to it. By creating positive, pleasurable associations
with waking up early and severe pain associations with not doing it you can help build stronger habit that
works, consistently. Here is how you can do it...
Read full story Sat, 14 Jul 2007 22:24:48 +0200
Another wake up trick is to puzzle yourself in the morning by putting alarm clock into
a place where it can’t be easily turned off or by using a gadget that will create a puzzle for you.
For example, bring a chair, put an alarm clock high on the cabinet, and then put your chair into another room. You will have to repeat
this procedure in the morning to shut off alarm. If you can’t come up with a puzzle, check
these gadgets that combine alarm clock and puzzle in one evil device...
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Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:04:44 +0200
New research has shown that weekend lie-in fails to make up for long hours in the week.
Chronic sleep deprivation breaks the ability of your body to compensate for lost sleep and
may result in weight gain, irritability, hallucinations and depression. Needless to say,
waking up early in this case may only add up to the problems...
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Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:34:36 +0200
Alarms are external irritants that make you wake up. When alarm goes off, your mind wakes up
but your internal organs keep “sleeping” for some more time. How you can wake
up “from the inside”? There is an old trick and it's quite simple - put a glass of water near alarm clock
and drink the water first thing as you wake up...
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Wed, 11 Jul 2007 00:39:14 +0200
Your first step away from your bed is the most important step you need to make towards your
early rising habit. How to make it? There are many options, but let’s start with this easy
one. You can simply put an alarm clock far enough from your bed, and...
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Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:08:42 +0200
Sat, 07 Jul 2007 21:23:02 +0200
You should avoid alcohol, nicotine and caffeine as much as possible because these stimulants have
alerting effect, they disrupt sleep and prevent your body from effective relaxation. It’s very
individual though so the best way is just to try and avoid these stimulants for some time and
see if your sleeping improves.
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Thu, 05 Jul 2007 08:24:40 +0200
I opened David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
for myself back in 2005
(I have been re-reading it every few months since then). Getting Things Done, commonly
abbreviated as GTD, is a work-life management system based on simple but very effective
principles. Here is how I used GTD to help me in my waking up experiments...
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for myself back in 2005
(I have been re-reading it every few months since then). Getting Things Done, commonly
abbreviated as GTD, is a work-life management system based on simple but very effective
principles. Here is how I used GTD to help me in my waking up experiments...
Read full story Wed, 04 Jul 2007 07:36:48 +0200
There are people who do their best only when they are put into a stress situation. If you
are one of them, if you need to feel the surge of adrenaline to get thing moved, then you
can try this approach to build early wake up habit. Put yourself into a situation where you
have extremely important things to do in the morning. Those should be “do or die” things that
cannot be postponed any further...
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Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:43:10 +0200
You can "practice" waking up by doing simple exercises at day time. This very original tip comes
from Steve Pavlina. His blog is a treasure
trove of useful information in the area of personal development.
Read full story
Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:58:02 +0200
If you still can’t decide on changing your lifestyle, if you still think whether you should wake
up early or not – you are probably thinking too high. You don’t have to wake up 2 hours earlier
starting from tomorrow. Start waking up 5 minutes earlier on every day, and start it tomorrow...
Read full story
Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:58:16 +0200
Can’t wake up after alarm goes off? Keep pressing that snooze button? Then this
tip, powered with few tricks, is for you.
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Thu, 21 Jun 2007 22:15:58 +0200
If you want to wake up early then make sure you have something important planned for the
morning – something that you really want to do first thing as you wake up and which is more
important than taking an extra hour of sleep.
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Sat, 16 Jun 2007 07:16:30 +0200
Don't eat too much right before bedtime. You may have light snack 2 hours before sleep time, but not later.
This advice has simple explanation. Your organism stays awake digesting the food, so even if you fall asleep part of
your body is not "sleeping" and overall you still have less effective sleep which is not restful...
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Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:06:28 +0200
Excellent trick that works very well not only for waking up but whenever you want to do
something you don't like or keep procrastinating on is putting a reward ahead of you...
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Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:44:16 +0200
If you are lucky to have friends or relatives who wake up early - ask them to
wake you up. You may ask friend to call your number (just have your phone close so you
don't wake up all the house or your neighbours). Or you may ask a friend who is jogging
in the morning by your house to knock your door. The secret of this trick is actually not
in the fact someone wakes you up (alarm clock can do it as well)...
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Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:23:10 +0200
One of the tricks to wake up early is to have more effective sleep for the same amount of time. Freshen the air in your room
before you go to sleep (or just sleep with windows open if outside temperature is OK), and you will have more relaxed and more
deep sleep...
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Sat, 09 Jun 2007 15:20:12 +0200
If you struggle to wake up early, chances are your body doesn't get enough sleep. Try to take a nap for 20-30 minutes at day
time. It helps reduce stress and you will feel refreshed. Best time to take a nap is midday...
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Fri, 08 Jun 2007 14:01:18 +0200
This is an excellent trick that I use for a long time. Do you have your favorite song? Then all you will need is a music player with a built-in alarm clock.
Set the player to play the song you selected and set the time of alarm...
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Thu, 07 Jun 2007 09:34:06 +0200
Some sources say it takes 21 day to make a habit, some say it's 24 days, some say it's 30. Doesn't really matter. What matters is that you do not need
to commit yourself to waking up early on every day till the end of your life. It's kind of commitment which is extremely hard to give!
What you do is you commit to wake up early for 3 weeks. That's all. You know that on 22nd day you may sleep for as long as you want.
Guess what? After 3 weeks, you will not want to sleep any longer!
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Mon, 04 Jun 2007 09:55:40 +0200
Give a promise to someone that you will start waking up early. Works best with your family members, friends, etc. Once given, promise
should be kept, or you lose respect with those people...
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Sat, 02 Jun 2007 08:40:04 +0200
It's a good habit you must acquire. First, you get more effective sleep for the same
period of time, if you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day...
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Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:20:12 +0200
As simple as it seems, this tip is hard to beat. Having enough sleep is important
not only to wake up early, but to feel energized on the next day, be productive and focused...
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