On Being an Early Riser: Progress Report
Thanks to being careful to plan around my jet lag, I’ve mostly managed to continue getting up in time to start work by 8:30am since I resolved to become an early riser. If you haven’t read that article already, I’ll wait here while you do to save repeating anything I wrote about already… Now, I spent last week working between 5am and 8pm for preparation and delivery of a course on Apache Security in Birmingham which destroyed my routine.
I previously advocated waking up at the same time every day, and allowing yourself to go to bed when you felt sleepy. However (you knew there was a however coming, didn’t you?), a week of breaking that routine threw me out more than I realised. After returning to my old routine on Saturday, I got back from
With hindsight, I think the steps I outlined in my earlier on being an early riser post can stand to be optimised a little. Here is my improved method…
1. Go to bed when you’re sleepy, and set the alarm for 7am regardless
Or 6am, or whatever time you want to get up. This still stands, and now I can appreciate that it is more important than ever. Actually, Octavia now goes swimming every morning and gets up at 6:20am to be at GL1 by 7am. Consequently I’ve been waking up with her, although actually getting up hasn’t worked out too well this week. After my previous successes, I’ll be setting my alarm for 6am from now on to make breakfast for us both before 6:20am.
2. Get up as soon after awakening as you can
I did manage to make the `plan the day ahead while waking up’ strategy work for me until last week, and it also helped gauge whether I was struggling to wake up because I hadn’t obeyed the previous golden rule. I’m more than comfortable with getting up at 7am now, so there’s no reason for me to be grumpy about starting an hour earlier and getting up right away.
3. Stick to a morning routine
No changes here. Without a set routine to go through while coming around, the day gets off to a bad start and
4. Be sure to set something to get up for the next morning
Another trap I’ve learned to avoid is checking my email, my RSS feeds, and my site stats as soon as I get to my computer. The trick here is to look at my TODO list the night before, and pick a specific short task that I can tackle right away in the morning. Once I’ve picked that task, I close my web browser and my email client, and type the task into a terminal or editor screen that I leave open ready to jog my memory when I lift the lid of my laptop in the morning. Once that task is done, I’m in the zone and can check my email without getting distracted from what I’m doing.
5. Reading is a great way to end the day
No changes here. I still want to try to read a book every week or so with all the extra time I’ve gained, and to reward myself for being so organised, so come 11pm I plan to be in bed with book in hand ready to read for half an hour or so until my eyes feel tired.
I’ll post another update in a month or so to let you know how the optimisations are working out.
Related Articles
- The Importance of Morning Routine
- On Being An Early Riser
- How To Avoid Jet Lag
- How To Avoid Jet Lag – Part 2
- How to Break Caffeine Addiction