I’m a night owl and it’s not so practical…
Although being either an early bird or night owl can have its benefits, we’re often discouraged from being night owls. Not, in fact, for health reasons but because being a night owl isn’t quite practical in terms of how many of our daily lives function. We already know the benefits: it fits in with our time schedule, is often healthier ( ensures we get the allotted amount of sleep we all need). Rising early means we would tend not to sleep in and feel groggy. Overall, it means a better start to the morning.
Mornings are extremely important and make up a good chunk of time in your day. It never really comes to me since I also like sleeping in on weekends and generally despise doing work in the morning. Say I wake up 9:00am on a Sunday; I wont be inclined to do my homework until after 12:00pm. If I plan to go to bed at 10:00pm so I can get that recommended 8 hours of sleep (rarely tends to happen) 3 hours of morning time flies away due to my refusal to start homework. That’s 3 hours out of a 13 hour work day. Not to mention eating, showering, and moping around some more, there’s truly not enough time you expect to be in a day. I always expect myself to be in the work mood as soon as noon hits the clock.
It’s definitely not practical to be a night owl because my schedule ends up being pushed forward a few hours every night and when I get the occasional chance to catch up on sleep by going to bed early, I’m not tired. Personally, my latest attempts of becoming an early riser are by taking a first small step: forcing myself to wake up at 7:00am or 8:00am on weekends. Frankly, this hasn’t been all that favorable because I end up feeling incredibly sleepy and lie in my bed for another hour instead of being able to enjoy another hour of sleep.
For now, here’s a 5 step guide on how to convert to an early riser:
1. Set a goal time: Keep a goal in mind of what time you want to wake up on the weekend mornings eventually.
2. Baby steps:
a) Wake up earlier: Aim to get up around 10-15minutes earlier than you’d usually wake up. I’d avoid making dramatic changes to your sleep schedule right off the bat just because you want to allow your body to naturally adjust and you’ll never feel super sleepy from waking up a little earlier than your usual wake up time. Use an alarm clock at first and once your body naturally wakes up those few minutes earlier each morning, repeat the process.
b) Sleep earlier: Remember that you’re waking up earlier to use the time in the morning instead of the time at night. There’s a lot of benefits to this because you can become more alert in the mornings- and that’s a time that a lot of important things may take place whether you’re a student, teacher or individual with any type of career.
3. Get out of bed: They (the internet) say to put your alarm across the room so you have to get up out of bed to turn it off. I’d suggest putting it as far away as possible so you don’t pick it up and go directly back to lying back in bed. Other sources say to drink lots of water before sleeping so you force yourself to get up and go to the bathroom in the morning. Honestly, this method isn’t the most comfortable.
I don’t have an answer to this but I typically get up either on advice from a sibling saying that I’ve overslept or by pushing off all my blankets (I’m not a fan of lying in bed without blankets). I realize it’s especially hard for us Canadians (and all other places with cold winters) to get out of bed when you’re cozied up and your room is all cold. In that case, keep a pair of slippers beside your bed because cold feet are my number one reason for not getting out of bed. (Perhaps I should rephrase this step into: find your method of getting out of bed.)
4. Don’t rationalize: Don’t say: I can’t do this. Instead say: I want to do this. It’s no use pep talking to yourself every morning (and this applies to everything you do: studying, cleaning, etc…) to complete your goal if you’re not going to follow through. You need to have a legitimate reason that you’d be willing to work towards.
5. Give yourself a treat: Getting up early is not easy but you can make it easier on yourself by making the whole experience a little better.
This guide is a pretty simple, seemingly universal formula for becoming an early riser based on all the sources that I read through. I’m definitely not one to judge how effective this method is of converting from a night owl to an early bird; however, I’m willing to give it a shot and I hope all of you night owls out there will too.
Sources /1/
