How to Wake Up (Refreshed) at 5am Every Day
Get extra hours every day
If you ask anyone above the age of 70, if given the chance would you go back to being 20 years old? The answer 100 times out of 100 would be yes.
Time is the most valuable resource you have.
Additionally, you don’t know how much you have left (the stoics would meditate on this daily).
So if I were to now ask you, would you like to add 1–3 additional hours to every day what would you say? It’s certainly possible, the problem is most people would rather sleep.
It took me about 10 years to fully master the art of getting up early, but it is by far one of the best changes I have added into my life. I want to provide you with a framework on how to do it, in the hopes that you can start to squeeze a little more valuable time out of each of your days.
If you want to get up early every day, I would recommend doing at least 2 out of the following 3 actions:
- Set your alarm clock back by only 15 minutes each day
Start small, don’t go straight from 07:30 to 05:00 because that will not work. Move your alarm clock back in 15 minute increments, and when you can successfully get up for a week straight at that time move it back another 15 minutes the next week.
You will find that the only time that 15 minutes makes a difference, is for the first few minutes after you wake up. Throughout the rest of the day it is irrelevant.
2. Go to bed on time
There are multiple things you can add into a bedtime routine to make this easier, however for now let’s just keep it simple with math.
It is well known that most people can survive and function properly on 6–8 hours of sleep. If you go to bed at 9pm, and wake up at 5am, that is still 8 solid hours of sleep. Again, only in your mind does it feel like you are sleep deprived when you wake up earlier than you have to or are used to.
3. Keep your mind busy as soon as you wake up
This is the most important step of all 3 of these tips, so I hope you take this one to heart.
As soon as you wake up in the morning, you need to immediately get your mind focused on something, ANYTHING. Otherwise, it will start intensely focusing on how groggy you are, how warm it is under the covers, how you don’t have to be up for another 2 hours, the BS your own mind throws at you is endless.
For me, what I did immediately upon waking up is making sure I had to get out of bed to reach my alarm and turn it off. As soon as I stepped out of bed I constantly say to myself (in my head), don’t go back to bed, don’t go back to bed, DON’T GO BACK TO BED.
It buys me enough time to get dressed, throw some water on my face, and brush my teeth, and by that point I’m not even tired anymore.
As an aside, I would advise against keeping your mind focused on social media first thing in the morning.
I can’t emphasize enough how huge it is for me and many other high performing individuals I know to take advantage of early morning hours.
Of course not every high performer will be best suited to take advantage of the early morning. However, many people who say it is not for them haven’t even tried it for an extended period. Like I said, it took me 10 years to get the hang of it, and before now I just thought it wasn’t meant to be.
Hopefully this encourages you to wake up and take advantage of no traffic, no email or work obligations, and completely unbothered time you can dedicate solely to you.
Let me know in the comments if you plan on trying this out, or if you already do and how it is helpful for you.
