How To Wake Up In The Morning Like A Total Boss

Full disclosure. I’m not a morning person but I’m not, not a morning person either. I can wake up in the morning at 5.30am and hit the gym but I’m rarely happy about it. I can also sleep until 9am (or longer) on the weekends. I’m not even really a night owl. I rarely sleep before midnight but I’m pretty useless from midnight onwards. I generally sleep from midnight to 7am most days. I’m smack bang in the middle of being a morning and a night person and I’m pretty happy with it.

Having said that, I’d love to be the type of person who rises with the sun and has half the shit they need to do that day done before their local cafe has turned on the coffee machine, but that’s just not who I am.

Mr Smaggle is worse than me in the morning. In fact he might be the worst in the world. He comes from a family of hard core night owls. They literally drink espresso after dinner every night and the whole family listens to the Night Life quiz which starts at midnight on the radio. They’re straight up creatures of the night. As a result, you pretty much don’t want to know him before 11am. He can get up, put pants on, eat breakfast and drink a coffee but if you want him to function, you need to wait until 11am.

I have a  few strategies that keep my nocturnal love acting like a respectable human before lunch time and they might just help you wake up in the morning too…

 

1. Tell yourself you’re a morning person

I constantly say I get up 7am and I probably only do that 4 days out of 7 but it’s slowly making it true across the board. The more I say it, the more it affects my behaviour. I find myself saying things like ‘I have to be home by 11pm because I wake up in the morning at 7.’ or ‘Time for bed! I’m up at 7 in the morning!’. I do the same thing with Mr Smaggle. I slip positive, early morning statements into my conversations with him and I swear it makes a big difference. I’m also quite gentle with him in the morning but I make sure I have a positive attitude too. It almost always rubs off on him. Slowly I’ve changed his wake up time from 11am to about 9am. That’s progress people.

2. Book in something not negotiable 

I’m a giant tight ass and my local gym charges me $20 if I book into a class and I skip it. Wasting $20 will straight up get me out of bed. If you’ve never tried this tactic, get on it. Works like a charm. If you’re the type of person who hates letting people down, try meeting a friend for exercise in the morning. Or get a dog. I hear they’re not very forgiving if you don’t wake up in the morning to take them for their walks. Think about getting up in the morning like you’d think about watching the latest episode of your favourite show. You wouldn’t miss it would you? And you’d plan your whole around the time it’s on right? Imagine your wake up time is a non-negotiatiable appointment and don’t break it.

3. Actually go to bed at a decent time 

It’s sounds like simple mathematics but it’s really hard to wake up in the morning if you haven’t slept enough the night before. I read a sleep journal a while ago and I’m going to translate this really badly but when you sleep, your brain fluid sloshes around and ‘washes’ your brain, which is why you feel groggy and gritty when you haven’t allowed enough time for your brain to complete its full wash cycle. Once you know about the brain washing thing, it changes the way you sleep. When you get a good night’s sleep, your brain feels washed and clean and when you don’t, it feels pretty bloody awful. This applies to hangovers too – your body is too busy processing alcohol to properly wash your brain which is why, even if you slept for ages, you’ll probably wake up feeling rubbish if you drank a bit too much the night before. Every day when you wake up with week, take a moment to notice how you feel and see if your brain feels washed. You’ll start to notice it, I promise.

4. Get yourself a wake-Up light

I bought this Philips Wake-Up Light a few years ago and it’s an absolute life saver. I live in a small, one bedroom flat that doesn’t let in a lot of natural light and this light slowly ramps up in the morning until it’s really bright and wakes me up naturally. I still have to set an alarm but it’s less horrific when it goes off because I’ve woken up naturally as the light in my bedroom has increased. It totally changes my mood in the morning and makes me feel much less like killing people when I wake up. It also does the opposite at night – I pop the light on for reading and it slowly dims, letting me know it’s time to go to sleep. I love gadgets like this because they mimic circadian rhythms. It just feels like a less obtrusive way to keep to a schedule rather than scaring yourself shitless every morning with a horrible alarm. You can also choose lovely rainforest sounds or the radio to get you up in the morning. Note: The Phillips light works much better for me than it does for Mr Smaggle, he still needs several alarms wake up in the morning but it definitely still helps.

5. Accept that you’re not a morning person 

I often write articles about sleep and changing habits but you know what? Some people just aren’t morning people and that’s totally fine. If you’ve tried to change your behaviour and can’t, just go with it. Mr Smaggle is not a morning person but he doesn’t have to be. He works for himself so he can make his own hours. He’s tried to adjust to societal norms but it’s just silly. He gets excellent work done between the hours of 11pm and 2am so why waste his golden time?

On that note, I have a request. Can we stop demonising people who don’t get up early in the morning? For some strange reason it’s seen as slovenly to sleep ‘late’ in the morning but it’s not that different to going to bed early and getting up early. If you sleep from 9pm to 5am, people think you’re a hero and if you sleep from 2am to 10am people think you’re a lazy party animal. It’s the exact same thing. I’ve had quite a few people question how cope with Mr Smaggle being a late riser and it honestly doesn’t bother me. It’s not like he’s up until 2am partying and playing Play Station. He’s working. I wake up every morning to a clean kitchen that’s all ready and set up for me to cook us breakfast. He makes sure all my devices are charged and my keys and water bottle are all ready for the gym. I’m useless at night before bed and he’s useless in the morning so we take our ‘shifts’ of being in charge and it works perfectly for us.

This week on Straight & Curly, Kelly and I are talking about getting up early in the morning. Kelly is far, far better at it than I am but here’s some tips if this is something you’re looking at changing.

 

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