Waking Up Earlier to Write: Tips or Tricks?

Being that I don't have a handy Drill Sergeant at home to get me out of bed in the morning, do any early risers out there have any tips?

I've tried putting the alarm clock on the far side of the room and setting it to radio instead of beep (helps somewhat), and putting the room lights on timers (still iffy on if that helps), I've stopped drinking caffeine after 5pm and am doing my best to have the lights out by 10pm… but I'm still fighting Jupiter's gravity to wake up at 6am.

And I really want to be getting up at 5! :(

I can power through a few days of getting up early, but on the third or fourth day I routinely end up sleeping through my alarm altogether.

Am I just doomed to fail this perennial New Year's resolution?

Halp! >.<;;

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Martha.net
-- Unquiet Bones (Writing)
-- Custom-Models.com (Model Horses)
-- Perish Twice (Warcraft)
... because you can never have enough hobbies.

I did this for awhile and it was a super productive writing period for me! I liked how quiet the world was first thing in the morning, it's like getting a head start on the day.

Some things I found helpful:
* I got off the computer and turned off the TV at least 3 hours before bedding down. I've read the artificial lighting engage your brain, preventing you from feeling sleepy. Instead I would read or write in my journal.
* I made sure my computer was set up the night before. So in the morning I just had to stagger over to it and switch it on. While it was booting up, I made myself a cup of hot tea or coffee. Your body is cold in the morning, so a warm beverage can help wake you up.

It may take some time for your body to get used to it, especially if you're a natural night owl. You could try writing simple things at first, like a short story or a journal entry.

Best of luck!

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-when-your-alarm-goes-off/

That talks about conditioning yourself to get out of bed right away. I haven't tried it, but it may help.

I started getting up early last year by having 864375439 phone alarms (Okay... More like 10 or 15.) for when I got up. It always worked, but that was overdoing it terribly. xD I think I had an alarm every 3 minutes, minimum, for whatever time I wanted to get up the next day ... *shakes head*

Anyyyway, I think your best bet is to have at least 3-5 alarms going off 2 minutes between each other (I think different sounds help as well). As for sleeping through the alarm rather than just ignoring them- make sure you get a minimum of 8 hours of sleep. (Err... That may be different for adults, that minimum number.)

You may have to get up really early, and just deal with the fact you will be sleep deprived that entire day, but then you should fall alseep easily. (As I am doing today, actually.) And from now until spring break or summer, I will be consistantly going to bed by 9:30 and getting up at 5:30. It works well. ^^

I wish you the best!

I've always found that, if I have something in particular to get up for, I do manage to get up - you know, the sort of thing that would go without me if I didn't get up - flights, work, that sort of stuff. Sometimes, if other things are really important to be done, I can get up early for them, too - things like clearing up the house when Mum's coming! (lol!) or - & I have done this (impressively, for me) - waking up at 4.30 to write for a couple of hours before going to work. :-)

But it takes its toll & I can't do it for long. It's generally a one-off thing. And, as others have said, preparing everything the night before helps quite a lot in achieving it.

I think, if you're a natural night owl (like me), you're doing well if you can get up early to write 3 times in a row. Maybe you need to be a bit kinder to your body & give yourself a morning off to sleep through, every 4 days - otherwise, you might end up sleep deprived & that won't do your writing any good. If you *know* you get a defined day off, too, you'll subconsciously internalist that & work towards it, so it'll be easier to wake early on the other days. :-)

What I did during NaNo was setting myself a really comfortable place to write (basically, a comfy chair in front of the computer), and leaving my cell with the alarm next to it, on the other side of the room than the bed is. When it went off, I immediately jumped to switch it off. Then, it was easier to sit down than to walk ALL the way back to the bed. :)

When I found out I had been given the morning shift at my current job (meaning: up and at work before the sun is even up no matter what time of year it is), I instantly skipped a whole night's sleep, which forced me to go to bed super duper early. The earlier you go to bed, the earlier you get up. Just simply having as much as 7 or 8 hours of sleep under my belt makes waking up way easier. Not to mention, my body got shifted over to that schedule. I just had to stick to getting to bed at around the same time instead of staying up late.

That's the crash course method, though, and doesn't always work!

For me, waking up early is a matter of motivation. If I'm really looking forward to whatever it is I'm doing (or I know it's something very very important, such as a job interview) I am likely to lie restless half the night and wake up even before the alarm goes off. If, on the other hand, it's getting up for boring ol' work or school ... yeah, not so much. I am known to roll out of bed 15 minutes before departure and skip breakfast, rather than wake up early. Which leaves me either paying for cafe food or going ravenous by 10:00. Not good.

I've never owned a Clocky, but they look kinda overrated, since all they do is run away when the alarm goes off -- just put the darn clock out of reach to begin with and you can save yourself $50. Or get a kitten. Also, most phones and radios will allow you to set multiple alarms on the same device, so if snoozing is a problem, set two alarms to go off 5 minutes apart.

You might want to make an appointment with a friend to meet at a cafe, or even on Skype, so you will have to get up or your friend will be mad. If that won't work, at least commit to a daily word war or something. This is how people do their exercise resolutions, so why not do it with writing? Anyways, if you actually have to go out of the house, rather than 3 meters over to the computer to work in your pajamas, you may find it less plausible to sleep through the alarm. Even though I prefer peace and solitude, I have a lot of trouble concentrating at home, so I usually go to a library or cafeteria when I need to work. Otherwise the bed is just too accessible.

If you must work at home, make the business as inviting as possible. Put a nice blanket on the chair, and have a treat ready if your health permits (fruit is fine too). If your furnace is on a timer, make sure it's set to warm up when you're getting up, 'cause waking up to a cold house is great motivation to stay in bed. I occasionally take a pastry out of the freezer and pop it in the microwave or toaster oven, but that's pretty rare, since if I want pastries, I have to make them myself ahead of time (Pop-Tarts do not cross the threshold of our home).

And as for breakfast ... I did some reading on this subject recently. Lots of people eat soup for breakfast, or some variant thereof. Pho, congee, porridge, you name it. Probably more people worldwide eating soup for breakfast than doughnuts. If that's what fires you up in the AM, go for it. I find it much easier to get up if someone ELSE fixes my breakfast... but fat chance of that at my house, it's every man (or woman) for himself in the mornings.

Regarding alarms: I'm similar to you in that waking up to a beeper puts me in a foul mood, but it's too easy just to ignore the radio, or just stay in bed and listen to it. I've found that what's really effective is setting the radio to go off ten or fifteen minutes before you *have* to get up, and then setting a super loud beeper for the time you actually want to get up. That way, you get to wake up gently by listening to the radio, and lie in bed for ten or fifteen minutes - and not wanting to hear the beeper gives you an incentive to get up before it goes off so you can stop it.

I have a nasty habit of waking up before the alarm goes off so it won't jolt me out of bed...waking up at 2am, 3am, 4 am, 5 am, and then lying awake waiting for the 6 o'clock alarm. I would like to do the radio alarm again -- that worked well. But now that we live deep in the forest, only certain rooms get in the two stations that come in out here, and the bedroom is not one of them. Nowadays I hope that bright writing ideas will wake me up. If they don't I didn't have anything to write anyway.

Getting up early is one of my eternal problems. I can do it (grunting and groaning, but reliably) when I have to go to work, but not on my days off. I never sleep through my alarm, but I turn it off or reset it to a later time and go back to sleep. Especially if it's still dark.
I'm thinking about putting one of the lamps in my bedroom on a timer and see if that helps.
Then again... I can go back to sleep even when it's bright day outside (and I only have a thin curtain), so probably not. I might just try turning on the light when the alarm goes off instead of spending money on a timer that mightn't actually be any use. It's just one more flailing hand-motion, after all.

Due to a computer meltdown (thankfully fixable) and the start of Mouse Wars 2012—I got a little behind on cleaning up my writing desk. That's on the fire for tonight, so hopefully I'll have better news on the 'waking up early' front tomorrow.

I tried practicing waking up on the weekend… and ended up taking a three hour nap instead. *sighs* But to be fair, I'm also cutting way back on my caffeine intake, so it might not have been a good test. I'll try again next weekend, or maybe after work this week. *crosses fingers*

I've got a whole checklist of things to try now (thanks all!) and will be checking them off this week. I'm still trying to track down something to warm up my tea, but I may end up MacGyver'ing a coffee pot and a wall socket timer instead. (Hot water is hot water, eh?)

I've got until June to make this work… can't be that hard, right? ^_~;;

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It is a matter of practice.

I have my alarm set to go off at 3:00 AM so I can do my Morning Pages and have some time to write afterward. (Morning Pages are three pages of stream of consciousness writing, a creativity concept promoted by Julia Cameron in her Artists Way related books.)

I've done this long enough that I can usually wake up at that time, or within an hour, without an alarm clock. If I want to sleep in later, I usually have to stay up later.

I do have to go to bed earlier to get enough sleep. Since I've given up on network television, preferring to watch the DVDs when they come out, I'm not tied to an evening schedule. (I have also learned to take five to ten minute cat naps during the day.)

I like the fact that the early morning is an uninterrupted time for me, with a 'quiet' world in the background.

I find that I can wake up earlier if I set an alarm and have to get up immediately, but I really hate it. The alarm makes me angry, the getting out of bed makes me frustrated. That's not a good start to the day. One of my friends said she visualised a certain very hot actor standing at the end of her bed to make her want to get up! But that doesn't work for me. I'm finding that with walking to and from work every day, the motivation of listening to an awesome podcast, or even a mediocre one, is enough to make me set off with a spring in my step, so I'd like to find something that I could reliably do first thing in the morning to motivate me to wake up. Tea helps, but isn't a motivation in itself. Sweet junk food is a very bad idea. Computer games or TV risk letting me just indulge in those and thus lose my precious extra time I've gained by getting up early. So I need to find something else.

I've also heard someone advise not to decide to get up an hour early but just five minutes early. That seems a lot more manageable. Then, when you're used to that five minutes earlier, knock it back five minutes again. Then get used to that. Not tried that one, mainly because I'm really bad at getting to bed early, so obviously my body wants to get as much sleep as possible.

Waking up early is difficult, but rewarding. I wake up before five each morning, to get to school at six, which is when I do almost all of my schoolwork. I've done this for the past year and a half, and so now waking up that early is almost a habit, though I do need an alarm clock. Some people posting above have said that you should go to sleep 8 hours before you want to wake, but that's not necessarily true. Even though in high school, when sleep is apparently important, I usually get no more than six hours a day, and it works fine for me.

But the early morning is the best time to do work, as your mind's fresh, if a bit groggy, and there's literally no one around to disturb you.

Good luck with your endeavours!

I have another hour or so of work tonight and then I'll have my bedroom ready for Round 12843164 of this battle. I figure at some point I'm going to stumble over out how to trick my Sleepy!Brain into getting up…

Right now I have the best of intentions when I go to sleep, but I forget them all when I'm in that wonderful half-asleep drowse of morning. I think I just need to start letting the Ninja Puppeh sleep on the bed with me—the hound dog refuses to get out of bed in the morning, but the white fluffy wonder is always ready for an early morning yard run. *ponders*

I will to learn how to be an early riser darnit! :P

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Martha.net
-- Unquiet Bones (Writing)
-- Custom-Models.com (Model Horses)
-- Perish Twice (Warcraft)
... because you can never have enough hobbies.