I've been thinking about this article for a bit long time. I didn't want to talk about something until I finished. For a record, I was a night coder who worked till 1-2 am and woke up barely at 10 am, that was a real mess, because I didn't feel productive but lazy and somewhat sleepy. I just decided to fix that because I used to sleep from 9-10 pm to 7 am and I really liked it so I gave it a shot.
New sleeping schedule
I made a goal: waking up early without laziness and unproductive, to do so I made a plan:
- Go to bed at 10 pm no matter what.
- Wake up at 6-7 am. First week it was a real struggle and I felt worse but I started to get used to it and most importantly I started to feel more productive and stress-free. Now, let's be more specific about the plan.
Go to bed at 10 pm no matter what
Well, logically I slept early to wake up early. Go to bed at 10 pm, no phones, no laptop, no light, no books, no kindle, no headsets, no music, nothing. Just go to bed, close my eyes and sleep. If you're sleeping with your phone (probably doom-scrolling) you SHOULD end this. It doesn't even help you sleep at all. Listening to music is controversial it may help you, maybe not, but it's probably the best without these.
As you've guessed, it was basically kinda crazy and boring. I did think about my future ideas, dreams, only good things. Don't think about your past mistakes, bad experience you had and so on. It will make you feel unease and don't help sleeping. If these bad thoughts start to coming to your mind, change the topic immediately, just ignore them and don't think about it.
Environment is another factor to be considered. Personally, I just can't sleep in hot room temperature even in dead cold winter. I sleep better and easily in chill/less-warm room. Also, I eat light 1-3 hours earlier before I go to bed, because I also can't sleep with full stomach so I better sleep hungry rather than full. These are just personal examples, your preferences are probably different so pay attention to them too.
Another most important thing is just stick to it. Do not break your sleeping schedule especially in early weeks no matter what. Don't have meeting with your boss in midnight, don't spend your whole night arguing with flerfs. Just sleep and count sheeps.
Stop judging yourself for everything. Be little more forgiving. If you have weeks long streaks that's awesome always try to achieve that. But, life isn't easy, sometimes you just can't finish your daily goals so when that happens stop judging yourself and think about the present. Last night couldn't sleep earlier? No problem, past doesn't exist, it's gone so think about today.
It took me around 2 weeks to get used to the schedule. It also depends on your body. It may take less or more but you never give up!
Wake up at 6-7 am
Now it's the moment of truth. You wake up early. You have more expectations than your government's promises. But... you.. don't feel good, aren't you? Now you're worse than before. It's part of the process, it should be like that. I remember when I just woke up, only thing I did wish is go back to bed and sleep and I didn't. I felt dizzy, sleepy, lazy, etc... I couldn't work on my projects obviously. In that situations you cannot I repeat YOU CANNOT go back to bed! Try to distract yourself but don't do doom-scrolling nor stress-causing activities. Try doing early light work-out or go out and have some fresh air. If you really really want to sleep and can't stop yourself, try playing games you like in your pc it may help. As I said earlier, it may take a while to get used to it, it took me around 2 weeks.
The result: I wake up at ~6:20 am without any alarm, I just wake up productive, fresh and ready to smash the tasks.
End
I really don't like writing complicated and long articles. I always prefer shorter and simple solutions. Little disclaimer here: None of these are medical advice nor scientific researches but personal experience and personal researches. I don't like including these things to make the article long instead I left these parts to you.
Worth to mention I wrote all of these myself without any AI or third party services that's why there could be grammar mistakes.
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