Waking up early in the morning may sound dreadful, but this is about teaching ourselves how to kick-start a productive day and achieve exceptionalism every day. You might say that getting up early in the morning is not relevant to you, but when you look at the best of the best – the A-players in their field – whether it is sports, business, office, these people have trained themselves to show up. Hitting the day more motivated is a gift you can give yourself to get more life.
Like what Ben Franklin said, you will have plenty of time when you’re dead. You don’t have to wake up at 4 am or 5 am, but you will only need to make your mornings better as it affects the rest of the day.
We all had mornings when the first hour of the day fell apart right after we wake up. This could be as simple as oversleeping, misplacing your keys, skipping your breakfast, and getting stuck in a traffic jam. Before you even get to grind, you already are stressed, unfocused, and unable to find the momentum until the day ends.
As much as we can, we must avoid those situations that lower our morning motivation and productivity. After all, one of the best versions of ourselves is that short moment right after we wake up.
Here are a few tips:
1. Get Super Fit
When your physical health is in a world-class condition, you need less sleep to compensate, and your metabolic rate is higher. This allows you to have more energy, stamina, and passion. For only 20 minutes, consider doing some stretches, yoga, Pilates, or any workout you want. The most important thing is to get the heart pumping and the blood flowing as you wake up your whole body. Don’t forget to drink a glass or two before and after your workout.
2. Start the Night Before
Spend at least 30-45 minutes before bedtime to organize what you might need the next day. This way, you will have fewer things to look into in the morning. As simple as preparing your clothes, meals, and supplies could save you a lot of time and from a lot of stress.
For more information, read our blog on Bedtime Rituals to Help You Have a Productive Tomorrow.
3. Don’t Snooze the Alarm
We all are tempted to get that “extra” five or ten minutes of sleeping time. However, this short amount of time could cause you to feel groggy and less energized. Your snooze minutes are enough to drive you off but not enough to complete a REM cycle. As a result, you will wake up with the hungover feeling known as sleep inertia. Sleep early the night before and stick to your alarm. It will train you accountability and make you confident that you don’t allow a snooze to decide your day.
4. Eat the Frog, First
No, this is not a new diet routine. Did you recall that anxiety of “I still have a lot of work to do today” lingering at the back of your mind? Eating the frog means tackling the most difficult tasks first. While most of us are master procrastinators, our highest energy, willpower, should be reserved for the most complex, dreading tasks. We mentioned that one of the best versions of yourselves is the first hour before you get up. By prioritizing the most challenging tasks, you will less likely become unmotivated, distracted, or put it off for the next day.
5. Don’t Check Your Phone
You may say that, “but hey, this is where I list my tasks,” or “my most difficult task requires me to open the phone.” Well, if you are the type of person who is not easily tempted to check your email, read the morning news or click the notifications from your social media, then you can easily do away with distractions. However, when you do this, you are already pre-occupying your brain with matters that will not directly affect you.
How often have you been concerned with an early email, news, or social media post that you forgot to do things for yourself first? When you can avoid this digital clutter, you can generate far more creative ideas and connections. Try shifting into a physical alarm, or turn off all notifications if you need to.
6. Eat a Protein-Filled Breakfast
People tend to skip breakfast as some just don’t feel like it, some believe it is bad for their diet, and others are into intermittent fasting. Breakfast is the first and most important meal of the day because it starts the metabolism process, and a lot of studies have indicated that having a good early breakfast can be linked to better memory, lower cholesterol levels, lower chances of diabetes, and better concentration.
Breakfast is essential because of the latter reasons but also because your body doesn’t stop working when you are asleep. So, your body has been starving itself for the last 10 hours that you have not eaten.
Getting a protein-rich breakfast can help you get a head-start on the day as it will give you a boost in energy you might even not know you need. It will help you get things done faster, make you feel less weak in the morning, and probably even uplift your mood.
7. Set a Schedule for the Morning
Everyone needs a schedule. Waking up whenever you feel like it and rushing to work is not doing your productivity any favor. Try setting a schedule for each task in a day; for example, “7:15 wake up, 7:25 brush your teeth, 7:35 eat breakfast, so on and so forth. This will help you set a schedule to follow every morning, eventually leading to a more productive and organized morning routine. You can then alter the routine to suit your needs for that week or month. This has been a known way to increase the productivity of a person.
8. Be a Morning Person
People like to party a lot, which might ruin a person’s sleep cycle. And having a messed-up sleep cycle does not go hand in hand with productivity. Office jobs have fixed hours, which are 98 percent of the time daytime hours. A person with a messed-up night cycle will be too busy fighting sleep than doing his work productively, making a good sleep cycle mandatory for jobs and indirectly for productivity.
There are a lot of ways to reset your sleep cycle. Some are harder than others, but they are more effective. Easier ones like exercising and slowly going back to normal sleeping and waking up times. But there are harder and more aggressive ones like skipping any naps in the day and waiting till night to fall asleep, this might be very hard, but it will hard reset your sleep cycle back to its original rhythm.
Conclusion
Waking up early does not need to be as bad as it seems or sometimes is. Scheduling everything, making it a habit, and putting some effort into having a comfortable sleep can always help you have a great day.