Early Riser Challenge

Most of my life I’ve been a night owl and while I’ve enjoyed that at different times in my life I’m ready for a change in my sleep habits. I’ve finally accepted (by force of nature) how important it is for health. A consistent sleep/wake cycle is proven time and again to be as fundamental to good health as a good diet.

The bottom line though is I’d like to change my late night ways…  I’d like to wake up early with ease, without an alarm clock and by God, I want to like it.  So I’m going to put it in the form of a 30 day challenge.  Over the past few months I’ve had good success with this format so my hope is that it will help modify this behavior also.

I mentioned this challenge to a few people and have had a mixed response. This most surprising was having someone say that they thought the idea of success being tied in any way to one’s waking time is dated and more tied to a life of farming etc..  I guess there is some truth in that but I would still venture to say that ‘most’ highly successful people are early risers and if not they are at a very minimum disciplined in how they approach sleep and I guess that’s a key component of what I’m going for in this challenge… exercising the Discipline muscle.

The approach

Well, the approach isn’t very scientific.  It involves getting in bed earlier and getting out of bed the first time I hear the alarm. If I feel extra groggy in the morning I have a glass of water beside the bed and I will drink it down so that if nothing else, 30 minuets will pass and I’ll have to answer the call of nature!

update: as the month went on I also found than hanging my leg off of the side of the bed at the hip really helped me from dozing back off.

The goal

Wake time of 5:00 AM.  Every day.

That’s it.. will see how it goes.

Results: 

 

9/1/2011

Woke at 5:30 – Felt tired… it makes getting the kids up and ready for school easier but I got nothing special done.  Strange thing is though is that it’s 8:00 and I’ve already finished a cup of coffee, wrote this (such as it is) and did a few other things…. that never would have happened otherwise. Guess I will go change the AC filter and head into work.  I think I can enjoy this challenge… I expect the weekends will be the real test though.

Friday, September 02, 2011 7:06 AM

Woke up at 5:15 – Guess I will have to get accustomed to being a bit useless for the first 30 minuets of the morning until my system is more adjusted. Maybe starting coffee earlier will help also.  Got in bed at around 10:00 last night.. though I was tired at 9:00. I guess the most important thing to note right now is that even though this is hard and in many ways sucks there is way more about it that feels “right”.  Look forward to seeing how this is going around the middle and end of the month.

9/3/2011

Got up at around 5:20. Went to bed at close to 11:00 so it was force of will that got me out of bed. Unfortunatly the drinking water thing isn’t working though. I just can’t stand warm water but I’ve found something else that works for me.  I hang my leg off the site of the bed at the hip. It’s impossible to sleep like this and the longer you do it the worse it feels until you finally get out of bed. Its about 10am now and I’m still feeling pretty good and have even done some jump rope and pull ups so it’s pretty much a normal day.

One other thing worth mentioning.  Both yesterday and today I’ve had an terrible time holding concentration on anything. I know it’s the sleep change but it lasts all day. I will keep track of this as the month progresses but coffee doesn’t seem to help at all, as it does with normal tiredness.

9/4/2011

Got up at a few minuets after 6:00 today.. we spent the day on the river yesterday and got home late.. it just was.not.possible to be up at 5:00.

9/5/2011

Went to a small party last night which kept us up to after midnight.. two days in a row of that had me waking up at 7:00. Ugh. That’s so far off target. Hope to be back on track tomorrow.

9/6/2011

Got up at 5:20 or so today.. went to the grocery store and shopped before everyone even woke up. Felt good most of the day. Still not able to do “thinking” work early in the morning but I’m going to try it tomorrow as I need to put together proposal for a new client. Will see how it goes.

9/7/2011

Got up 5:30 today… it was hard. BUT… it’s was slightly less more difficult than the day prior.  That’s new!  I maintained a reasonably productive day and didn’t feel very tired.

9/8/2011

Did it.. 5:30 or so.. hated it.. but did it. Felt like I had the flu until about 6:30.

9/9/2011

Got up at 6:30 today.. got the kids off to school and took a nap until 8:30. sad.  Stayed up late for the Packers-Saints game… it was worth staying up for but it blew my morning up. Discipline.

9/11/2011

Got up at 8 today… and did the same yesterday. Just staying up too damn late for this to work right.  so it’s 9:01 PM right now.. I’m typing this and then going to bed.

9/15/2011

Got up at 5:30 today.. yesterday though, I got up at 6:45 and … the days before were mostly in the middle 5 AM hour.

10/3/2011

Well, I ended up with a cold this month that hung around for a long time.. I needed more sleep than usual and to make matters worse it was the kind of cold that made it difficult to GET to sleep… It threw me off completely and I was not able to maintain the new wake-up time.

I’m going to give it another go starting Wednesday of this month. I’m also going to move the time up to 5:30am instead of 5AM… I think is’t just more realistic.