I'd recommend sleeping in a room that gets sunlight as early as possible. As the room warms up (and gets brighter), you'll naturally wake up less groggily.
If your schedule can handle it, try just going to sleep when you are tired and seeing when you wake up (ie. don't use an alarm at all).
I tried this for about six months, and the following happened.
The first week or two I slept upwards of 10-11 hours a night, and woke up in the afternoon.
The next couple months, my schedule kind of rotated around the clock (I'd wake up about 30-45 mins later each day), but I only slept 8-9 hours.
By month four, I was only sleeping 7-7.5 hours at a time, and my schedule rotation had slowed to where it was only shifting about 15 mins a day.
The best part was that I always woke up extremely fresh and ready to go. I never felt like the walking dead, and generally was happier.
Before I tried this, I thought I was a night person, just because I always seem to stay up too late and dislike waking up... but I realized what I really liked was the quiet, and found that early morning quiet time (4-7am) was actually more productive, just because I wasn't worn out from a whole day of being awake.
Sadly I had to return to a day job for a bit before grad school, so now I survive mostly on coffee, but it was fun to try when I had the chance.
I'd recommend this as well - particularly waking with the sun. I've been in some light-deprived places, and then I got a wake-up light (basically it slowly lights up the room, rather than an alarm).
Instead of having an alarm BAM wake up, it's much more natural - you'll find yourself thinking "hey I'm awake". Much, much more pleasant.
I used to wake up to my nokia mobile phone alarm (which are excruciatingly loud). I'd snooze it about 4-5 times... Terrible habit. It would totally wreck me for the morning.
I also tend to exercise in the morning. I find this motivating. Doing this, or taking a walk, or something similar - you hit the day in peak form.
I wouldn't say "get light as early as possible." (Ideally) I go to bed at 11pm and wake up rested (I said ideally, ok?) at 7am.
So in London in the middle of summer it's light from 5am or so and I have to use an eye-mask. That early light was not my friend. On the other hand in winter the dark at 8am wasn't my friend either. A "wake-up light" (google for "sunrise alarm clock" or "daylight simulator") for winter might help.
Agree with the sunlight recommendation. In my case, controlling light levels makes all the difference. I need it pitch black when I'm supposed to be sleeping (whenever that is), with gradually increasing light when I need to get up. Some motorized blinds and a sunrise simulating alarm (possibly linked into a home automation system) might help, since the sun comes up too early during the summer and late in the winter at high latitudes.
That's almost identical to my experience, except with a bit less sleep and a bit longer rotations each day.
One thing that I noticed with the light thing is that an ultra-bright, dim-able lamp works wonders. It somehow puts me in a decent mood even if I'm sleeping at weird times.
I had this problem for nearly my entire life, and I finally solved it about 3 years ago. For me, I had to fix every problem that was affecting my sleep at the same time. If any one of those problems crops up again, then I won't be able to sleep properly until I resolve it. Anyway, for me, it involved the following changes in my life:
1) No caffeine after 5-6 PM, and generally less than 100mg of caffeine per day.
2) Exercising for at least 30 minutes/day, 3-4 times/week (but not right before sleeping). Although in my case, it's closer to 5 hours total/week.
3) Avoiding too much artificial sugar in a given day. I limit it to one "thing" (pastry/small piece of pie/etc) per day. After that, just eat fruit.
4) Keeping the area in which I sleep completely free of things that would distract me from sleeping. That is, I absolutely never use my laptop, watch TV or do anything similar while laying in bed. At least for me, this has turned out to be really important (and something my doctor recommended).
Also, some things that might help:
* Create a routine; start each morning with something you enjoy (coffee or watching tv or catching up on your news).. You'll find it gives you an incentive to wake up, rather than if you knew you were just immediately getting ready and leaving
* If you feel less tired than normal on a particular day, you can drink chamomile tea, or warm milk, both of which seem to mildly increase sleepiness.
* If you're overweight or in bad physical shape, then you will sleep much better after getting in shape. So if this is the case, you should work to make it a priority.
To expand on PGs comment a little bit. I used to have serious problems with onset insomnia, almost to the point of making me sick. While trying to find a solution, I found that having a few quiet, "boring" hours before I go to bed helps me a lot to fall a sleep earlier and quicker.
This means no tv, no internet, loud music etc. At first, this was extremely frustrating for me, I felt that I needed some kind audio/visual stimuli to keep sane. But after a while, I started to embrace this boredom and focus my awareness inside. Sometimes I meditate, write in my journal, take a slow walk to a beautiful viewpoint or just chill out to an old Bob Dylan album and really try to focus on the music.
These days, I manage to do this about half the time, and it usually makes me calm enough to fall asleep within 30 minutes or so.
True words. A connection can be made to the programming. It's generally accepted by programmers that there is no way to "hack" the process of becoming a really great programmer. That's why it's obvious that the whole notion of "[Persons] Teach Yourself [Enterprise Language] in [Unrealistic Time Frame]" is just garbage. Yet I personally had a hard time accepting that a good night's sleep wasn't hackable. I've tried all the methods you can think of: various routines and schedules, etc. When it comes down to it, like programming, it's something you can't hack. Trying to hack a good night's sleep is much like trying to learn a programing language quickly. True success requires effort and consistency, in the case of sleep, going to bed early.
2) You can only shift your schedule about 1 hour per day. You can try shifting it more, but you're going to have sweater-head, nausea and hot flashes. If you go from getting up at 11 to getting up at 5, expect five days of feeling like crap.
3) The pineal gland is activated by light incident on the retina. So calculate when you need to go to sleep based on when you get up, and stop using the computer one hour prior. AND use Flux, or do something to turn down the absolute amount of light coming from your screen(s).
4) The sleep-wake cycle is naturally about 25 hours. It takes discipline to go to sleep at the same time every night. Or exhaustion.
5) Recent findings suggest that starvation can suspend the diurnal cycle 12 hours or more. So eat a good dinner.
6) Additionally, fats, proteins, warmth, and bulk activate the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). Simple carbs offer none of these things. So fatty snacks are better. Unsalted nuts are a great snack (salt stimulated the cephalic phase of eating. So, sorry, but bacon is not a good snack).
7) Caffeine. Metabolized in the liver at a second-order decay rate by CYP1A2. Effective half-life is 3-7 hours.
Coffee: 30-170 mg/8oz
Espresso: 30-50 mg/oz
Tea: 10-50 mg/8oz (more with black teas)
Soda: 30-60 mg/12oz
Dark chocolate: 20mg/oz
Minimum effective concentration is around 0.05 mg/dL. Total body water is 40L for a 5'10" male (5'10" male has about a 70kg lean body mass regardless of total body weight and 40L of that is water. The 70kg and 40L vary linearly with height for adults). So those two cups of French pressed Sumatra you stopped drinking at 8:30 after a 7pm pasta dinner could easily keep you wired until 1 or 2 in the morning. Go on, have that chocolate ice cream, too.
8) Calculate when you want to get up (remember, you need to phase in the change, one hour a day). Establish a routine that starts at dinner. Eat. No more caffeine. Work. Have a small, fatty snack. Work until an hour before you need to go to sleep. Brush your teeth, change; lay down. Read something good. I recommend the classics. Doesn't really engage the problem-solving areas of your brain, but you've been meaning to start reading those things. Start with Plato. Very readable.
9) If you just absolutely have to go to sleep with noise, I recommend white noise. A beat, rhythm, or lyric will capture your conscious mind.
As for getting up, the only thing I've found that definitely will get me up without relying on sunrise is a social commitment. If surgery starts at 7 am and I need to round on patients before then, it's relatively easy to get up at 4:15. If I'm on a "research month", um, yeah.
The starvation study I remember said _don't_ eat 16 hours before you wake up, and then eat well. Then the body will remember the time you got food, and make sure you're awake for it.
Also, this is the least useful comment by pg i've seen in a long while. It's not even funny if you happen to be a late sleeper.
The description by niels_olson is thorough and in large part amounts to "how to get to sleep earlier". The pg comment simple cuts to the point and says "get to sleep earlier" without the medical explanations of "how and why".
The are both very useful and correct answers to the OP. I don't think it needs to be funny. Its simply correct. Most of us have far too much to do every day and end up working too late. If you want to wake up earlier, you have to stop doing that.
I'll leave with this one (also not meant to be funny):
"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
If you are a late sleeper, you've gone through a long time, usually many years, trying to do exactly that. Knowing you need to go to sleep earlier is trivial.. scraping all those pieces of information and making countless adjustments to your schedule in order to actually do it is not.
Somewhat off topic, you realize it's a real disservice to pg to upvote and defend any comment he makes indiscriminately? Or even with less discretion then normal.
I thought the comment was funny because I interpreted the OP not as really wanting to know how to get up earlier but rather how to sleep less (otherwise why the comment about sleeping your life away).
Wait, what? Plato is definitely heavy reading, and worth your full conscious attention!
Don't waste Plato by reading him when you're about to fall asleep!
Never worry about wasting the great books just because you're not reading them between 9 am and 1 pm in a sunlit alcove with two friends (or some other highly optimized conditions). If it's that great, suboptimal conditions don't matter.
I think you just lost your right to complain about comments that are shallow, flippant and/or do not bring any useful knowledge or argument to the table. Sleep is a serious subject with many intricacies and hacking one's sleep can have far-reaching consequences. By reducing it to a short soundbite you set out a bad example, and it will be followed with zeal - already it's been modded to 55. Sad.
Actually, the question has a simple and correct answer which is what PG provided. Just because sleep is a serious matter does not mean the advice/answer to the question must be complicated.
Answering the question is one thing, fostering good discussion is another. To foster discussion, both parties should understand each other. To help understanding, a question should not only be answered, but explained. An explanation is more helpful than a straight answer.
Consistency is the most important part. You need to reset your internal clock to get used to going to sleep and waking up at the same time. Even though it sucks at first -- you may have trouble falling asleep and then getting up early you'll still be tired -- you have to muddle through to get on a regular sleep schedule. Eventually, your body will adjust. Try not to deviate much at all.
(That's advice given to me by a sleep expert at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, RI many years ago, when I was afflicted with a rare sleeping disorder.)
She also told me never to do anything but sleep in my bed (don't read there, don't eat there, don't work, don't watch TV, etc.). Beds are for sleeping and training your brain to recognize that will help you keep to your regular sleep cycle.
If you're having trouble falling asleep, get up, go sit in a chair and read for 15 or 20 minutes, then try going to sleep again.
I will never have a good sleep - wake cycle. I normally go to sleep at midnight. wake up at 0600. And the worst thing is that I work, read, study & sometimes even eat on my bed. I'm not at my home there's very little room to make big changes with. But I'll try to re arrange my little room to keep up with your advice. thanx.
Consistency is for assembly lines. Sleep when you're tired. Eat when you're hungry. Just as importantly, don't eat or sleep when you're not hungry or tired.
...and by following that strategy, you will soon find yourself out of sync with everyone around you, to both your annoyance and theirs. However, if you start getting up at the time you want to be getting up whether or not you feel like it, then sleeping when you're tired will eventually work. Unless you have some medical problem, I guess.
I think that's part of why I do it, actually. I've noticed that in times where I'm very busy I tend to drift to a sleep pattern that gives me the most time to work undisturbed. Like, in real crunch times, I'll start going to bed at 8:00 p.m. and getting back up at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m.
Sometimes being out of synch with everyone can be a boon to productivity.
I do the same..my schedule is quite weird.. I will wake up around 9:30 AM go to sleep around 11 or 12 PM , quick power nap till about 1 AM , work more till about 4 or 5 AM , sleep and do it all over again. I find I'm most productive at night. so this is the schedule I work around.
What if I have a problem going to bed earlier? Sometimes, I can stay awake in the bed for at least an hour, if not even a couple of hours. It's like when you suffer from insomnia.
Try melatonin. They usually come in 3mg pills, and I find that a quarter pill will do me fine, triggering a drowsy phase in about half an hour lasting for about half an hour. If I am in bed with the lights out, I will sleep the rest of the night.
I am a night owl. When I'm not working, I naturally phase shift until I go to sleep at 5AM. When my workplace instituted a less flexible flex time so that I had to get there before 10AM as opposed to before noon, it allowed me to get to sleep early enough to be well rested.
I would prefer not to use any kind of pills/drugs.
I have tried drinking some tea made from lime/tilia-tree blossoms and some other plants, but it wasn't quite enough. It makes me sleepy, but just a bit and for a very short time. If I don't go to bed in the next 5 minutes or so, its effect seems to vanish in thin air.
5 minutes seems like plenty of time, assuming you place the tea right next to your bed and drink it once you've gotten into bed.
Natural ways to induce drowsiness include sex and turkey. A good workout and a hot shower a couple of hours before bed also makes it easier for me to fall asleep.
+1 for sex. I remember the nights when I slept at my girlfriend. They didn't necessarily made me an early riser, but they sure made me an early sleeper. But again, if I didn't sleep in the first minutes, the drowsiness would disappear.
Wake up very early the next day. Get something like 4-5 hours of sleep. Then you'll be so tired that you'll have to go to bed early. Then start a routine of going to bed and waking up at the same time every day and your body will get used to it.
I've tried this, but it didn't work. I was able to wake early for about 3 days then I still went late to bed and my schedule became a mess again. This has happened to me a lot of times: no matter how tired I am, somehow I still manage to go late to bed. Or if I go too early (at 11-12 PM), I wake way too early at 4 or 5 AM which is impractical. In the afternoon I'll become very sleepy and transform into a zombie :-)
Thats pretty much it - We've all read the various sleep 'hacks' and blogs out there but the only thing that worked for me was to go to bed earlier.
Like an old man, I now go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 6 ;) - But business/work/wife dictates that I get up earlier - when I first started this schedule it felt like I had been missing out on the wonderful early mornings. I just felt a bit more 'fresher'.
My previous schedule was 1:30-2am and waking up at 9-9:30; I sorta miss being a night owl, but both work and wife make sure I go to bed early.
Going to bed is easy; the trick is being able to get to sleep earlier. Melatonin can help, and so can simply not getting as much sleep as you'd like for a few days in a row. And only shift your schedule in short increments if you're looking to make a bigger change eventually.
I've had this problem forever. When I was in high school, I'd stay up all night, go to school at the end of my day, come home and sleep until midnight.
To the extent that I've solved it, I solved it after I had kids, and sleeping until 1PM became untenable for the family.
The answer for me? Wait for it: waking up early every morning.
I've learned that there is absolutely no way to predict when I'm going to fall asleep at night (even if I eliminate caffeine, use-bed-only-for-sleep, avoid stimulating reading before bed, etc); the only habit I've deliberately changed is that I never code after 10PM (a surefire way to look up and have it be 4AM).
Nope, what works for me is, whether I got to bed at 12:30A or 4:45A, I'm out of bed with the kids at 7A. If I have a bad night, I'll fall asleep the next night before 12A. Won't have any choice.
A day, a couple days, a week in sleep dep, not worth the life stress of starting the day in the afternoon.
Personally, I have noticed that watching tv and using the computer late at night keeps me up later. There have been studies that link tv watching and reduced melatonin levels. So don't use either before you want to go to bed.
Steve Pavlina has written a couple good articles.
Overview.
1. Go to bed when tired
2. Get up at the same time every morning. So if you don't get enough sleep one night, you'll go to bed earlier the next.
3. Don't do anything very stimulating late at night. Don't drink caffeine, or exercise late at night. Stimulating activities will keep you up to late.
4. Don't turn getting up into a problem with self-discipline, turn getting up into a habit. It's kind of corny, but practice getting out of bed during the day. Match the conditions where you get up, turn out lights, take off your work clothes, and get into bed. When your alarm goes off, jump out of bed, thrown on clothes, and do a little bit of exercise or do something else to wake you up. It doesn't matter really what you do, it just has to be consistent. After practicing a few times, it should be a habit, and you will be able to get up with your alarm when it goes off.
Getting up in the morning used to be one of the central struggles of my life (seriously), but I rarely think about it now and I'm almost always up by 430am, which is something I never thought would happen. Here's my story, if anyone is interested.
I've struggled with getting up my entire life, and so has my entire family, immediate and extended. My 18-year-old brother regularly sleeps until 1pm, as do many of my cousins and their parents. I was homeschooled growing up and the day didn't typically start until 11am. In high school, I got suspended numerous times for missing my first few classes. I joined the Navy out of HS and I pretty rarely had issues with being late because I overslept, because the military is very effective at putting the fear of God in you regarding the consequences. I still always slept until the last possible minute before getting up. After the Navy, I went back to finish college and ended up taking about 30 hours worth of classes every semester, which helped some, but I still overslept and was always jumping out of bed and rushing to class at the last second. I very often would sit down in class about 5-10 mins after having been sound asleep before. My wife was very frustrated, and I was frustrated with myself. I was sure that I had some kind of sleep disorder, especially since my whole family is like this.
So what changed? Mostly what changed is that I realized what you've realized: life is too short to sleep it away. My central problem has always been the actual act of getting up; once I'm up and awake, I'm fine. So I started looking around and I found this article by Steve Pavlina:
Basically, his method is to practice getting up, in the middle of the day. Bizarre (and embarrassing), but it works. I did this every day for a few weeks, and I immediately noticed a difference.
The other big thing I did was go to bed early. Not earlier, as I typically went to bed at 1am or 2am, but early. Like 8pm. I'd go to bed at 8pm for a week and get up at 5am. That was more sleep than I usually got, and since I was doing it consistently, it got easier over time. Then I started going to bed a little later and now I usually get to bed between 9pm and 10pm. Because I'm consistent, I get better quality sleep and I can get by on 7 hours consistently.
I know it's frustrating to have someone tell you to just go to bed early, but I found that it's a lot harder than it looks, especially because you've almost always got way more to do than you have time for and it feels like you should work on some of it rather than go to bed. The key for me was realizing (after some "split-testing") that I get probably 2-3x more accomplished in the four hours from 5am - 9am that I do from 10pm - 2am.
A few other things that I found vital:
- no caffeine after noon
- no computer or tv within an hour of bed
- keep room as dark and quiet as possible while sleeping
- try to keep the same schedule on weekends
- alarm clock in different room
- once you're up, immediately splash water in your face
- exercise several times per week
- track your progress!
Try this for a month. Most people I know who have become early risers would never go back. There's something incredibly rewarding about hitting 8am having already had breakfast, worked out, showered, knocked out a bunch of emails, read all your blogs, and built two new features. In San Francisco, that means you're about two hours from when most folks even start working :)
Listen to that man!
I was about to suggest the same thing. Take Steve Pavlina's advice as seriously as you can. That should be enough for starters. You should notice a great improvement just like Ryan and myself have.
I was known as somebody who's completely alarms-any alarms-"resistant". I'd set my alarm so loud and so annoying that I used to wake up my whole family and then they had to wake me up... this just couldn't go forever.
I read Steve Pavlina's article and applied his suggestion. Wow, what a difference... I experienced great results even after a couple of days of practicing.
As for the rest of the advices Ryan gives, I should probably listen to a couple of them (I already ditched coffee completely, don't watch TV before bed, but I do work on computer...) for better quality sleep, but I never really had problems sleeping - just waking up ;)
Wake up early. Go to bed when you're tired. Don't work on a computer past "X" at night (X varies for a lot of people, but usually an hour- from when you want to sleep).
Not sure what it is, might just be not winding down -- but the light of the screen probably doesn't help imho.
If you’re able, you should do what comes naturally. Are you a night-owl or a morning person? If you’re asking about how to wake up earlier, I’d guess the former.
I’m simply more productive and creative in the AM, so I rise each day at 5:30. For me, knowing when I'm the most please with my own production is my motivation. But, by the time 2 or 3 rolls around in the afternoon I’m all out of juice. And truth be told if I wasn’t in a corporate environment I would likely take a nap at this time to recharge.
It depends on your biochemistry to a large degree. Some people need hardly any sleep, some do _much_ better work if they sleep a full night's sleep, which can be defined anywhere between 6 and 10 hours. Some people do well on a 24-hour clock, some don't. Minor sleep disorders are common and often not diagnosed.
Don't worry about anyone else (one of the luxuries of a lot of tech jobs), find the schedule that leaves you feeling alert and awake and able to get things done. If you need 8 hours of sleep to be able to code the next day and not walk through the day in a haze - that's you. If you do well keeping a fixed schedule and not deviating, that's great. But if not, don't fight it, listen to your body.
Similarly, some people can code for 10, 12 hour stretches. Some people stop doing useful things after 4 hours without a serious break. Experiment, find what works for you, and _do not_ expect other people to work like you do. Focus on end goals, not processes.
He means that some people do well going to sleep and getting up around the same time every day and some don't. (My hackers go to bed later every day, so their bedtime wraps around the clock often.)
For me it is, asleep from 1-4:40am, wake up at 7:30am to get the kids off to school, back asleep by 8:30am wake up at 11:00am-12:00pm. I then start work (I can work any hours I like as long as I do the work). Frankly, it kind of sucks. I've always wished I could get up early, chipper and fresh but even when I was a little kid I couldn't (well, when I was 8 I could).
Even by the age of 10, when I had to get up at 5:00am to deliver a paper route, I was an absolute wreck in the morning. By the time I was a High School student I would essentially spend the entire first half of the day in a sleepy haze even falling asleep in the midst of taking tests (I would jump with a start and find pencil trails running down the sheet where I had passed out). Teachers would yell at me for sleeping in their class all the time.
No I don't have narcolepsy... I was tested. Most they came back with was I have mild sleep apnea but the stupid breathing machine they give you just prevents me from sleeping even more so I quit wearing it... so I could actually get SOME sleep. ARGH!!!
As someone who has to nag someone else to wake up and get up, can I just say how disruptive it is to what I'm trying to do. Instead of concentrating I'm constantly checking back to see if they need another nag. So the sleeper isn't just consuming their own time, they're affecting the quality of mine too.
Sleep is a important component of health, along with nutrition and exercise. Life's too short to be unhealthy for a major part of it. You should get all the sleep your body needs.
Do it consistently. I just started rising at 9:30 (this is early for me) every day a few weeks ago, and I now wake up naturally without the alarm, and usually by 9. It only took about four or five days with the alarm and going to bed at a reasonably consistent time (between 1AM and 2AM) every day before I was comfortable waking at this time. I even "slept in" this morning after waking naturally at about 7:30...I rolled over and went back to sleep and got up again at 9:15 feeling pretty well rested. I often take a 20 minute nap between 4 and 6 in the afternoon.
I'm a lifetime overachiever in the field of sleep. If I can convert to a 7-8 hour sleep schedule, anybody can. And I've found that consistency is about the only way I can do it without feeling like crap during the day...so no more all-nighters, no matter how awesome whatever I'm working on is.
Well you all may missing the point. It's not important at what hour You get up. The matter is how long did You sleep. Normal person needs up to 4 circadian cycles. We make one every 1.5h, it varies individually.
Here is real catch, if You sleep over this four cycles. Your brain starts to use some proteins produced during sleep. Its big waste because catecholamine is produced only during sleep. So if You over sleep, You loose energy, and You may wake up tired.
To start wake up earlier, this was tested by myself. You need to reset your brain. So don't sleep for night or two. And after go sleep on proper time. For 6-6.5h. You will be fresh as new born.
Interesting about the sleeps starts when You have idea about, training polyphasic sleep :-). Well its different story.
1. Plan in the evening what exact tasks you are going to do in the morning. Come up with detailed tasks - code this function, debug this issue, write follow-up emails, etc. If the tasks are not defined, then it's hard to push yourself to wake up early in the morning.
Basically you need a reason to wake up in the morning. If we don't have reason, then even if alarm rings, we snooze it and procrastinate waking up at the decided time.
Do all brainstorming, planning, HN/news/blogs reading in the night. And decide a clear action plan for the morning.
2. Sleep early. One of my advisers sleeps at 10-10:30 in the night, and wakes up at 4am. I tried following same pattern, and it worked flawlessly. I used to get solid work done in 4am-8am before I go to my day job.
I love the way my mom's younger brother wakes me up. This is a memory of my kid time. He softly talk to me saying "it's better to wake up" while providing some dim light with his little torch. It gives me a comfortable wake up.
I wish I can have that smooth wake up all the time but now he has his own kids to worry about and he's so far away from me. It'll be good if there's something emulates that feeling.
My story won't mean you anything. But I enjoyed reminiscing those nice wake ups & if I ever have to wake some one up I'll definitely do it my uncles way.
Deadlines work the opposite for me. Procrastinators can do anything other than what they're supposed to be doing...including sleep. At least, I can. The less I want to do something, the more exhausted I feel; and deadlines damage my desire to do something more than just about anything.
On the other hand, if I'm excited about something, and feeling really interested in what will happen that day it definitely helps. So, if I open a bug on a project that I need for my work...and I think about it some the night before, I'll wake up excitedly thinking, "I wonder if my bug has been answered?" Likewise if I email someone about some work I need done; requesting quotes, whatever, for projects that I'm enthusiastic about. Today I woke up thinking about the RFQs I sent out to three designers yesterday (nothing! this is why crowdsourced design is winning...), and a bug I opened about the Drupal Project module.
I wonder how Paul Buchheit (the guy who started GMail) got around this problem. He mentioned that he's not an early riser in the book "Founders at Work".
When searching more on the subject, I found this interesting text:
"This sort of smugness is prevalent among morning people, who count among their ranks Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, nearly every American president, and even Jesus. (See Mark 1:35: "And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.") Night people are stuck with psychopaths like Adolf Hitler and Juan Arreola, the guy in Pennsylvania who nearly killed his girlfriend's 2-year-old last year, explaining to a judge, "I'm not a morning person."" http://friendfeed.com/e/cc0e9eb4-39ff-11dd-9d6f-003048343a40...
Have something to do once you get up, a reason to get up. I had the same issues before I started to go to the gym in the morning. This has really fixed my sleeping routine.
If I don't have a reason to get up in the morning, I'm much more likely to stay in bed before I go to sleep again.
Yes, this is my biggest tip as well. All the best intentions in the world won't help you change for good - in my experience. Though having said that, even something voluntary like going to the gym might not be enough...
The two things that worked best for me were:
Organise every meeting you possibly can to be in the morning, and don't allow yourself to cancel.
Go to bed with something unfinished, i.e. have something to do that really propels you out of bed. An example would be leaving a piece of code not quite done, but with a good idea of how to finish it (if you haven't got a clue, it's more likely to make you want to stay in bed and make it go away, no?). Thinking about the problem while dropping off and waking up makes me just want to leap up and fix it.
Other tips, potentially irrelevant to most commenters, but that worked for me:
Give up WoW. Or at least stop playing it late at night. Seriously. The difference in sleep quality, for me, is night and day.
Hack your nutrition. Eat low-GI. Cut out soda and junk food. Let caffeine be a treat, not a staple.
Have a flatmate or loved one poke you awake. Even if they're not geographically present, having someone you love call you or tuning yourself to wake up to the sound of an incoming IM can help you boot up faster in the morning.
Read in bed, but don't read anything too interesting. I still have this backfire when I open a new book at 11pm and don't sleep 'til it's finished. Others love to journal instead, which can be a great relaxer, but I end up making todo lists which has the opposite effect.
Life is too short to be muttering through the day like a zombie, either, so you're going to need to sleep as much as you need.
Keep going to be earlier until you wake up when you want. Stop using an alarm clock. Be consistent.
I haven't used an alarm clock in years, and when I need to get up at 3:30 to hit the gym, its not a problem. Of course, I'm going to bed 8 hours before that too.
You can't cheat the math. If you want to get up earlier, as pg and others said, go to bed earlier.
EDIT: By nature, I have the damnedest time going to bed. I'm always immersing myself in a programming problem or a TV show or some other time sink (worthwhile or not). To fix this, I started taking melatonin an hour or so before I plan to go to sleep. I know its helped me adjust my sleep/wake cycle.
Get a kid, particularly the infant kind. They'll wake up at 5am without fail everyday for the first several years and are impossible to ignore when they're awake. When they start sleeping in late, get a another one.
I swear by this concept:
http://www.homedics.com/products/soundspa-sunrise.html
Even just a simple timer on a lightswitch or lamp works for starters. I find the natural sunrise effect to be less jarring however.
I used to use an X10-type system as well, controlled by a server to dim lights at night and brighten them in the am. This was ideal but X10 was flaky so I'm using the SoundSpa Sunrise until I can upgrade to something more reliable.
I forgot to mention...for those occasional must-get-up-very-early mornings, I drink a coke before bed (usually I'm tired enough it doesn't phase me) and sleep with the light on. 4-5 hours later, I'm up.
Drink lots of water a few hours before you go to bed, and use an alarm clock. I often find that I'm up before it goes off, but if for some reason that doesn't happen, the alarm clock wakes me up.
I fast to reset my sleep cycle. I can only tolerate 10-12 hours of no calories, but longer supposedly works better. I try to maintain it by not eating during my desired sleep schedule. So if I'm up all night coding, no calories are allowed.
* My pre-alarm goes off 15 minutes early. After this alarm, I start thinking and worrying about what I need to do. When the real alarm sounds I'm ready to jump out of bed.
* I don't use the bathroom in the morning when I'm sleepy. A full bladder helps me stay awake.
* I nap whenever I can't work.
* Also, drink some water before you go to bed and don't use the bathroom, this will help you wake up in the morning.
I will be more flippant than pg: Just get up already.
Now I will explain my reaction so I don't just get downvoted and if you disagree with me, reply.
Most people in the world have responsibilities. Kids to feed and to take to school, chores and errands to do plus a (sometimes long) commute to a job where they cannot afford to be late (responsibilities, a boss, or both). Yet, they all manage just fine.
Do something interesting. My project consumes the whole of me. I go to bed thinking about it, sometimes I get ideas in my sleep, and I wake up eager to implement or research whatever I "dreamed" up :-)
It also helps that my girlfriend is on a different time zone and calls me early in the morning for her good-night kiss and chit chat.
Its not like somebody will pay me if i get up early :)
I say stay up as long as required and try to get as much done as possible. But one important thing is to maintain atleast a 12 hour overlap with other people in your team if you are in a startup. An added advantage is, there is somebody to monitor the servers round the clock ;).
If I go to bed at midnight, I wake up after 10 hours of sleep. If I go to bed at 5am, I wake up after 7. If you're really looking to maximize your waking time, it's not about getting up early, it's about finding your most productive pattern. My work output doubled once I realized this and stopped setting alarms.
I've always been the kind of person who loves sleeping in.
I've got several alarm clocks strategically placed in my room so that I can't simply turn them off without having to actually get out of bed and because there are several of them, the resulting dissonant noise is usually enough to wake me up.
Exercise at least 1 hour per day, 4-5 days per week. You may begrudge the time in the gym, but I've found that an hour of exercise can replace an hour of sleep -- so you're not really out any time, you're just in pain for that hour ;).
Travel to a country that shifts your waking up time by the correct amount, and stay there for a couple of months. It's the most painless method, but it's a bit expensive.
Find people to work out with and establish a time to meet early in the morning. Make sure they will be pissed off if you don't show up. Rowing is ideal for this.
I thought this was well known, so sorry about the lack of links in the first assertion. Is that why I'm gaining negative marks, or are you shooting the messenger for the news you don't like?
Unfortunately I sometimes wake up with no alarm going off, think to myself "hmm, where's the alarm? what time is it?", look at the clock and realize that it's 4 hours later than I intended and the alarm has been turned off. Since I have no recollection of turning off the alarm, it isn't really a matter of discipline :(
Edit: Of course, I'm not suggesting that this is a deal breaker, or that I've 'given up', just that it's not always as simple as "just get up when the alarm goes off." I also have been known to pass the turing test in my sleep. I once convinced my wife that I had the day off when she tried to wake me up... Yea, I was really late that day.
I once got up, ready, into the elevator, down to the street, bought a coffee and took a sip, looked around (dark, busy intersection not so busy), swore and then went back to bed. As far as I know I was totally coherent the whole time to everyone around (wife, doorman, coffee-shop-girl, etc).
Stress factors a lot into it for me. If I'm having a good week hardly anything strange happens in my sleep.
You laugh, but I've done this when I stayed up way too late and really wanted to be up early the next morning. When I started my first company, I spent many nights sleeping on the floor with just a small blanket that was too small for me. Miserable, but pretty easy to get up when my alarm went off.
There's no reason to get up early in the morning. This is one of those things like marathon running and vegetarianism. For totally irrational reasons people think they're doing something worthwhile just because doing it sucks.
I disagree. Running is pretty damn exciting, even more than video games. Don't believe me?
Go on track, run a lap in under 1:45. Now imagine you can run at that speed for a long long time, without getting tired, in the trails, near lakes, on the tiny bridges -- running rules.
Once you actually can run (not jog like many do: took me a year or so) it is great.
If your schedule can handle it, try just going to sleep when you are tired and seeing when you wake up (ie. don't use an alarm at all).
I tried this for about six months, and the following happened.
The first week or two I slept upwards of 10-11 hours a night, and woke up in the afternoon.
The next couple months, my schedule kind of rotated around the clock (I'd wake up about 30-45 mins later each day), but I only slept 8-9 hours.
By month four, I was only sleeping 7-7.5 hours at a time, and my schedule rotation had slowed to where it was only shifting about 15 mins a day.
The best part was that I always woke up extremely fresh and ready to go. I never felt like the walking dead, and generally was happier.
Before I tried this, I thought I was a night person, just because I always seem to stay up too late and dislike waking up... but I realized what I really liked was the quiet, and found that early morning quiet time (4-7am) was actually more productive, just because I wasn't worn out from a whole day of being awake.
Sadly I had to return to a day job for a bit before grad school, so now I survive mostly on coffee, but it was fun to try when I had the chance.