Surprising secret to change your morning routine and be more productive
Imagine you could experience the sensation of the sunrise every day. Imagine you could awake before anybody else does. Imagine you can use that extra time for yourself. With no distractions around, just a fresh and quiet morning. You can easily make it your new morning routine — with the right change behavior hacks.
Seems quite interesting, that we people somehow appreciate the sunrise more than a sunset. I guess it is because we subconsciously know that unlike sunset, experiencing the sunrise takes effort. To see the sunset, you just stay awake a little bit longer. And depending on your location’s longitude and the period of the year, you perhaps even don’t need to push that too far.
Sunrise however is very different, special. You just have to set that alarm clock and pull yourself out of the comfy bed. That takes effort. That takes determination. But when you actually do it, you know that the prize was worth it. The trouble is how to make it a habit, right?
The good news is that changing your morning routine and waking up early is perfectly possible. Most people fail to establish this new habit just because they follow one of the change management misconceptions: they believe in the power of willpower. Willpower is a great force multiplier, a catalyst to initiate a change. But willpower evaporates over time. Willpower sucks as a long-term change management tool.
Have you ever tried to wake up early yourself? Like everyday at — let’s say — 5 a.m.? First day was actually quite easy, right? Your motivation was fresh and high — so when the alarm went on, you jumped out of the bed. No problem. The second day however was more challenging, and the bed was sooo comfy. But somehow you managed. Just do it! The third day was a killer. Maybe, it was even raining outside, dark and unwelcoming. And perhaps you went to bed late that evening before. So you hit the snooze button twice. Well, maybe three times. On the fourth day, you might have a problem to even persuade yourself that it actually makes sense to wake up so early. What’s the whole point of this madness? And you were looking for the reasons not only to snooze the alarm — but to switch it off completely and sleep until 7 a.m.
Do not rely on the willpower when you want to change your habits — or for any other change activity for that sake. To impose the new routine and get up early in the morning, you need to focus on making just two things right.
1. Make it personal: have a reason
Although that may sound pretty obvious, you would be surprised how many people fail to establish the regular early morning routine just because they don’t really know why they want to do it. The social media gurus might be buzzing and bragging about waking up at 4 a.m., hence people may get the notion that it is a cool thing to do. So let’s try that too, shouldn’t we?
To make any change work however, the first prerequisite is to know why you are doing it. To have a strong personal reason. Actually, you may watch my short video on the importance of personal motivation on youtube.
Everyone may have different reason why to wake up early in the morning and how to use that extra time, just make sure that you one and that it is strong for you. Myself, I appreciate that everybody around is well asleep I have quiet and undisturbed time either to workout or to do some creative work. Like writing this article. Some of the popular reasons why other people want to get early out of the bed might be the following.
Workout or walk outside: with no unexpected meeting request and delays, morning seem to be sure time not to skip your physical exercise.
Productive work: with nobody to interrupt your concentration and a fresh brain, mornings are ideal for creative work and when you need to do more.
Side hustle: some extra time next to your 9 to 5, when you are still fresh.
Skip the traffic commute: when you daily commute in the rush hour eats too much time, it may be a good idea to avoid the jam and ride early.
Health and align with circadian rhythm: our body is biologically programmed to wake up with the sunset.
Mindfulness: quit time of the day for your meditation or reading a book.
Slow start: enjoy the peaceful mornings to start your day without rush and stress.
The reason to wake up early in the morning not only formalizes your motivation, it actually makes the effort tangible. If you have no clear plan what you are going to do right after getting out of the bed, you will have hard times. The reason is therefore also about having that clear plan, knowing what you will do. That you will read one chapter in a book, that you will dress up and go running, that you will write a blog post. Always know what you will do that morning — do not plan on being spontaneous, do not postpone the decision on the morning’s activity for when you wake up.
2. Rely on behavior change system
Once you know your reason why, it is time for the how. Contrary to popular belief, and as I explained earlier, the willpower and just-do-it won’t make it unfortunately. Luckily, the Change Causality method can crack this challenge too. Without going into the full Causality Tree Map, I will only pick up the practical take-aways here.
First thing to understand is that there is no way around the required amount of sleeping time. In one youtube video, I remember Arnold Schwarzenegger to advise how to achieve more in life by saying “sleep faster”. There is no such a thing, unless you are about for serious health problems! If you want to better understand the sleeping, I recommend you the book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker.
As you therefore need to sleep 8 to 9 hours, simple mathematics tells us that to wake up at 5 a.m. you need to be in your bed by 9 p.m. Voilà — the surprising key to a consistent early morning routine is actually a consistent evening routine!
And that is the key question: can you adjust your evenings to go for bed that “early”? Do you want to, actually? I am aware that this very first prerequisite is hard to swallow for most people. Evenings and late nights become the time to catch up with our personal life, once we are done with our jobs and put kids into sleep (how two-faced).
But it doesn’t have to be a sacrifice, an either-or situation, a trade-off. Just look back on what is your reason for waking up early in the morning. Perhaps you just want to reschedule your activities from the evening to the morning — and enjoy them more undisturbed? Perhaps the review of how you spend your evenings could be an eye-opening exercise and a beginning of a healthier and more productive life?
When running this exercise on myself, I realized that majority of my evening activities is either catching up with work tasks or just wasting time, a mental buffering in an attempt to relax after a tiresome day. Watching Netflix, watching youtube, scrolling social media, trying to read a book at best. Now, I can move the work into the morning — and actually do it faster and better with a fresh mind and no distractions. And I can replace the useless and passive streaming consumption with more mindfulness activities in the fresh and peaceful morning.
The reshuffling of your evening routine unlocks the opportunity for a healthy 8 to 9 hours sleep and awaking early, yet refreshed each and every morning. Further steps may be however necessary to ensure you are snuggled up in bed by 9 p.m.
Our bodies prepare for the sleep gradually, it is not like jumping in the bed and falling asleep as on command. Here are the most critical do’s and don’ts how to get into your new habit:
Discuss your new habit with your family. If they won’t joint you, they at least should understand and not interfere and jeopardize with your new schedule.
Avoid caffeine at least 5 hours prior your sleep time. Caffein blocks the neuron-receptors for adenosine, a substance triggering the sleep-wake cycle in our brain.
Eat light and modest meals for the dinner, 2 to 3 hours prior the bedtime.
Do not watch TV and avoid blue light from electronic devices. If possible, turn on automatically the blue-light filter on your mobile phone 1 or 2 hours before sleep.
Dedicate your bedroom to just sleeping (well, besides perhaps one other thing). Either darken the windows or use a sleeping mask, if you go to sleep with light still outside.
There is nothing wrong to use sleeping apps or meditation music to facilitate falling asleep.
But most importantly, be consistent. Both in your new evening routine and waking up. The weekends should be no exception to the rule. Of course, you may need to attend a business dinner, party with friends or the travel may disrupt your rhythm. But you should always return back to your new habit as soon as possible.
The conclusion
Waking early in the morning could shift your productivity and wellbeing to a whole new level. Not only our brain is fresh and more creative, we may work or self-care undisturbed, while everybody is still asleep. Although establishing this habit is not overly complicated, many people fail because not understanding the causality of the behavior change. The most important thing to recognize is that you cannot cheat on the duration of your sleep. Waking up at 5 a.m. actually means going to bed at 9 p.m. Changing the morning routine therefore starts with changing your evening routine, like cause and consequence. The rework of the usual habitual patterns, that are more imposed on us than deliberately chosen, is the key to sustainable and consistent change.
Closing remark
This change management use case of altering the morning routine quite interestingly demonstrates how the change misconceptions can easily cause the change execution to fail. The obvious solution, setting the alarm clock to 5 a.m., will not work in long-term and cause abandoning the whole change activity. This is why I developed the Change Causality change method: to cut through the obvious and through the white noise, so you can make any change work for you.