5 simple tricks for waking up early to achieve your goals

7 min readMar 28, 2019

In this article you will learn easy tricks to overcome your difficulty of getting out of bed. The purpose is to not change you into a morning person. It is only about helping you wake up 30 min early to spend that time to achieve your dream goals.

Have you dreaded waking up early? Do you believe that you are not a morning person? Is it simply impossible for you to get out of bed in the morning?

Well, neither are you alone nor should you change into a completely morning person.

The intention of the article is NOT to transform you into a 5 AM person. After reading this article, you will be happy to wake up 30 minutes earlier than your current time.

Whether you want to wake up earlier than that is completely up to your discretion.

This article is Step 4: 5 simple tricks for waking up early to achieve your goals of 3 phase transformation into super human productivity. You can begin right from step 1 by accessing the index here.

I used to myself hate waking up before 9 AM for a long time. In this article, I will share how I managed to break out of that habit. With some simple changes I managed to utilize my morning time fruitfully. I am now happier than ever starting my day early.

Why morning time is precious

Morning time is absolutely precious. Sadly, many waste their morning time either sleeping or spending it on the smartphone. These activities in the morning fail to enrich one’s life. When asked why don’t you wake up early, the standard answer usually is “I am not a morning person, I function the best in the evening.”

Cut that bullshit. Sure, there are a few people who are really at their best during the evening or night. Stop citing them as examples and making excuses for failing to budge your lazy ass off the bed. The reasons why you are not waking up early is because you are lazy. You lack the self discipline required to sleep early or value sleep more than your goals in life.

If you are already thinking of reasons why you cannot sleep early or wake up early, stop right there. Those are excuses. No one can change them for you except yourselves.

Benefits of waking up early:

1. You get more time during the day:

If you get into the habit of waking up around the 5:30 AM mark, you would have completed a ton of things by lunch time. In the mean time the rest of the world would have just warmed up. Out of nowhere, it seems like your day has stretched longer. Consequently, you now have more time to do things you could not find time for earlier.

2. You can focus better:

Mornings are calm and serene because the rest of the world is busy in bed. The lack of distraction helps you focus more.

3. You feel more healthy and proactive:

Research has proved that early risers are more likely to set long term goals and accomplish them. There is something magical about the early morning time. You not only become organized and productive, but also level headed throughout the day.

4. You procrastinate less in the morning:

Early in the day you will be more motivated to work on tasks that you would otherwise procrastinate. This is because, in the morning you are more inclined to make every minute count.

5. You plan your day better:

Even if this is the only thing that you do after waking up in the morning, it still makes waking up early completely worth it.

How sleep happens in cycles

Sleep consists of sleep cycles of 90 min each. Every night you go through multiple sleep cycles. The hack that you can use is, to ensure you wake up towards the end of the sleep cycle. If you wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle, the cycle breaks. Interruption in sleep cycles causes you to wake up exhausted. If you wake up towards the end of one cycle or early in the next cycle, you tend to remain fresh.

On the long run, it is recommended to sleep for at least 6 hours on an average. You can still wake up fresh with 3 or 4.5 hours of sleep daily, but it is not a good habit to cultivate.

You can calculate what time should you wake if you are going to sleep now. If you have a specific time to wake up, you can calculate the time you must go to bed — What time should I wake up to not feel tired?

Tricks to waking up early

Are you are facing challenges with waking early and staying fresh? Here are a few tips and tricks that might be helpful:

1. Do not snooze:

As mentioned earlier, sleep happens in cycles. If you snooze and wake up 10 min later, you are interrupting your sleep cycle. You wake up more exhausted than you would have without the snooze. Try to spend a few minutes in bed instead of waking up abruptly. However, do not spend these few minutes sleeping to wake up to the snooze. Change your opinion that the additional 10 min of sleep before the snooze will help. The reality is quite the contrary.

2. Change your mindset when you sleep and wake up:

Before going to bed, stop thinking that you are late to bed and that you won’t get enough sleep. The same applies when you wake up.

Train your mind to believe that you will get enough sleep irrespective of the time that you sleep or wake up. Subsequently, you will notice a paradigm shift in your freshness in the morning and during the day.

3. Countdown to 5 and wake up:

The single most challenging task in waking up is to sit straight.

If you manage to do that, you have conquered the quest for the day. Once you sit up, your urge to sleep again is far reduced. Sure, you might feel like lying down again. However, it is far more easier to resist it because you have already overcome the barrier of waking up.

4. Get enough sleep:

Everyone has a varied sleep need. It usually falls in the 6–8 hour range.Wind up your day early to ensure you get enough rest. Are are saying “hey, my circumstances or my job prevent me from sleeping early.” Do realize that it is not the circumstances that is the reason behind this. You are the reason.

If you are working in night shifts, find another job. If you have calls to attend late in the night, stop attending them and explain to people why. Yes, it is not very easy for some to tweak your routine to get into a morning schedule. But you know what? Blaming the circumstances ain’t gonna take you anywhere.

5. Sleep and wake up at roughly the same time everyday:

Try to get into bed at the same time, so that you get your adequate sleep. This makes it easier to then wake up early in the morning. Sleep happens in cycles of 90 mins. Science says that you wake up fresh if you wake up towards the end of a cycle. Use What time should I wake up to not feel tired? to help you figure out what time would be the best to wake u to complete your cycle. Do this as an experiment over a few days. If you are not someone who is used to waking up early, it will take a few days to balance your sleep and waking hours until you get it right.

Conclusion with an exercise

The benefits of waking up early are many. As stated earlier, you do not have to transform into a morning person after reading this article. All you need to do is, wake up a little earlier than normal. 30 minutes is the right start. You can stop at 30 minutes or aim to increase than 30 min to a longer duration which you deem necessary.

So the purpose of this exercise is, tomorrow you will set your alarm clock to wake up 30 min earlier. After you wake up tomorrow, proceed to the next exercise of taking action towards your goal.

This article is Step 4: 5 simple tricks for waking up early to achieve your goals of 3 phase transformation into super human productivity. You can begin right from step 1 by accessing the index here.