Healthy Living • YMCA Health and Fitness
How to become a morning person
02 December 2016 - by Nicole Meredith
I’m always jealous of people who can hop out of bed at the crack of dawn and get a head start on the day, while the rest of us are still struggling to find our way out from under the covers. It turns out that transforming yourself into one of those ultra productive morning people is more straightforward than I thought. Science says you just have to do one thing: stop hitting the snooze button.
Of course, we all know that’s easier said than done. If you don’t want to invest in a clock that won’t stop ringing until you catch it, try one of these strategies to stop snoozing:
1. Before you head to bed, set your alarm for the time you actually need to wake up at (not three snooze intervals before). You won’t be able to doze for those extra ten minutes, or you’ll be late for work.
2. Jump out of bed as soon as your alarm rings, so you don’t have a chance to slip back to sleep. Try putting your alarm clock on the other side of your bedroom, so you have to get up to make its annoying beeping stop.
3. Take baby steps: instead of resolving to shun the snooze button eternally, give it up for just a week. Knowing you’re only trying this out for the short term will help you actually avoid snoozing for the full trial period — but by the time that week’s up, I doubt you’ll want to relinquish your newfound perkiness and slip back into your snoozing habit.
4. Think about your snooze time as lost time. Use the extra 10–30 minutes you would have wasted lounging in bed to make yourself a fancier-than-usual breakfast, go for a run, get a head start on your backlog of emails, or check off one of the dozen other things on your To Do list.
By retiring your snooze button, you’ll improve your quality of sleep drastically, which means you’ll be more energized and productive all day. That makes this one of the easiest things you can do to make a big difference towards your health.
Of course, we all know that’s easier said than done. If you don’t want to invest in a clock that won’t stop ringing until you catch it, try one of these strategies to stop snoozing:
1. Before you head to bed, set your alarm for the time you actually need to wake up at (not three snooze intervals before). You won’t be able to doze for those extra ten minutes, or you’ll be late for work.
2. Jump out of bed as soon as your alarm rings, so you don’t have a chance to slip back to sleep. Try putting your alarm clock on the other side of your bedroom, so you have to get up to make its annoying beeping stop.
3. Take baby steps: instead of resolving to shun the snooze button eternally, give it up for just a week. Knowing you’re only trying this out for the short term will help you actually avoid snoozing for the full trial period — but by the time that week’s up, I doubt you’ll want to relinquish your newfound perkiness and slip back into your snoozing habit.
4. Think about your snooze time as lost time. Use the extra 10–30 minutes you would have wasted lounging in bed to make yourself a fancier-than-usual breakfast, go for a run, get a head start on your backlog of emails, or check off one of the dozen other things on your To Do list.
By retiring your snooze button, you’ll improve your quality of sleep drastically, which means you’ll be more energized and productive all day. That makes this one of the easiest things you can do to make a big difference towards your health.
