If you’re like me, you often think of sleep as being something you need at least 8 hours a night, but often catch 9 to 10 hours of it, depending on the time you head to bed. You set your alarm to a local radio station because you’re tired of hearing the buzzer. And you always wake up to the initial alarm thinking “just a few more minutes”, taking 30, day in and day out.

I decided to perform an experiment about getting up early. Like many, I hated the idea of waking up before 9am. So much so, I intentionally set my clock ahead 45 minutes to give the illusion it was actually later than the reality, but even then, I would quite often sleep in until post 9am. This was a habit I needed to change, but didn’t have the motivation or discipline to do it. I decided to change all that.

Here are the facts of sleep, as I know them:

• As you get older, you actually require less sleep — an average adult only needs approximately 6 hours sleep.
• As a teenager, I found a “money shot” sleep time of 5.5 hours where I was able to wake up freely and never had to worry about an alarm clock — that lasted 2 weeks, until the first day I decided to sleep in.
• Sleeping too much is just as bad as not sleeping enough.
• When you first wake up, your initial decisions are generally wrong, especially your decision to “sleep a few more minutes.”
• It is better to wake up at a specific time, every day, but go to bed only when tired.
• If you hold the same pattern for 30 days, it becomes habit.

Last night, I told myself I cannot rely on my thinking in the morning to get me up. I ingrained it into my mind, “don’t listen to my reasonings in the morning.” I will get up when the alarm rang, no later.

Like most people, I have a clock radio next to my bed which has two alarms. I have always just used the second alarm, tuned to a local radio station, cranked 45 minutes ahead. My first step was to fix that.

I decided I wanted to get up at 6am, a real 6am, not some cozy, 45 minutes padded number designed to make think it was later than reality. I removed the false 45 minutes “buffer” from my alarm. Then I adjusted both alarms; the second was backup in case I “convinced” myself to sleep in, again. I set the first alarm for 6am, the time I wanted to wake up. I removed the local radio station from my second alarm and set it to buzzer for 6:15am. Finally, I stayed up until I could stay up no more: I think I finally went to bed around 11:30pm last night.

This morning, the alarm rang at 6am. For the next 45 seconds, my brain raced wondering why the alarm was even going off. I was just about to it off, and sleep “a few more minutes” when it dawned as to why. I took a deep breath, stretched my entire body and got out of bed. At 6am, I was up and moving! Well, looks like I didn’t need that backup this time.

Step one, completed successfully. Now, lets see if I can hold this out for the next 29 days.

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