On waking early: the early-rising mindset

Today, Bad Language has a very helpful list of ten tips on waking up early, including setting goals for yourself with a tool like Joe's Goals, promising yourself rewards, and simply going to sleep earlier. The fact that Bad Language is a stellar source of top ten lists notwithstanding (it actually has its own top ten tips for top ten lists), this early-rising advice seems particularly reasonable. Much more so, for instance, than Steve Pavlina's popular post on rising early, in which he advises to stay awake as long as you like. Apparently that works for him, but not for me.

As for myself, I have a pretty simple approach: I put myself in the early-rising mindset as I fall asleep the night before. I just think for a few moments about why it is important to wake up at x o'clock, and about what will go wrong if I don't. When I wake up the following morning, I'm generally still in that mindset, and I have a feeling that it's important to get up right away. At that point, the key is to get up right away. Because if I don't, I'll talk myself out of the early-rising mindset, and drift back into a blissful somnolent state.

Tags: sleep early rising productivity Bad Language morning waking