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Ask HN: how to become a morning person?

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11–20 of 104 posts

Re: Ask HN: how to become a morning person?

#11
Sounds like you're exactly like me -- if so, then probably nothing will work. You're options are: 1) Be out of sync with everyone else, or 2) Feel half dead throughout the day.

I stumbled across an illuminating graph on the trends page of my Google Web History: http://imgur.com/Or18c

I've got that 3 am to noon gap, just like the OP describes. I used to think I was on a 25+ hour cycle, but now I'm thinking I just generally like to go to sleep late. If something grabs my attention and I end up staying awake a few hours later than usual, the sun comes up and that makes it harder to go to sleep... thus leading to what seems like a > 24 hour sleep/wake cycle.

Exposure to sunlight seems to help somewhat.

Maybe consulting a professional would be a good idea. Prescription drugs. I never cared enough to go that far.

Re: Ask HN: how to become a morning person?

#12
I'm a big sleeper. I really enjoy sleeping, but I usually get up at 4 am. I'm not necessarily recommending this, but here's what I do:

- I drink a lot of caffeine (studies show that after a regular, high level of caffeine intake it doesn't affect your sleep patterns anymore).

- I take a 1 hour nap every day (usually around 3 pm)

- I go to sleep around 11 pm

- I naturally wake up around 4 am with no alarm

I like this schedule because I get a lot done before everyone gets up and then I have the whole day ahead. Plus, I really like taking naps.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I'm not naturally what you would consider a "morning person". My previous schedule for the last several years was something like: wake up at 2 pm, work, go to sleep at around 6 am, rinse, repeat. I kind of stumbled into my current schedule by accident.

Re: Ask HN: how to become a morning person?

#14
I had issues with sleeping when others do for a long while. I do not anymore (although get out of sync again about 2x a year).

1. Caffeine and you: You have a certain sensitivity to this drug. You may also be misusing it. Generally speaking, it's a late morning, early afternoon only drug. Late morning is the only place it starts working as its an adenosine antagonist, and you don't start getting adenosine in any really effective amount in your brain until then. (Adenosine is the neurotransmitter which makes you sleepy because you've been up for a certain period of time).

If you drink coffee (or soda) when you wake up stop. Cup #1 of coffee is the Earliest you should use it, and shouldn't happen before about 13 hours before you want your "bed time" to be or about 3 hours after you get your butt out of bed (so let's say "11 am". All it does before then is a brief heart rate spike from the adrenaline surge, or possibly help with caffeine withdrawal from yesterday (which you will not have issues with if you use your caffeine only between say 11a-4p)

The bloodstream half-life of caffeine is 4.9 hours That means it takes about ~10 hours to 1/4 the amount of caffeine in your system as when you stopped drinking it. Additionally, as its an adenosine antagonist, its effectiveness skyrockets the later in the day you have it in you. So if you're shooting for a 12pm bedtime, stop drinking by 2pm-5pm to significantly reduce your blood stream level by bed time.

2. Your bed and you: What are you allowed to do in your bedroom from now on? Have sex, sleep, get dressed. That's it. If there is a tv in your bedroom, say bye bye. If you read in there, say bye bye. If you touch your bed during the day, stop it. If you're sitting there with thoughts for tomorrow, stop that. If you can't stop that, you have to schedule a time of day considerably earlier than bedtime where you lay out tomorrows tasks.

If you're laying in bed for more than 30 minutes without sleep, up and at em, go read in a different room.

3. Routine: You need to get into a set pattern. Set yourself a bedtime. Start winding down before that, not playing video games or watching TV, (especially sports or TV with lots of faces) in that hour before bed. Setup a ritual for sleep, including oral hygene, preparing for tomorrow, etc.

4. Reduce alcohol consumption: Alcohol lightens the depth of sleep. Especially while getting used to a schedule, restrict your intake.

5. Cool down your house at night. I don't care if you like the thermostat in the high 70's most of the time, at night you want high 60's and hide under warm blankets. It really really really will knock you out.

6. Lights are something people are sensitive to in varying degrees. I suggest erroring on the side of expecting yourself to be light sensitive. Use tools like f.lux to drop monitor brightness after sundown. Use timers to turn on/off lamps to make your house have a sundown. Eschew bright, overhead lights before bedtime. If your TV has multiple video settings, even make a TV setting that's overly dark to use past a certain hour.

On the flipside, try to get a North eastern room with lots of windows. Try to live as far south geographically as you can. Make lights turn on like crazy (again, timers) before you want to be waking up. Create lots of noise in your living space (not alarms, but things like tvs, etc) around the time to get up.

7. Eat breakfast, and to really reset yourself, eat nothing 16 hours before you want to wake up. (This works VERY well to fix jetlag).

Re: Ask HN: how to become a morning person?

#15
post #9

Upon waking in winter: "does my clock say 5:30 or later"? -> GTFO of bed. In spring/summer/fall: "is the sky no longer pitch black?" -> GTFO of bed. I will cheat if I went to bed > 12:00. Why rise at insane times? Because there are far too many awesome things I want to do that day, and as soon as I wake up they pop into my head. Between 6 and 9 I do whatever I want, so I use it to read about interesting tech stuff, p…

> Because there are far too many awesome things I want to do that day, and as soon as I wake up they pop into my head.

Sounds like a description of what it's like to be a morning person, rather than how to become one. I do not wake up full of excitement and ideas for the day. I wake up pissed. But by the end of the day I'm full of inspiration and generally get a lot done in the evenings. I don't know if this is something you can change about yourself, at least not easily.

Re: Ask HN: how to become a morning person?

#17
As soon as you wake up, turn on a lot of bright light, open the drapes to let the Sun in, and so on. Exposure to light is one of the major factors that is used to reset your circadian rhythms to keep them synchronized with the external world.

Re: Ask HN: how to become a morning person?

#18

I've found Flux[1] to be very useful in stopping the constant forward-shift of my sleep schedule. Now I actually get tired at night. Perhaps it was simply over-exposure to blue light all these years... [1] http://stereopsis.com/flux/

Pretty cool tool. This would not be as useful to someone doing design work that requires color accuracy though :-\.

Re: Ask HN: how to become a morning person?

#20
I run in the morning on the treadmill to wake up. And take a nap in the afternoon - I find it makes me more productive like starting a second shift.

I heard about this one guy who mastered never sleeping by taking a number of power naps per day - and that it makes for more productivity working around the clock...

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