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Go to bed earlier at night.
By the way, have a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome
If you’re able, you should do what comes naturally. Are you a night-owl or a morning person? If you’re asking about how to wake up earlier, I’d guess the former. I’m simply more productive and creative in the AM, so I rise each day at 5:30. For me, knowing when I'm the most please with my own production is my motivation. But, by the time 2 or 3 rolls around in the afternoon I’m all out of juice. And truth be told if…
If you’re able, you should do what comes naturally Not sure I agree with this - For me, sleeping is just a habit. I get into the habit of staying up late, or the habit of getting up early. This makes it sound trivial - but it's not - habits take work to form and work to change. Naturally everyone is different. I'm sure there is research that disagrees with me :-) But that's my experience anyway.
If you do not sleep enough, your life will be shorter!
1) No caffeine after 5-6 PM, and generally less than 100mg of caffeine per day.
2) Exercising for at least 30 minutes/day, 3-4 times/week (but not right before sleeping). Although in my case, it's closer to 5 hours total/week.
3) Avoiding too much artificial sugar in a given day. I limit it to one "thing" (pastry/small piece of pie/etc) per day. After that, just eat fruit.
4) Keeping the area in which I sleep completely free of things that would distract me from sleeping. That is, I absolutely never use my laptop, watch TV or do anything similar while laying in bed. At least for me, this has turned out to be really important (and something my doctor recommended).
Also, some things that might help:
* Create a routine; start each morning with something you enjoy (coffee or watching tv or catching up on your news).. You'll find it gives you an incentive to wake up, rather than if you knew you were just immediately getting ready and leaving
* If you feel less tired than normal on a particular day, you can drink chamomile tea, or warm milk, both of which seem to mildly increase sleepiness.
* If you're overweight or in bad physical shape, then you will sleep much better after getting in shape. So if this is the case, you should work to make it a priority.
Go to bed earlier at night.
This means no tv, no internet, loud music etc. At first, this was extremely frustrating for me, I felt that I needed some kind audio/visual stimuli to keep sane. But after a while, I started to embrace this boredom and focus my awareness inside. Sometimes I meditate, write in my journal, take a slow walk to a beautiful viewpoint or just chill out to an old Bob Dylan album and really try to focus on the music.
These days, I manage to do this about half the time, and it usually makes me calm enough to fall asleep within 30 minutes or so.
These things work for me: Go to bed earlier at night. Leave your blinds open to let natural light come in in the morning. Have a deadline due the next day.
On the other hand, if I'm excited about something, and feeling really interested in what will happen that day it definitely helps. So, if I open a bug on a project that I need for my work...and I think about it some the night before, I'll wake up excitedly thinking, "I wonder if my bug has been answered?" Likewise if I email someone about some work I need done; requesting quotes, whatever, for projects that I'm enthusiastic about. Today I woke up thinking about the RFQs I sent out to three designers yesterday (nothing! this is why crowdsourced design is winning...), and a bug I opened about the Drupal Project module.
have children - you will quickly become an early riser ;)