Ask HN: What did you do that got you to wake up earlier?

For me it is driven by the sun.

In the summer often it is bright at 5:30am and I can't help but drive to

https://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/8204.html

hike 6 miles then go to work.

I use alarms on multiple devices to maintain a strict 7 days schedule.

For me, a 2:30am to 7:30pm local time wake schedule allows direct daily communication in all important time zones; it has the added advantages of allowing for decent morning rituals and a solid 4 hours before anyone local is online, and eliminating the typical activities most people engage in after 8pm..

Along the same lines, I start my personal weekly schedule on Friday mornings with the aim of preemption of Friday afternoon crises and preparation for whatever looks likely to come along the following Monday.

My experience is that any schedule allowing for less than 8 hours sleep time needs vigilant protection of the time one actually goes to bed to avoid sleep deficit.

I managed to wake up earlier by ensuring that I got 15-30 minutes of bright light exposure immediately upon waking. Sunlight is ideal, but I'm in the PNW and it was winter at the time, so that wasn't an option for me. Instead, I bought a sun lamp on Amazon. The particular model is no longer available, but it was a 10,000 lux lamp that I placed right below my monitor. The incredible thing is that it took less than a week before I was waking up before 6am without the use of an alarm clock.

I learned of this from the Huberman Lab Podcast, specifically the part where he touches on advancing your biological clock here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm1TxQj9IsQ&t=3339s

I’m a sample of one, but I’ll offer two things that have made a huge difference for me.

#1 - 5-ish years ago I used an alarm clock app that would require me to get out of bed and take a picture of an object in my house away from the bedroom (I chose my microwave), then complete a puzzle, then review goals I had written down in order to turn the alarm off.

I probably used the app for 6 months and I have to say it absolutely and permanently changed my behavior.

#2 - I had an epiphany about how my diet affects my sleep. I still have a lot to learn about this but the casual observation that eating a big meal too close to bedtime, high salt meals, and anything that could lead to heartburn can wreck a night for me. It sounds obvious now but I was going through my life not having really acknowledged this.

All in all, I do think my difficulty was mostly that I was a little tired in the AM and prone to making excuses and hitting snooze… my sleep habits were otherwise ok to good.

If you’re in a similar situation, I’d try paying attention to the link between your diet and sleep (even if you don’t think the link is there!) and finding something that forces you over that hump of initial work of getting out of bed. Once you’ve had to run to your kitchen to shut your alarm clock off and jumped through a few mental hoops, you’ve already gone through much of the trouble of getting out of bed.

Waking up earlier is a secondary effect of going to bed earlier and/or getting better sleep. If you go to bed earlier and sleep well, waking up earlier shouldn't be a problem. Here are some strategies that I employed:

* Drug yourself if needed (benadryl or melatonin work pretty well for a lot of people - if you use melatonin, https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th... is of interest)

* Stay away from alcohol. It can help you get to sleep, but the quality of your sleep is materially worse. For me, as little as half of a beer can absolutely wreck a night of sleep.

* Get away from bright screens before bed. No TV, no computers, no phone, etc. If you really must, try an eink ebook reader (kindle, remarkable, etc). Read a book. Write (on paper). Practice a musical instrument. Listen to an audiobook. Literally anything other than staring at a screen.

* No caffeine intake after ~3pm ish (if this doesn't help, try earlier cutoff times).

* If you snore a lot (and especially if a partner tells you you stop breathing or sound like you're choking or something), get tested for sleep apnea. Sleeping with a CPAP changed my life. I genuinely can't remember a single day in my life where I woke up feeling rested until I was 28 years old, which is when I got my CPAP.

* Lower the temperature in your home about an hour before bed if possible. A few degrees (Fahrenheit) will do. For extra effect: take a really hot shower right before going to bed. The temperature swing from hot to cold can help you get to sleep faster.

* If you don't already do so, try taking a short walk during the day (15-20 min or so). A tiny amount of exercise during the day really changes how I sleep.

* Go to bed and get up at the same time every day (even weekends). If you feel the need to sleep in on the weekends, you're probably not sleeping enough.

* Gradually darken your environment at night, brighten it in the morning around the time you want to wake up. Smart light bulbs (Phillips Hue and the like) are great tools for this, especially when paired with something like home assistant. I shift all of my lights a bit warmer/more red toward the end of my day, then ~30 minutes before I want to wake up, I start fading up the lights in my bedroom to full brightness (over the course of 20 minutes so that the lights reach full brightness ~10 minutes before I want to wake up). Most days, I am awake before my alarm goes off. As an added bonus, waking up this way feels much better -- I am always slightly startled by my alarm, so I start the day mildly grumpy if that's how I wake up.

* If you silence your alarm and then go back to sleep in the mornings, I find it helpful to move the alarm across the room so that you have to physically get out of bed to turn it off. Once you're up, stay up. Don't let yourself learn that it's okay to wake up and then immediately go back to sleep.

YMMV, I'm not a doctor, etc, etc.