Soaring high above the mountaintops, you swoop down to graze your wingtip, slicing in half the 500-foot-long waterfall that thunders down into the lagoon below. You twist into a barrel roll, the cool morning breeze under your arms lifting you higher, and climb, just inches out from a cliffside, expertly dodging rocks and shrubs. You see the top of the cliff only five seconds away and . . . BEEP BEEP BEEP!
“You’re welcome!” Your alarm clock stares back proudly, having dutifully fulfilled its purpose for the day. And the responsibilities begin stacking up. The race against time has started. The cogs of society are already turning, and you need to get dressed and insert yourself into the machine. No doubt, you could have benefited from another 20 minutes of sleep, flying over mountains, but a double-shot Americano and donut will have to suffice.
We’ve somehow come to accept this daily torture as a necessary part of our morning grind. Waking up on a work or school day is an arduous chore, and sleeping in has become one of life’s precious indulgences. We rely on the alarm to keep our commitments with others, but at the cost of less rest for ourselves. We give less priority to the benefits of a full night’s sleep than to being up to date on social media or the latest streaming sensation. And we justify it by telling ourselves that we’ll catch up on sleep over the weekend. I’ve worked at companies where those who sacrificed the most sleep and incurred the most damage to their wellbeing were regarded as heroes. Sleep is for the weak! I suspect some of us treat our cars with better care than we do our own bodies.
Sleep deprivation is linked to many chronic diseases and can lower your productivity by increasing stress and anxiety, slowing your thinking, reducing your concentration, and impairing your judgment.
Being woken up by an alarm means you’re getting up before your body is naturally ready to do so. Why start the day tired, anxious, in reactive mode and playing catchup, and dependent on adrenaline and caffeine to muster up results? Why do we allow ourselves to be jolted up in the middle of a sleep cycle? It’s like asking to be smacked upside the head while meditating or having the television configured to switch off randomly when engrossed in a gripping whodunnit. And we couldn’t have picked a worse time of day to inflict suffering on ourselves.
But there’s an alternative. What if you could wake up naturally every day, refreshed, and with extra time to indulge in some exercise or quiet me time? Imagine being able to start each morning with a clear mind, a well-rested body, and a positive mindset to take on the day. The good news is that you can. Just retire that alarm clock. It’s an enabler of bad habits.
The alarm clock is a torture device you use to punish yourself for misjudging your bedtime.
Ditching your alarm clock is a lifestyle change that’s easier said than done, so here are some simple steps to get you there methodically.
First, preparing your mindset with the following elements will improve your chances of success:
- The conviction that a full night’s sleep is necessary to function optimally
- The motivation to live a healthier lifestyle
- The determination and commitment to make real changes to your current routines
All my life, I had believed myself to be a night owl, but that changed six years ago when my first son was born. As any parent would know, a newborn child is like an alarm clock on the fritz. So the Sony clock radio I’d had for over 25 years finally became redundant. I haven’t gone back to waking up with an alarm, and my mornings have become a time of peace and clarity.
You, too, can reclaim your mornings (without needing to have a newborn child). Here are the steps you can take to break free from the crutch of a wake-up alarm:
1. Design your ideal morning and determine what time you would need to get up.
Take this opportunity to redesign your mornings. I’m not saying you should get up at 5 a.m. every day or get any less sleep than your body needs. But if you’ve been curious about gratitude journaling or morning yoga, this might be a good time to start. Untethering yourself from the wake-up alarm is a step toward living a healthier lifestyle by giving your mind and body the rest they need each day. And by creating time for yourself in the morning, you’ll be opening the door to even more possibilities to improve your mental wellbeing.
Soon after I wake up and hydrate, my mind is clear, in a state of high drive, and capable of concentration. I do my planning and visioning the evening before so that I can get into the doing mode in the morning without hesitation. Here are some activities, fitting for a fresh mind, that you could consider for your mornings:
- Journal
- Meditate
- Read or write
- Exercise or stretch
- Work on a side project
- Prepare a more nutritious breakfast
Also well-suited for the early mornings is mechanical work you’ve been putting off. When you wake up well rested, your mind and body are eager to get things done and less prone to procrastination. Just be sure to have determined ahead of time exactly what to do and how to do it so that you can jump right in without having to stall the engine by switching to planning mode.
Next, decide how long you want to spend on your morning activities and work backward from any time commitments you have to determine when you need to get up. Have a 7:10 a.m. train you can’t miss? Then an appropriate wake-up time may be closer to 5:30 a.m. and not 6:45 a.m. I used to live my life trying to fit in as much as possible with little slack to account for unpredictability or mental wellbeing. But scheduling my entire waking time this way was unsustainable. If you work during the days, you likely have some downtime in the evenings. Try moving some of that free time to the morning and see if a bit of peace in the early hours might positively impact your outlook on life.
I generally set my wake-up time to when the sun rises. I have the good fortune of being able to see the sunrise from where I live, and witnessing this cosmic event helps to realign me to the present and put things into perspective. Being in the northern hemisphere, I get up earlier in the summers than in the winters. And I do this not by adjusting an alarm clock but by changing my bedtime.
You’ve decided on your morning activities, figured out how long they will take, and calculated your wake-up time based on any predefined schedule commitments. Onto the next step.
2. Estimate your bedtime.
Your successful morning starts with having a successful evening beforehand. The natural way to control your wake-up time is by adapting your bedtime. This step is about selecting an initial bedtime that you can tweak in the next step.
How much sleep do you typically need? When you allow yourself to sleep in, how many hours would you have slept? If you’re not sure, you could start with eight or nine hours and revise from there. Be conservative and give yourself plenty of buffer. Over time, you can reduce this cushion as you become more accustomed to your new schedule. Working backward from your selected wake-up time, determine your sleep time, the time by which you need to be asleep.
Your bedtime, the time by which you need to be in bed, is your sleep time minus how long it takes you to fall asleep once you’re in bed. If you like to read in bed, make sure to budget for that when setting your bedtime.
You’ve planned your mornings and estimated your bedtime. Now, let’s implement your new schedule.
3. Shift your sleep schedule.
Here’s where you turn your new schedule into a routine. Just as you might do to recover from jet lag, try to turn in as close to your new bedtime as possible. You may need several days to adjust slowly. We all have those days when we come home from work or school completely spent and ready to collapse. Pick one of those days to start the habit.
Based on your new bedtime, you’ll likely need to modify your evening routine. This could mean making some tough priority decisions like foregoing that second Netflix episode or cutting down on reading Twitter posts in favor of the morning routine you designed. Here’s where you’ll need to remind yourself of your commitment and determination to effect change and show strength through discipline. Challenge yourself to stick with it for a week so that you can assess the quality of your new lifestyle with a fully adjusted mind and body. If you start to see benefits, the changes you made will begin to feel less like sacrifices.
Undoubtedly, you’ll need some flexibility to account for the odd night out and dependencies with others’ schedules, but try to be ruthless about keeping to your new bedtime. Slipping back into your old routine on the weekends will mean you’ll need to reset your sleep schedule every week.
You may want to keep your alarm clock as a backup for now while transitioning to your new schedule. But one day, you’ll wake up a few minutes before the buzzer and smile to yourself as you gently switch off the alarm and deny it the pleasure.
You see the top of the cliff only five seconds away and pick up speed. Flying higher, you shoot past the edge and draw three spirals before starting your descent, gliding down toward the cliff top. As you approach, the dense trees shuffle and creak to reveal a clearing of turquoise grass below. You land gently with both feet, the coolness of the blades between your bare toes. Closing your eyes, you fall backward, splashing down into the lush, blue bed, and surrender to the swaying grass as it carries you left and right. Now, fully rejuvenated, you open your eyes and begin your day.
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