Haven’t seen any posts here for a while? It’s because waking up early sometimes, well, doesn’t work . I had to work late on pretty much every day over last couple of months and this completely screwed up my wake up schedule. And since I was mostly writing my posts early in the morning, this schedule change has put my blogging on hold for a while.
Work schedule is one common reason why you may never become an early riser, and there are others.

How often do you hear people saying things like "I’ll start eating only healthy food from next Monday", "I’ll start exercising on September 1st" etc. Did you note that many people want to change their life on some special day like first day of the week or month? There is some magic in that Day One and for some reason we think that if we start something on that specific day we have somehow more chances to succeed...

This smart simple tip was found in the list of 52 Proven Stress Reducers. What this tip means is that first of all you need at least two alarm clocks (or get a dual alarm clock). You will be using one alarm clock in a usual way – for waking up in the morning. But you will set another alarm clock for the time when you have to go to bed. This alarm clock will act as a reminder to ...

There is another great self-improvement tip which some people often neglect and which you can use to advance in any area and not just to learn how to wake up early. Everyone heard the phrase Knowledge is power but not all people actually get the meaning. And the tip is simple ...

Okay, getting a pet BECAUSE you want to wake up early is a wrong thing. Do not do it. Never ever get a pet unless you love pets and unless you know you can take care of them. Pets are like kids – if you get one, you are held fully responsible for its health and life...

Why one big change is easier to implement than many small ones...

Finally, I’m back from vacation. Not only I’m well rested now but I’m full with fresh wake up ideas. The idea I have to share today has emerged soon after vacation was over, and it was time to get back on my early wake up schedule, which I temporarily gave up on. I had 3 hours difference between my vacation wake up time and my "normal" early wake up time...

Here comes the king of all tips. If you still fail to wake up early but haven’t lost the hope, try this one...
When everything else fails, it’s time to get to serious military tactics. One known military tactic is called overwhelming force, or rapid dominance. It’s simple, yet it’s more powerful than any other tip. If you still wonder how can it be, here is the answer. Overwhelming force means using...

This is another "universal" tip that can help you in many situations when you need to learn a new skill or get a new habit, and it may come to use if you want to learn how to wake up early. Think of someone among your friends, relatives or just people you know who wakes up early. Talk to them, ask them how they acquired this habit, what challenges they faced and how they overcame them, what tools and techniques they use now or used in the past to develop early rising habit. You can even ask to borrow their alarm clock :)
The mentor can help you not just giving advices or sharing his life experience...

Unfortunately, many people when looking for the ways to improve the quality of their sleep and solve their sleeping problems turn to sleeping pills and other medications. Why it’s a bad idea? Because they are trying to treat the symptoms, not the causes. There are other, more healthier ways to solve these issues that you could try first. If you suffer from insomnia or other sleeping problems, sleeping pills should be your LAST retreat, ONLY if prescribed by doctor and only for SHORT periods of time. Your sleeping issues may be caused by a number of reasons. You should focus on finding out what those reasons are and addressing them - by changing your habits, changing your thinking and sometime changing your whole lifestyle...

As it is 9/9 today, I thought it would be good to revamp my earlier article about 9 Reasons to Wake Up Early. Having good reasons to wake up and things to do is a half of success on the way to becoming an early riser. I hope that among the listed reasons you’ll find those that can light a burning desire within you. Here is the link to the article: 9 Reasons to Wake Up Early.

Do not worry, this tip is not about waking up at 4 a.m., so keep reading...
When it comes to sleep, everyone prefers to sleep in a dark room. Our body’s clock is trained to sleep when it’s dark and we always fall asleep faster and relax better in the darkness. So if darkness helps you sleep better, what do you need to wake up? Right, you need light! As soon as you get up from the bed, expose yourself to a bright light (ideally - to sun light) and you won’t get back to bed. Light in the morning is good for two reasons...

We continue our quest to find the best ways on how to wake up early and do it consistently. If you search the web for “how to wake up early” or “alarm clocks” keywords combination you will definitely find Vincent Cheung’s article Alarm clocks are bad. How to wake up and feel better. This article has got almost 3,000 diggs and a number of links for a reason. It includes the trick on how to wake up early that Vincent has successfully used for years and now shares with the readers of his blog. To better understand how this trick works and why it works I recommend you first to check one of my previous posts on how sleep works...

My today’s tip is up as a guest post at Pick the Brain blog. It’s about sleeping less time by improving the quality of your sleep and changing your sleeping habits. Head there to read full story, as well as many other great articles on self-improvement, productivity and motivation.

I’ve been reading Robin S. Sharma’s book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari – a wonderful story full with insights and ancient wisdom on how to open your life to success and happiness. One of my favorite authors writing on productivity and personal development Brian Tracy said about this book: “A fun, fascinating, fanciful adventure into the realms of personal development, personal effectiveness, and individual happiness. It contains treasures of wisdom that can enrich and enhance the life of every single person.”
One of the strategies known to the sages that Robin Sharma shares is the Ritual of Early Awakening...

One day I’ve decided that I should start running in the mornings to get back into shape. Two weeks later, I was still thinking that it would be good to finally start doing it. Probably from next week... Or better from the first day of next month... It continued this way for almost 2 months. Do you know how I finally managed to stop procrastinating it? I bought myself pair of new running shoes and some sports wear and after that I simply couldn’t hold it any longer. Investing in my new habit was the thing that actually pushed me out of endless procrastination. You can use the same trick to help you start or resume your habit of waking up early...

One of the primary reasons why most people fail to wake up early in the morning is that once they wake up and turn off alarm clock they talk themselves into going back to bed again. It’s amazing how many “good” reasons for sleeping another hour we may find once we wake up. The key here is to stop rationalizing and let your body outrun your thoughts...

“Wake up and Smile? And what then?” – you’ll ask. That’s it! Just smile, and see what happens. Kudos for this tip goes to Aaron Potts and his Today is that Day blog. In his recent post on 8 Tips on How to Get Out of Bed even When You Don’t Want To he mentions this incredibly simple yet amazingly powerful tip. Yes, all you need is a big smile. Here is how it works and why...

To wake up early in the morning you should get a habit of going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, but… There is one exception to this rule. On some days you may not feel sleepy enough at the time when you usually go to bed. This often happens if your day was calm and quiet and you aren’t feeling tired. Or, in the opposite situation, you may be so excited about something that happened to you today you simply can’t sleep...

We talked before about giving a promise to someone that you will wake up early. When given, such promise will hold you accountable, and that’s exactly what you need to continue building your early rising habit day by day. There is one more way to get the same result though. Wake up early in the morning at least once, and start telling people about it. Matthew Stibbe from BadLanguage blog recommends to boast widely about your new early-birdiness...

We always have a better chance to succeed in things which we understand and where we know underlying principles and laws, as opposed to things we do not understand. Let’s see how understanding sleep mechanics can help you sleep better and wake up earlier. The principles of how sleep works are quite simple (well, at basic level), yet many people have never heard about them. Here is your 5-minute crash course on sleep mechanics...

Most of us used wake up call services in the hotels before, when reception calls you at the specific time you’ve asked them for. But today’s technology went far beyond that so it’s time to re-evaluate old wake up call service and see how it can help you wake up. Today’s wake up call service is digitally equipped, fully automated, highly customizable, reliable, inexpensive and takes minutes to setup...

This early wake up trick was inspired by Jerry Seinfeld's productivity secret posted by Brad Isaac at LifeHacker.com, link to which I’ve run into while browsing Jim Gibbon’s blog (Thanks Jim!). I’ll quote Brad, because I probably won’t come up with a better explanation anyway. According to Brad, he once approached Jerry Seinfeld asking if he had any tips for a young comic.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker...

 

Another important how to wake up early strategy is based on creating positive associations with waking up early and negative associations with not doing it. Every person on this planet is driven by two things. The need to avoid pain, and the desire to gain pleasure – explains Anthony Robbins in his most popular Personal Power program. If you do something, it’s because you associate a pleasure with it. If you don’t do something, it’s because of pain and fear you link to it. By creating positive, pleasurable associations with waking up early and severe pain associations with not doing it you can help build stronger habit that works, consistently. Here is how you can do it...

Another wake up trick is to puzzle yourself in the morning by putting alarm clock into a place where it can’t be easily turned off or by using a gadget that will create a puzzle for you. For example, bring a chair, put an alarm clock high on the cabinet, and then put your chair into another room. You will have to repeat this procedure in the morning to shut off alarm. If you can’t come up with a puzzle, check these gadgets that combine alarm clock and puzzle in one evil device...

New research has shown that weekend lie-in fails to make up for long hours in the week. Chronic sleep deprivation breaks the ability of your body to compensate for lost sleep and may result in weight gain, irritability, hallucinations and depression. Needless to say, waking up early in this case may only add up to the problems...

Alarms are external irritants that make you get up. When wake up alarm goes off, your mind wakes up but your internal organs keep “sleeping” for some more time. How you can wake up “from the inside”? There is an old trick and it's quite simple - put a glass of water close to alarm clock and drink the water first thing as you get up...

Your first step away from your bed is the most important step you need to make towards your early rising habit. How to make it? There are many options, but let’s start with this easy one. You can simply put an alarm clock far enough from your bed, and...

Check this funny YouTube video showing “wake up tricks of the trade”...

You should avoid alcohol, nicotine and caffeine as much as possible because these stimulants have alerting effect, they disrupt sleep and prevent your body from effective relaxation. It’s very individual though so the best way is just to try and avoid these stimulants for some time and see if your sleeping improves.

I opened David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity for myself back in 2005 (I have been re-reading it every few months since then). Getting Things Done, commonly abbreviated as GTD, is a work-life management system based on simple but very effective principles. Here is how I used GTD to help me in my waking up experiments...

There are people who do their best only when they are put into a stress situation. If you are one of them, if you need to feel the surge of adrenaline to get thing moved, then you can try this approach to build early wake up habit. Put yourself into a situation where you have extremely important things to do in the morning. Those should be “do or die” things that cannot be postponed any further...

You can "practice" waking up by doing simple exercises at day time. This very original tip comes from Steve Pavlina. His blog is a treasure trove of useful information in the area of personal development.

If you still can’t decide on changing your lifestyle, if you still think whether you should wake up early or not – you are probably thinking too high. You don’t have to wake up 2 hours earlier starting from tomorrow. Start waking up 5 minutes earlier on every day, and start it tomorrow...

Can’t get up after wake up alarm goes off? Keep pressing that snooze button? Then this tip, powered with few tricks, is for you.

If you want to wake up earlier then make sure you have something important planned for the morning – something that you really want to do first thing as you get up and which is more important than taking an extra hour of sleep.

Don't eat too much right before bedtime. You may have light snack 2 hours before sleep time, but not later. This advice has simple explanation. Your organism stays awake digesting the food, so even if you fall asleep part of your body is not "sleeping" and overall you still have less effective sleep which is not restful...

Excellent wake up technique that works very well not only for waking up but whenever you want to do something you don't like or keep procrastinating on is putting a reward ahead of you...

If you are lucky to have friends or relatives who wake up early in the morning - ask them to wake you up. You may ask friend for a wake up call (just have your phone close so you don't wake up all the house or your neighbours). Or you may ask a friend who is jogging in the morning by your house to knock your door. The secret of this trick is actually not in the fact someone wakes you up (alarm clock can do it as well)...

One of the tricks to wake up early is to have more effective sleep for the same amount of time. Freshen the air in your room before you go to sleep (or just sleep with windows open if outside temperature is OK), and you will have more relaxed and more deep sleep...

If you struggle to wake up early in the morning, chances are your body doesn't get enough sleep. Try to take a nap for 20-30 minutes at day time. It helps reduce stress and you will feel refreshed. Best time to take a nap is midday...

This is an excellent trick that I use for a long time. Do you have your favorite song? Then all you will need is a music player with a built-in alarm clock. Set the player to play the song you selected and set the time of alarm...

Some sources say it takes 21 day to make a habit, some say it's 24 days, some say it's 30. Doesn't really matter. What matters is that you do not need to commit yourself to waking up early on every day till the end of your life. Just commit to wake up early for 3 weeks. That's all...

Give a promise to someone that you would start waking up early. Works best with your family members, friends, etc. Once given, promise should be kept, or you lose respect with those people...

It's a good habit you must acquire. First, you get more effective sleep for the same period of time, if you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day...

As simple as it seems, this tip is hard to beat so we've put it as a number one. Having enough sleep is important not only to wake up early, but to feel energized on the next day, to be productive and focused. It easily may be the best technique to solve your waking up problems.