How to Get Up at 5 AM every day ?

[Marco Cuevas]

Hey guys , I want to increase my discipline .

Just asking what is the best way for you to wake up at 5AM every day ?

Is it motivation your main thing that wake up you and what ?

I have a baby... that's a sure way to be up early! Sometimes even as early as 4 or 3 am... And a baby is perfect motivation to always keep going.

 

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[Jamaal]

If you're interested in waking up at 5am, have a read on the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod...

He'll explain to you the mental steps to take to make waking up at 5am seem like a breeze.

 

[srodrigo]

I don't get it. Is this some kind of self-flagellation for the sake of it? How is getting up at 5am going to help you in any way? Just to start with, you are fighting your natural cycles in winter, where your inner animal is telling you that energy conservation is important for your survival and getting up at 5am is crazy.

Had you said you wanted to get up at 5am to work on your business before work, then it would have sounded okay. But for discipline? WTF.

As others said, the day has 24 hours. Just move your schedule around so you can make the most of them, being it at 4am, 8am, 12pm. Some people are more productive in the morning, some others in the evening or night. What time you do the work at doesn't matter as long as you do it, just make sure you block your most productive time and use it to get work done.

And don't cut on quality sleep. If you get up at 5am, go to bed a 9pm.

 

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[Ika]

The most important thing IMHO is having a good reason to get up that early.

If you are just bullshitting yourself into thinking it's a good idea because successful people do it but you really have no plan for your morning, you'll fail.

This!
Earlier this year I created a bullshit thread about "getting up at 6 to regain control of my life".
Read it here to have a chuckle.
I did not really have a reason to get up, so naturally it did not work.

And now I get up at 6 every day, with no problem.
Because I have enough important shit to do to use the extra time.

So, step 0 is to maximise your current working hours. No need to wake up 2 hours earlier only to go surf social media while working.

You've reached a limit with the current working hours?
I don't think so, but here is what I do every morning to start energized in the day.

Wake Up.
Eat breakfast (25min)
Work out (25min)
Ice Cold shower (10min)

It takes roughly an hour.

After that I do focused work, in the best case my One Thing.

All of the steps are there to create the best possible outcome for my working phase.
It works for me, because somehow my exercises make me energized and cold showers fuels me up.
For you it might be meditation, running - whatever makes you wide awake and ready to work with clarity.


One important step:
Every evening I sit down and I write down what I am going to do in the next working phase.

The difference is incredible:
If I wake up without a clear goal in mind, my morning routine takes me way longer and I end up spending my attention elsewhere.
If I wake up with a goal, my morning routine is really quick and I end up giving the task my whole attention.


A lot of this came together by trial and error.
Try to observe why some days getting out of bed is easier than on others.,
And don't be too hard on yourself - it's a process. I still miss some days and don't manage to get work done. Just move into the right direction.



TLDR:
Step 0: Maximise the current working hours.
Step 1: Have a reason to wake up (aka a plan on what to work on)
Step 3: Find activities that energize you and give you mental clarity.
Step 4: Use the quite morning hours to do deep work.

 

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[Ika]

Oh and since I'm in the mood:
The goal should be a long term change, not a temporary change.

That consists of 3 components:
Slow approach + Cheat Days + Consistency

1. Slow approach
If you are waking up at 10am today, waking up at 6am tomorrow won't work.
Well, it will work for a week and after the motivation turned off, there is not enough willpower for such a drastic change.

It is easier to start slow:
Wake up at 9:30.
Next week, wake up at 9:00
The next week, wake up at 8:30
and so on
Go slower if you need to adjust.

There is no reason in completly destroying your sleep schedule just to not be able to concentrate while working the extra hours.


2. Cheat-Days
Sleep is a really sensitve structure.
Listen to your body. If you feel like you really need some more sleep, miss one day.
If it does not work, adjust your diet or your sleeping hours.
Again, if you have too less sleep, having more hours to work won't help.

But don't take this as an excuse to sleep in whenever you "feel like you need a bit more time in the bed" or because you've spent your night playing Xbox and thus missed going to bed.

Be real to yourself.

If you are sleepy because you've missed your bed-time on your own fault, don't sleep in.
Feel the consequence of your decision the next morning.


3. Consistency
This is quite a contrast to the last point.
Make it your goal to not miss a single day.

I printed out a calender and pinned the A4 paper above my desk.
Every day that I manage to wake up on time and do my routine, I mark the day with a green pen.
Every day that I did not go out of bed, I took unreasonably long to do my routine, slept in, or did not go on and worked I mark the day with a red pen.
Plus I write down what made me miss my goal.

Let me tell you, it sucks to have more red than green days.
And it sucks even more to have a 20 day chain of green interrupted by one red day (because you checked your smartphone after waking up and ended up watching youtube videos).

And it helps turning off the PC when it's time to go to bed - if you don't want to break the chain, going to bed becomes more attractive.

One additional point:
If you go to bed later than planned, and it is your own fault - don't change your wake up time.
Right now I'm 45min overdue my planned time (which is bad!) because I finished an email and wrote these posts.
While they are both good things to do, it was my own fault of not doing it earlier.

That just means I will have one hour less to sleep.

My hope is that one day it is "hurting" enough so I learn that my decisions have consequences and will thus go to bed in time.


good night

 

[CareCPA]

Honestly, I might catch some flak for this but why do people care so much for waking up at 4am, 5:15am, 6:05 am like it's some badge of honor?

It's almost like those war stories I hear of people "grinding 48 hours straight".

Listen, stop it. It's madness.

There are 24 hours in a day for everyone. No one gets less and no one gets more.

If you choose to sleep until 11:45am and get up, YOU HAVE NOT WASTED YOUR DAY. Midnight does not define "MY DAY", why should you let it define your day too?

If you get up at 11:45am and feel you have wasted your day, you aren't thinking clearly that a day is a 24 hour time period. When it starts is up to you.

If I wake up at 11:45am, I simply work until 3-4am the next day and go to bed. I still get 7-8 hours of sleep like people who wake up at 5:15am and put in 16-17 hours of "work" ( whatever that might be ) like everyone else.

What the people who wake up at 5:15am dont tell you is, they went to bed at like 9:30pm-10pm. Who cares when this 7-8 hour period of sleep started/ended compared to the 16-17 hours of "work"?

The only time this doesn't work is if you you constrain yourself to letting other people and processes control your time for you each day ( like a 9-5 job ). But even then, what if you worked remotely for a company located in Ireland and had to work those hours anyways because of the timezone difference?

There is nothing glamorous, glorious, honorable, productive, or worth sharing when you talk about how early you rise out of bed and how you self destruct yourself grinding for 3 days with no sleep.

And yes, I've been there and thought it was magical to talk about and plan around too in my past. As I got older, I realized just how dumb it actually is though.

Just sleep for 6-7-8 hours at a time, and then work your 16-17-18 hours at a time.

Grocery stores are still open at noon. Gyms are open at noon. People still read emails and txt and take phone calls at noon. You aren't wasting your day.
.

Awesome point.
I wake up early because I have a job that still believes in working during normal business hours. When I can disconnect my productivity and my earnings from the time of day, I won't be as motivated to wake up early - I'll sleep when my body tells me it's time.

 

[RBefort]

Honestly, I might catch some flak for this but why do people care so much for waking up at 4am, 5:15am, 6:05 am like it's some badge of honor?

It's almost like those war stories I hear of people "grinding 48 hours straight".

Listen, stop it. It's madness.

There are 24 hours in a day for everyone. No one gets less and no one gets more.

If you choose to sleep until 11:45am and get up, YOU HAVE NOT WASTED YOUR DAY. Midnight does not define "MY DAY", why should you let it define your day too?

If you get up at 11:45am and feel you have wasted your day, you aren't thinking clearly that a day is a 24 hour time period. When it starts is up to you.

If I wake up at 11:45am, I simply work until 3-4am the next day and go to bed. I still get 7-8 hours of sleep like people who wake up at 5:15am and put in 16-17 hours of "work" ( whatever that might be ) like everyone else.

What the people who wake up at 5:15am dont tell you is, they went to bed at like 9:30pm-10pm. Who cares when this 7-8 hour period of sleep started/ended compared to the 16-17 hours of "work"?

The only time this doesn't work is if you you constrain yourself to letting other people and processes control your time for you each day ( like a 9-5 job ). But even then, what if you worked remotely for a company located in Ireland and had to work those hours anyways because of the timezone difference?

There is nothing glamorous, glorious, honorable, productive, or worth sharing when you talk about how early you rise out of bed and how you self destruct yourself grinding for 3 days with no sleep.

And yes, I've been there and thought it was magical to talk about and plan around too in my past. As I got older, I realized just how dumb it actually is though.

Just sleep for 6-7-8 hours at a time, and then work your 16-17-18 hours at a time.

Grocery stores are still open at noon. Gyms are open at noon. People still read emails and txt and take phone calls at noon. You aren't wasting your day.
.

So much win in this post and fits what I'd say perfectly. My wife sets a 5am alarm to be to work by 7 and gets wide awake that early. I drag a$$, but can stay up until the weeee hours of the morning working hard on something...and be fine with getting up for 10am just before lunch. Do I like being up before the sun? Sure...but you don't have to. As others said, the "why" is the reason to do anything....it's the "why" that gets me up early, but also keeps me up late. Unfortunately, I haven't found something for that "why" yet...so I hate both going to bed and getting up lololol

 

[minivanman]

I'm with eliquid! Back when I had a large cleaning company my girls started showing up around 8am and I would get up at 7:30-7:45am so I could be up before they arrived. We had a large house and worked out of a shop there. Now in the appliance business I make 50% of my sales around midnight. Last night I stayed up until 2:15am selling, woke up at 8am, went back to bed about 11am and woke back up about 1:45pm. Did a little work, messed around, did a little more work, went to eat at the Waffle House (I love our local Waffle House plus I was on my own for supper tonight) and now I'm here. I'll start selling washers and dryers in just a few minutes and stay up until 2-3am again.

Now the question is.... could I make that same 50% of sales if I woke up at 5am? Now let's be clear... I will never find out but I can tell you this, between 7:30am-11am I can't hardly sell anything so I doubt it. Maybe some time I'll stay up all night just to see if I can sell between 5am-8am.

 

[Koen_88]

The only way I can get up early is when I have a strong motivation:
1: When I leave early to go on vacation ;-)
2: when I have something that has to be done on time @ work (luckily this is only seldom)
2: and 1 or 2 times a week I get up @ 5:30 to workout from 6 to 7 at my trainer's gym this gives my day a jumpstart and leaves time to spend on something useful in the evening.

 

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[Carnage]

A light alarm worked wonders for me when i used to wake up early. Used a phillips light alarm, shyt was bright as hell.

Dont use it anymore now that I wake up at 9...

 

[Luke Phillips]

I actually used to do this every day until I started working nights.

A really great way to keep motivated, (besides buying an alarm clock):

• Buy a calander
• Post on a wall in your bedroom
• Mark each day that you wake up early, (this is important, it will keep your mind on what you're doing) try to get as many consecutive days as you can.

Generally it takes 21 days for our brains to develop a habit, although it doesn't get easier, you do become more dissaplined.

But none of these tips are going to work unless you do, knowing your "why" for doing anything is always going to be your greatest motivator.

But try it out! Let me know how you go.

 

[LordGanon]

This "wake up early, because every rich and successful person does this" tale is bull. People who are successful wake up early because they are tired early because they worked all day and therefore go to bed early.

I wake up really early somewhere around 2AM to 6AM. I have an alarm clock on 5AM, but I rarely need it.

It has advantages, yes. A lot, I think. But it comes natural to me and you shouldn't go against what your body tells you.

What I like most about waking up that early is that you have the world aaaaall to yourself. No mails, no calls, no annoying neighbors, no nothing. Everything and everyone is asleep. Now you can get the stuff done that is important to you, and you alone, and you won't be interrupted. And if you focus, your day's work is done when most people walk into the office.

Also, you really don't miss that much after 8PM. It's TV prime time, and that's what most people will spend their time on.

 

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[The-J]

I used to get up at 4:30 am. But I had a reason to: I had to leave for work at 6 and I needed time to work on my own stuff. I had a reason to get up that early, because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to do my own stuff.

Now, I'm free of the 9-5 and there's really no reason for me to do that anymore.

I got up at 8:30am today Fine time for me.

So how did I do it? How did I get up at 4:30 am?

I went to bed at 8 pm. Easy.

Well, not so easy. That first night is rough. I laid awake in bed for four hours before I could get to sleep. I drank chamomile tea and took magnesium, and it didn't help much.

But there's something about being forced to be in bed for a long time that shifts when you wake up. When that alarm rang, I knew I was ready. My body had been in bed for too long and needed to get out.

Cue the next day. By 8pm I was exhausted. So I climbed into bed at 8 again and saw it only took about an hour before I fell asleep.

Woke at 4:30 am again, this time much better rested.

Rinse repeat. Some days I woke up later, but I had to make sure not to do it twice in a row. Weekends, I tried to get up early then but it was too hard. So every Monday ended up being a struggle.

Sooner or later, I noticed I was getting up around 6-7am on weekends too.

I didn't sacrifice going out on some Friday and Saturday nights, and those became real rough. I needed coffee to survive staying out till only 2am.

 

[WabiSabi]

If it's working for you just do that!

For me, beds always seemed to suck me down, I had trouble moving at all after sleep. I'd just lie there for hours struggling to get up. Floor + pillow solved that, for me anyways.

Sometimes you just gotta try something different and see if it works for you. At the end of the day that's all that matters.

 

[sparechange]

All these 'wake-up-at-3am' is part of the ongoing HUSTLEPORN trend.

I read on one of the youtube comments that the writer of the famous The Miracle Morning book, Hal Elrod aka Yo Pal Hal, got cancer and after that, he toned down the whole 'wake-up-at-5am' thing.

Become unscripted , and wakeup to your natural bodyclock

 

[GoodluckChuck]

I hear a lot people say they want to wake up earlier but they never have a reason why. It's just that they think waking up early will solve their other problems. Here's a tip: It won't solve your other problems.

The procrastination habit you have is the same reason why you can't get up at 5am. Notice that I said get up, because anyone can wake up whenever they want by setting an alarm. It's the not going back to sleep part that is hard.

I get up at 5am most days because I like to spend an hour drinking coffee, reading the news, and checking stocks before my obligations kick in and I have meetings to attend and people counting on me to do stuff. If not for these obligations, I would wake up later.

There have been times in my life when I woke up earlier every day as a challenge and exercise in discipline. For a while after The Fastlane Summit I woke up at 4 every day and followed a strict routine. It was great for a while but didn't last because I didn't have a solid reason for being up so early. The best advice I can give if this is your aim is this:

When you alarm goes off, stand up immediately. Do it quickly like you are waking up to find your car is on fire in the front yard. Sitting up can work too. Just getting yourself vertical will wake you up.

You can do other tricks too like putting an alarm outside your bedroom window so you have to go outside to turn it off, but if you're doing this, you probably don't need to be waking up so early. However, I've met people that just have a really hard time waking up in the morning, like moreso than the normal person. In those cases I think it's something like diet or medical issue that is hindering their ability to get up. I know when I did Keto diet for 45 days I slept like a baby and woke up ready and rearing to go every day...

 

[Ethan_Scott]

The 5 AM club by Robin Sharma is one of the best self-help books I have ever read.

 

[Nikkiahmet]

or you could be really boring and count backwards 30 minutes 1800 seconds! LOL

 

[GastonEE]

In all seriousness it's not as hard as you might think. It takes a little bit of time but eventually you will get used to it. The main problem here is when you plan to go to bed. Assuming that you want to have a healthy 7-hour sleep every night, it will require you to go to bed at 10 PM. Not many people are comfortable/can afford to do that.

 

[jsk29]

Jocko Willink (@jockowillink) • Instagram photos and videos

 

[GuestUser450]

Hey guys , I want to increase my discipline .

Jocko Willink (@jockowillink) • Instagram photos and videos

That escalated quickly.

 

[Strider]

Well, I've been getting some work done in terms of studying (exams time) even though I had shitty discipline before. My habit is:

- Make a draft of what you next day will be like. What are you going to do, at what hours (in particular the first thing you want to accomplish).

- Go to bed earlier than usual. You might not fall asleep but stay there, read maybe, don't use electronic devices. If you don't know how much to sleep, try this sleepyti.me bedtime calculator

-Have the alarm set for 5AM. Once it rings just jump out of the bed no shitty excuses. I usually take my cold shower then if my parents aren't home. If they are at least I wash my face. Maybe do a few jumps, get the blood moving and wake up. Go have breakfast... freaking important. And then at the set time (I usually put it 15/20min after waking up) go work. I've been using the pomodoro technique (with some changes) to get stuff done but that's up to you.

Really important to know what you have to do so you don't get stuck into planning and procrastination. If you feel sleepy get up anyway, either it's just laziness or you use that to go to sleep earlier the next time. Finally, eat the goddamn breakfast, seriously. It's going to fuel your day, eat something.

 

[Philip Marlowe]

Avoid a total blackout in your room. If you sleep in a crypt it can be hard to get motivated.

I get up at 4:30AM every morning and my ritual is an early bed time, no food after 7PM, and my phone (with is my alarm clock) goes across the room so I need to get out of my warm bed to turn it off. From there I just KEEP MOVING. Do not lay back down.

Mentally, I also "justify" waking-up early by telling myself that I just got 7.5 hours of sleep and don't need any more than that.

Oh, and coffee.

 

[Philip Marlowe]

Honestly, I might catch some flak for this but why do people care so much for waking up at 4am, 5:15am, 6:05 am like it's some badge of honor?

It's almost like those war stories I hear of people "grinding 48 hours straight".

Listen, stop it. It's madness.

There are 24 hours in a day for everyone. No one gets less and no one gets more.

If you choose to sleep until 11:45am and get up, YOU HAVE NOT WASTED YOUR DAY. Midnight does not define "MY DAY", why should you let it define your day too?

If you get up at 11:45am and feel you have wasted your day, you aren't thinking clearly that a day is a 24 hour time period. When it starts is up to you.

If I wake up at 11:45am, I simply work until 3-4am the next day and go to bed. I still get 7-8 hours of sleep like people who wake up at 5:15am and put in 16-17 hours of "work" ( whatever that might be ) like everyone else.

What the people who wake up at 5:15am dont tell you is, they went to bed at like 9:30pm-10pm. Who cares when this 7-8 hour period of sleep started/ended compared to the 16-17 hours of "work"?

The only time this doesn't work is if you you constrain yourself to letting other people and processes control your time for you each day ( like a 9-5 job ). But even then, what if you worked remotely for a company located in Ireland and had to work those hours anyways because of the timezone difference?

There is nothing glamorous, glorious, honorable, productive, or worth sharing when you talk about how early you rise out of bed and how you self destruct yourself grinding for 3 days with no sleep.

And yes, I've been there and thought it was magical to talk about and plan around too in my past. As I got older, I realized just how dumb it actually is though.

Just sleep for 6-7-8 hours at a time, and then work your 16-17-18 hours at a time.

Grocery stores are still open at noon. Gyms are open at noon. People still read emails and txt and take phone calls at noon. You aren't wasting your day.
.

Getting-up at 5AM is his example, but his real question is about discipline. To your point, getting your work done (no matter the time of day) should be your discipline. That said, if you're looking for a willpower exercise than yes, maybe seeing if you can wake-up at 5AM every week day for a month isn't a bad test.

Implement the tips you've gotten here and see what works.

Once you've proven you can establish a habit, reassess. Maybe a 5AM isn't the best thing for you. Perhaps examine it backwards - when do you do your best work?

Frankly, if you've got something worth waking-up for it won't be that hard. Maybe that's what's missing?

 

[Delmania]

To cut through all the nonsense, the simplest way to do this is set your alarm for 5 am, and then make a commitment that as soon as you hear it, you will immediately get up and start moving. To be an arrogant a**hole, I wake up at 4:30 on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays to go workout. As a result on Tuesday and Thursday, I wake up at 4:30 as well; I just don't get up, so I eventually fall back asleep. The weekends I have a different mindset, so I don't wake up as early.

You don't change your bedtime at first. If you're used to going to sleep at 11 pm, you still continue to do so. What happens is that once you've grown accustomed to the habit of waking up at 5 am, you will automatically adjust your bedtime and start to feel sleepy earlier. Adults need between 7 to 9 hours of restful sleep to be happy, healthy, and productive. Don't be swayed by people who claim they can get by on 5 to 6 hours, you need to pay attention to your physical needs. If you need 9 hours of sleep, get 9 hours of sleep.

 

[Rammsteinfanboy]

I recently trained myself to wake up at 5. I have a buddy, I give him 5 Euro for each day I don`t send him my todolist for the day before 6. Its hard, you will fail a lot, because it takes a while to train the body to wake up unconsciously because you cannot wake up in time on purpose. You will fail a lot, but you simply must not give up, until its a habit. It definetly takes a while, but the body eventually

That`s the hardcore approach short but efficient. Or you do a lot of preparation, such as fixing your go to bed time, starting with less early such as 5:45 etc. But that takes lots of time. Grind yourself for a limited period of time and then you have that habit permanently in your system.

 

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[Christopher777]

I guess what's more important is beginning the day with the right headspace. If you wake up early but it doesn't make you effective, then it's useless. Waking up early has this good effect though. And doing a jam session that early puts you into the minority that gets things done before most people wake up.

But how are you gonna do that jam session if you're not in the right frame of mind? You won't. You'll end up procrastinating.

 

[sonny_1080]

This thread has been helpful. I've usually go to bed at midnight-1pm and wake up at 7:30-8am. I usually work until 5-6pm because I have my workout, nightly meeting, and I have to spend time with my woman in the evenings so I can't be working all hours of the night like what @eliquid was talking about. I've also noticed that I'm much more focused in the early mornings.

The other day, I coincidentally spoke to 2 people that wake at 5am. After realizing the difference waking up 3 hours earlier would make - an additional 21 hours a week - I decided to get into that habit. Today is day 2 of failing to get up at 5am.

I hear different philosophies on how 7.5-8 is the prime amount of sleep you need. Anything over 8 for me and I'm groggy for the whole day. I also hear that you only need 4-5 hours of sleep. Then you hear those stories about Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan.

I'm going to try these things to develop the habit of getting out of bed earlier:
1. write goals down before bed instead of first thing in the morning
2. leave phone to charge next to the coffee pot in the kitchen
3. when alarm goes off, I'll have to go into the kitchen, start the coffee, and while it brews, get my morning meditation in
4. I also have a calendar next to my bed that I can keep track of the days I succeed or not (extra motivation)

I'll let you guys know how it goes.

 

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[sparechange]

An alarm clock.

But what are the steps?

 

[Xeon]

All these 'wake-up-at-3am' is part of the ongoing HUSTLEPORN trend.

I read on one of the youtube comments that the writer of the famous The Miracle Morning book, Hal Elrod aka Yo Pal Hal, got cancer and after that, he toned down the whole 'wake-up-at-5am' thing.