How To Wake Up Early: Night Owl Edition

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

If you pick up any personal development book, one of the pillars of advice that every author seems to tote is “Wake Up Early.”

For people like Wes Watson, Marc Wahlberg, and Dwayne Johnson, this is 2:30 am, 2:45 am, or 3 am.

The social media hashtag #5amclub seems to be the favorite time for people to be awake and doing, meaning that they wake up anywhere between 4 am and 4:45 am.

All these time recommendations are incredibly frustrating to those who are night owls. Through preference or profession, night owls are those who go to bed at three or four am and wake up while the rest of the world is eating lunch.

These time differences can be incredibly lonely and isolating. In addition, moving from a Night Owl schedule to an Early Bird schedule can be a shock to the system.

If this is you, here is how you can take this personal development practice and adapt it to your purposes.

The reason for the early rise is two-fold:

1. You are at your most mentally fresh when you first wake up, and
2. If you wake up early enough, no one and nothing else around require your attention.

Since you can manipulate when you wake up, the only other time that matters is when people need you to be around. Start planning your wake-up around that expectation by setting your alarm three hours before you need to be anywhere. Then, within those three hours, you can:

• Go to the gym or work out at home.
• Meal plan for the day.
• Journal, and practice gratitude for this time you give yourself.
• Do something creative just for you.
• Practice a new skill, or work toward a personal goal.
• Read something inspirational or educational.

After that, calculate backward from your wake-up when you should be asleep.

It was never about the time on the clock. You can’t always control when the world needs you, but you can control your attitude and actions around those expectations.