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How to wake up by 6:30 every morning - for the serious procrastinator

By markovich in Op-Ed
Sun Nov 05, 2006 at 12:18:45 AM EST
Tags: sleep wakup sleep (all tags)

Many of us want to wake up earlier in the day. We stay up all day doing nothing but think how much more nothing we could get done if we woke up even earlier. The problem is - we are procrastinators, and we just keeping pushing the decision to wake up earlier till later.

I am a procrastinator! I admit it! I'm lazy, I have zero self control and even less self discipline. My life consists of simply rolling down the path of least resistance.

You know what I've done? I've gone and taken the biggest changes I wanted to make in my life, and modified them so that they BECOME the path of least resistance.

The first lesson is this - how to wake up by 6:30 every morning.


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This is not the first how to wake up early article. There are hundreds of them constantly floating past on digg and delicious and reddit. The problem with those articles in my opinion is that they require a little effort on my part. They require me to change something about my fat lazy self, and I simply refuse to.

Are you sure you want to wake up earlier?
Seriously, dude, you really want to wake up earlier? Let me destroy the first illusion that you have - that if you wake up earlier you will have a longer day. No, you will not! Your day length will stay the same, because you'll be going to bed earlier. If everyone you know is awake till 12, then stay up later and wake up later. Nothing wrong with that.

You know how you used to code to 11p.m? Forget that shit if you wake up by 6.30. By 9pm you will be brain dead, as your 9pm in body clock time will now be your 2am.

Why is Markovich waking up earlier then?
I'm waking up earlier because I do software development at home, and I prefer to have my extra hours at the start of the day instead of at the end of the day. I start work by 7, and finish by 6, instead of starting by 11 and finishing by 10. It gives me a lot of uninterrupted time before lunch, and the lunch lethargy does not spoil my efficiency.

Furthermore, I need to sometimes meet with people by 7:30, and instead of feeling like shit at having to wake up at the unaccustomed time, I'm waking up at my usual time.

The meat
I tried many different methods of waking up earlier. The problem has always been this morning lethargy. You are in bed, you are warm and comfortable, you can easily switch off the alarm clock, why get up out of bed! I don't have a boss,  I don't have anybody controlling me! I do what I want!

So I sat down and drew up the battle plans. Morning lethargy is the biggest enemy we have, that is the brother that we have to conquer with whatever system we use.

I figured and figured, planned and strategized, mapped out and refined, till I finally discovered the formula.

Preparatory Step 1
Go get some sleeping pills. Look, I never said we were going to do this clean and healthy, we are trying to make a bloody change here, and some blood has to be spillt. Go to the drugstore and buy some sleeping pills. Just get something light, you'll need only about 7 - enough for a week or so.

Preparatory Step 2
Go to the shop and buy a weeks worth of apple juice or coca cola or whatever your favorite non-water drink is. I'm not talking coffee or anything you need to prepare, I'm talking something that you can keep beside your bed and that you can easily grab and drink.

Preparatory Step 3
Get something you eat for breakfast that is in a package. Something like sweet bread or crackers or so.

The plan
Make sure your PC is in your bedroom with the monitor pointed at such an angle that you can see the screen perfectly. Go to the bios of your pc. Set your PC to startup automatically by 6:30a.m.

Set your alarm clock to startup by 6:20a.m. Set your alarm clock to Radio, preferably, talk radio, not music radio. Put it at the far end of your room.

Download a whole bunch of stand-up comedy routines that you have not watched. Make a link to one of them in your autostart menu. Set VLC so that it startsup in fullscreen mode.

Strategically place bread and the juice beside your bed.

By 9pm on the first day, swallow one of the sleeping tablets. As an optional step, put on some Jenna and squeeze out some tadpoles.

The Effect
Now what happens in the morning? By 6:20, your alarm clock goes on. The guy will start talking. This will probably not wake you, but it will disturb you enough to take you out of deep sleep into a restless slumber.

By 6:30, your PC will go on. This sound alone will wake you up, because of the strong body association between PC and mental work. So you are now basically is a state of light slumber, and left alone, you would fall back into sleep.

But as soon as your PC goes one, the standup comedy goes on.

Well, what happens here. Even though you are half asleep, your brain will listen to some of the jokes, and as soon as one funny joke comes through, your brain will suddenly kickstart, and you will open your eyes to look at the screen. As you watch, you will discover you are thirsty, so you will drink from the water. You will discover your snack and start eating.

So you are there eating and watching stand up comedy and drinking juice. In 10 minutes, you will admit to yourself - aww shit, I'm fully awake.

It's friggin great, and it's such a gentle awakening. It's not like those terrible BEEEP, BEEEEP, BEEEP of the alarm clocks.

Alternative
My original strategy was this - shock myself into awakening by tricking my brain into believing that something horrible was happening. So I put the sounds of people screaming and dying on the PC. Well, trust me, that's something you don't want to do. Those sounds got absorbed into my dream and for some reason, it was my family screaming and dying. Which is a sucky way to wake up on a monday.

Conclusion
If you're a serious procrastinator, this method makes waking up a much more pleasant experience than staying asleep. Your brain gets activated immediately, and you are awake in 15 minutes without any problems at all.

Try it tonight!

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Poll
What time do you get up?
o 5:00 5%
o 5:30 4%
o 6:00 8%
o 6:30 8%
o 7:00 15%
o 7:30 13%
o 8:00 11%
o 8:30 1%
o 9:00 9%
o Later 15%
o Whenever she is gone! 6%

Votes: 86
Results | Other Polls

Related Links
o Also by markovich


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How to wake up by 6:30 every morning - for the serious procrastinator | 89 comments (83 topical, 6 editorial, 0 hidden)
Alternatively (2.75 / 12) (#1)
by nebbish on Fri Nov 03, 2006 at 11:58:31 AM EST

Just get out of bed

---------
Kicking someone in the head is like punching them in the foot - Bruce Lee

Intriguing ... perhaps not for everyone. (none / 1) (#2)
by rpresser on Fri Nov 03, 2006 at 12:41:47 PM EST

  1. Many morning radio shows are in large part comedic routines... so if you're accustomed to hearing comedy in the morning, the comedy may be easy to ignore.

  2. Substantial routine changes like this are almost certain to be annoying to your bed partner, if you have one.

  3. Who the heck drinks warm juice?

------------
"In terms of both hyperbolic overreaching and eventual wrongness, the Permanent [Republican] Majority has set a new, and truly difficult to beat, standard." --rusty
You might already be braindead (1.33 / 3) (#5)
by Zombie Ronald Reagan on Fri Nov 03, 2006 at 01:30:53 PM EST

I get up at 4.30am and by 9pm I'm still awake as ever and it takes considerable meditation-like effort to fall asleep.

So it seems your problem is just that you're a low-yield loser.

OH MY GODZILLA (none / 1) (#6)
by Mylakovich on Fri Nov 03, 2006 at 02:02:25 PM EST

I wake up at 6:30 every day too!
Markovich is my Eval twin.

Maybe the world should admit (2.84 / 19) (#7)
by kitten on Fri Nov 03, 2006 at 04:32:16 PM EST

that if you're not a farmer, there's no reason for you to wake up at some obscene hour of the morning. The idea that everyone has to be at the office first thing in the morning leads to a lot of really unhappy people (not everyone is diurnal, and not everyone's internal clock lets them wake up at 7am just because some arbitrary workplace rule says so), insane traffic problems and associated health and environmental issues, and so forth.

If you're the type who enjoys getting up at 6am and being at your desk by 8, then great! What's wrong with other people coming in later and staying later -- afraid you'll have to wait a few extra hours for your TPS report?

Naturally there are some jobs that are time-sensitive, but most of what humans do really can wait -- they just won't admit it.

Anyway, what I ended up doing at my old apartment was this. Screw all your gentle wake-up and comedy routines. I locked my alarm clock in a foot locker and put the key in my car on the other side of the complex. To turn that fucking alarm off, I had to get up, shower, get dressed, and schlep to the car, then come back, unlock the locker, and turn off the alarm. This brute force approach worked.
mirrorshades radio - darkwave, synthpop, industrial, futurepop.
Did you ever try the sleeptracker? (3.00 / 4) (#12)
by shinshin on Fri Nov 03, 2006 at 07:17:35 PM EST

It looks interesting: a watch that supposedly figures out the lightest part of your sleep cycle, so you can wake up with the least amount of pain. It gets pretty mixed reviews, though.

Alternately, Clocky sounds fun, albeit a tad perverse.

____
We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons --Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, March 16, 2003

Alternatively: (2.84 / 13) (#14)
by jandev on Fri Nov 03, 2006 at 08:43:31 PM EST

Obtain a child. Preferably a toddler, old enough to climb out of his bed.

I haven't slept past 7:30 in 2 years and 10 months.


"ENGINEERS" IS NOT POSSESSIVE. IT'S A PLURAL. YOU DO NOT MOTHERFUCKING MARK A PLURAL WITH A COCKSUCKING APOSTROPHE. APOSTROPHES ARE FOR MARKING POSSESSIVES IN THIS CASE. IF YOU WEREN'T A TOTAL MORON, YOU WOULD BE SAYING SOMETHING LIKE "THE CIVIL ENGINEER'S SMALL PENIS". SEE THAT APOSTROPHE? IT'S A HAPPY APOSTROPHE. IT'S NOT BEING ABUSED BY SOME GODDAMN SHIT-FOR-BRAINS IDIOT WITH NO EDUCATION. - Nimey

modifications (none / 1) (#17)
by buford on Sat Nov 04, 2006 at 01:00:32 AM EST

On sleeping pills: use melatonin, great stuff and gives you decent sleep unlike other sleeping meds.

Talk radio: Tune your alarm clock to a foreign radio station, so you will be woken up by incomprehensible blathering and won't be tempted to sit and listen.

I have a bunch of computers in my room always on anyway, so the whine of the fans doesn't really work for me..

zHHD's first law of grandiosity:
if a man zeros you, he is a spastic with the scro

if you're a serious procrastinator (2.00 / 8) (#18)
by circletimessquare on Sat Nov 04, 2006 at 01:58:13 AM EST

go to k5 and write a story about some random shit instead of actually working

works for me

oh wait... the goal is to STOP procrastinating?

i don't understand

because here you are, writing a story about some random shit instead of actually working


The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

I like this piece (none / 0) (#20)
by Cambria on Sat Nov 04, 2006 at 05:23:23 AM EST

I can usually get up on time but seriously 6:30 is too early. Anyway, if I want to get up, I leave the blinds open. It's really hard to get back to sleep with light coming in to your room.

The best way I've found to wake up (3.00 / 3) (#21)
by Keepiru on Sat Nov 04, 2006 at 05:24:20 AM EST

I have my MP3 player on my PC very slowly fade in music in the morning - over the course of 15 minutes or so.  The interesting part is when I left Shpongle queued up one night.

I woke up tripping.

I think it just caught me at the right moment of REM sleep, but it was a nice new way to start the day.

OMG (none / 0) (#22)
by ljazbec on Sat Nov 04, 2006 at 07:02:44 AM EST

I'm so lame I don't know how to set my PC to do that. I never tried so maybe it is easier than it sounds.

Help help help.

What about porn instead of stand-up comedy?

Hang on (none / 0) (#37)
by BJH on Sat Nov 04, 2006 at 10:00:20 PM EST

People actually switch off the PC in their bedroom? Weird...
--
Roses are red, violets are blue.
I'm schizophrenic, and so am I.
-- Oscar Levant

My method (none / 0) (#43)
by nanobug on Sun Nov 05, 2006 at 02:21:26 AM EST

  1.  Download a PC alarm clock that plays mp3s.
  2.  Download or rip the song "Who the hell was in my room last night" by the Butthole Surfers.
  3.  Set the alarm to play the track from step 2 at a loud enough volume to wake you.

Its very simple and effective.  You just have to make sure to do it every night.

also alternatively (none / 1) (#45)
by assquake on Sun Nov 05, 2006 at 05:50:55 AM EST

Are you out of your god damned mind? What you just described can be used as some form of torture.

If you need all that shit to wake up at 6:30, you'll be a lot happier waking up whenever it is you want to wake up normally.

good stuff (none / 0) (#52)
by rsayers on Sun Nov 05, 2006 at 02:13:37 PM EST

I'm in the same boat right now, I've never been one to wake up early, although I do like getting an early start on the day.  I'll be trying this starting tonight and see how well it works for me.

Here is Mine (3.00 / 8) (#54)
by Gruntathon on Sun Nov 05, 2006 at 07:46:21 PM EST

Put your cat in the oven. Put oven on full, and oven timer and you alarm clock on for the same time. That way, you feel morally compeled to get up and let the cat out of the oven before it gets uncomfortable, let alone injured or dies.

It takes some getting used to, but it works.
__________
If they hadn't been such quality beasts (despite being so young) it would have been a nightmare - good self-starting, capable hands are your finest friend. -- Anonymous CEO
Bah. Been done. Last millennium. (3.00 / 4) (#68)
by frijolito on Mon Nov 06, 2006 at 02:59:11 PM EST

K5 is evidently doomed to repeat itself.

Ad nauseam, probably.

Why not stay up all night? (none / 1) (#71)
by potentialnoman on Mon Nov 06, 2006 at 08:38:50 PM EST

Simply apply the ubermann-sleep cycle and you're off.

Well, maybe it's not exactly a matter of 'simply', but once you get the hang of it, everything will move along effortless. For me it has certainly been the ideal way to become a true man of tao.


My problem is not the waking up part of it.... (2.66 / 3) (#75)
by wesfalcon on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 11:07:15 PM EST

The waking up at the time you set is fairly easy for me. I set up an alarm clock in my computer and set my volume to max - it's SO SO loud, thank goodness my roommate is okay with this. Once I got into the computer to turn off the alarm, I read my emails, check facebook, etc. to make me awake. Okay I'm awake now. Now here comes the problem... instead of using the extra time in the morning to do whatever I have to do, I wasted those extra hours procrastinating on the internet, checking my facebook and all other internet surfing whatnots... bleh I guess I'm a true procrastinator afterall...

comedy worked for me (none / 0) (#76)
by frozencrow on Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 02:30:43 AM EST

i did the thing with the computer playing a comedy routine. worked great.

ok, actually what i did was to crank the volume, leave the screen locked, and set it to play a clip from an adam sandler routine where some guy is saying "we're two guys fucking." repeatedly. and it was not my computer, it was my roommate's computer.

worked great.



Same philosophy, different approach (none / 1) (#78)
by twh270 on Thu Nov 09, 2006 at 07:49:46 PM EST

I'm a lazy sonofabitch too.  I don't get quite enough sleep during the week, and my "default" body alarm clock gets me up around 8:00 instead of 6:30.  I'm doing the same thing as you, conceptually: change the path of most resistance to the path of least resistance.  But I use a different approach.

I know that once I'm up and moving I'll be fine.  So instead of focusing on how nice it would feel to lie there and hit snooze, or succumbing to that lying-in-bed-lethargy, I think about how easy it is to roll out of bed and get moving, just remembering that I'll be fine in two minutes.  Thinking of it in those terms eliminates most of the effort of and resistance to "getting up".  And then I can just do it.  (Yeah, it really is that simple.)

Once in a while I need a little more help.  That comes from knowing that if I get up on time, I can go through my morning routine in a calm, unhurried fashion.  If I hit snooze, I'm gonna be rushed and stressed, and that's not how I want to start the day.

I'm not perfect, but this gets me up on time most mornings.  

BTW I'm not knocking what you're doing; you've found something that works for you, and you're obviously happy about it, and that's just peachy as far as I'm concerned.  Props to you.


Great stuff (none / 0) (#79)
by morgadinho on Sat Nov 11, 2006 at 10:08:49 AM EST

Great stuff, congratulations :)

Drill Sergeants (none / 0) (#80)
by Steely Grey on Mon Nov 13, 2006 at 07:07:44 PM EST

Worked for me.

pretty good analysis and suggestion of most stuff (none / 0) (#82)
by regaudio on Wed Nov 15, 2006 at 11:25:25 PM EST

 also, eat before bed- fruit, whatever.
deeper sleep.
pretty good technique suggested, I use sleeping pills and two tea bag cuppa with radio across room.

gradual light increase alarm clocks (none / 0) (#83)
by matthijs on Sun Nov 19, 2006 at 05:48:37 AM EST

For some people the type of alarm clocks that gradually increase in brightness might help. Here are two:
http://www.hammacher.com/publish/70460.asp
http://www.toolsforwellness.com/62074.html

--
Matthijs

I was ready to hate you and your article (none / 1) (#84)
by Chewbacca Uncircumsized on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 09:09:56 PM EST

But then you whipped out the drugs so I'll check it out yo.

I slept late today (none / 1) (#85)
by MichaelCrawford on Tue Nov 28, 2006 at 02:53:32 AM EST

when I knew I needed to get up to go to the bank. But I couldn't wake up. Instead, I kept having these awful dreams about trying to wake up, and staggering around unable to walk straight, only to realize I was still in bed.


--

Live your fucking life. Sue someone on the Internet. Write a fucking music player. Like the great man Michael David Crawford has shown us all: Hard work, a strong will to stalk, and a few fries short of a happy meal goes a long way. -- bride of spidy


lol (none / 0) (#89)
by auraslip on Wed Dec 06, 2006 at 08:51:14 PM EST

tylenol pm and melatonin :)

They both work very well, but in differant ways.
Chew them up for faster affect.
Whiskey works well also.
I like to switch between the two so i don't get to used to one of them.

Coke in a water bottle with a top I can open with my mouth is good.  Coffea on a timer is also good.

Lights on a timer work too. Very bright lights! And go outside during the day! Also don't eat before bedtime. Wake up hungry!

Non-24-hour sleep syndrome

The most important thing is plan to wake up. Set a cycle. Do the same things before you go to bed. Do the same things when you wake up.
124

How to wake up by 6:30 every morning - for the serious procrastinator | 89 comments (83 topical, 6 editorial, 0 hidden)
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