How to train myself to be an early riser ? Tips needed for a night owl.

[bushproblems]

I have never been a morning person, and as I’ve gotten older, it seems to be worse than ever. I just love my sleep and but I can not get to sleep before 12ish, then struggle to wake up at a reasonable time.

Ideally, I’d like to be up and about by 7.30am but I snooze my alarm till gone 8.45 some days! Luckily I WFH at the moment.

Has anyone trained themselves out of being a night owl?

You’re just in a cycle of late to bed, so late to rise.

Get up when your alarm goes off - it’s that simple.

From a former night owl with kids, and a full time job with a commute.

No, I'm a night owl and I'm also a teacher so my alarm goes off at 6:30am and I'm in front of a class at 8:40am. I still can't get to sleep before midnight so I'm just permanently tired.

You just have to get up at the same (early) time every day. Having kids is quite good for curing you of being a night owl! If you are trying to reset, I'd start by being very active in the day so you are physically tired and wanting to go to bed early. I'd also wait a few months until it is lighter and warmer. We used to have a sunlight alarm clock which helped, plus I like to have the heating on in the morning to make it easier to get out of bed.

Have you always been a late sleeper, OP? Just asking because sometimes there’s more to it than just needing to train oneself to a different schedule…

But why do you want to change? There is nothing instrinsically better about getting up early.

Do you go to bed earlier but not feel tired? Or just can't make yourself go to bed?

I think if you go to bed earlier but you don't feel tired, I would just lie there resting, maybe read in low light or listen to something. Normalise the 'early to bed' part.

Also, maybe you could start a new routine that forces you up in the morning e.g. meet a friend for a run first thing, or give yourself some kind of reward that you can only have if you get up for it.

Apparently early morning is good for resetting the circadian rhythm, so you could aim to get outside as early as possible.

@cranberryhaddock yes, I’ve always been a late sleeper.

@BendingSpoons waiting until the spring sounds like good advice!

@ReignOfError I start work at 9am! I just feel shitty waking up so late, and then straight on to the laptop.

Have a baby.

If you get up early for a few days you'll go to sleep earlier. I am a confirmed night owl but force myself to get up earlier than I would naturally. It's horrible in the winter though getting up in the dark.
Ideally I'd sleep until 9.30am!

Pull an all nighter and then go to bed early the next day!

It's literally making yourself get up at the same time day in day out. I had a baby who woke at 5 every day for more than 14 years. I wouldn't recommend that but I very rarely sleep past 6 now. I do have to be in bed by 10 to cope. Try sleep training yourself! Set your alarm 15 minutes earlier, have a plan of what to do when you get up, make yourself a routing. Then after 3-4 weeks, set it 15 minutes earlier still. Make sure you go to bed as soon as you're tired rather than waiting til you're falling asleep.

Stop snoozing the alarm. Put whatever your alarm is on, I am assuming your phone physically away from your reach so you have to get out of bed to stop it. Then straight into the shower to help wake you up. Do not get back into bed, do not have 5 more minutes. The falling back asleep makes it worse apparently.

Ds uses an app that calculates what time he wants to get up and the app works out what time he needs to sleep to be in the lightest sleep cycle for the alarm going off.

I have a light alarm clock so it starts to light up before my sound alarm goes off. My bedroom is pitch black. I have 2 sets of blinds and blackout curtains, bliss.

I think a lot of it really comes down to routine. Trying to gradually shift bedtime earlier can help, even if it’s only by 15–20 minutes at a time. One thing that’s helped me personally is not eating for a couple of hours before bed. I find I fall asleep more easily and sleep more consistently. It takes a bit of time, but small changes do add up.

Mine were/are night owls but I’m a lark.

OP I think you just have to do it. In theory get into sun light in the morning but sun rise is 8.30 at the moment so that won’t help.

I did a course in this. You need to fix your circadian rhythm.

You fix it by getting outside and seeing morning light. Spend 5 to 10 minutes outside at sunrise or looking through an open widow but get morning light (not necessarily sunlight it doesn’t matter if it’s cloudy).

Then let your house go dark in the evening, no bright lights only low level ones. Get blue light blocking glasses from dusk onwards and no screens at least 3 hours before bed.

Your bedroom should be cool, heat blocks melatonin secretion. Good sleep starts in the morning, remember that!

A Lumi lamp literally changed my life 😂 I have never ever been good at waking up on time but this lamp really does help.

Night owl here who did that - didn’t cure me, just aged me about 10 years as I just feel awful when I have to get up early 😩😩😩 solidarity OP, I’d dearly love to be an early riser but nothing I’ve ever tried has “worked” (obviously I can get up and do get up but I always feel horrendous all day if I’ve had to get up before 7 no matter what I do)

I've tried so hard to do this and not succeeded. I nearly didn't train as a teacher because of the early starts. Sunrise lamp is an absolute essential. I don't think it's possible to completely change your natural chronotype. Every holiday I naturally go back to late nights and late starts.

The only way that I "cured" my night owl tendencies were to get a job on a dairy farm, where I do all of the milking! It means that I'm usually up at 4am, work long hours in a manual job, and then start yawning from about 8pm onwards. It now (finally) takes me less than a few hours to go to sleep every night...

I realise that this isn't an option for everyone, but it's been very effective for me!

I think just do it, eventually your brain will catch up with what your body is doing. Go to bed earlier and get up earlier, do it in stages if it's difficult, go to bed half an hour earlier and get up half an hour earlier, do that for a while and then add another half hour, or do it cold turkey.

When people say they've always been a late sleeper despite wanting to sleep earlier, I always wonder if their circadian rhythms are slightly off. Mine unfortunately are about 3 hours out of sync 😖but I'm not a typical example (I have delayed sleep phase syndrome which is pretty rare) - I'm not suggesting you have the same problem, that's unlikely but all I would say is don't feel like you're failing if changing your sleep patterns doesn't come easily, as you might be hardwired to sleep and wake a little later than most. I think the term 'not a morning person' sometimes misses the point if the non-morningness is the result of insufficient sleep, in which case it's natural to feel crappy.

(I also think it's sheer lunacy that melatonin isn't more readily available in the UK (at the time I was first prescribed it required a prescription from a hospital sleep clinic) as apparently a lot of sleep irregularities are caused by melatonin deficiency or by levels peaking at the 'wrong' times, and could presumably be corrected with a melatonin supplement. Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now! 😄- it just frustrates me that it's so tightly controlled, as sleep problems cause so much misery and I can't see any logical or practical reason for this.)

This sounds interesting. Please could you tell us the app name?

This would have totally been me if I'd had kids!

@GaudySocks it is this he uses

https://www.calculator.net/sleep-calculator.html

Thank you!