To think waking up early will solve 99% of my problems!

[Gamechanger12e3]

Someone please help me!
I am single handedly causing my own issues by sleeping in late EVERY MORNING!!

Due to me waking up late.. I'm late for work everyday meaning i always have to work late to make up my hours. This has a knock on affect to my evenings where banks/places are closed by the time i finish work so i have to wait for weekends to run errands. My work is very flexible so they don't care too much.

I always looks like SHIT at work because i literally roll out of bed, into clothes and out the door! Which affects my self esteem!!

I can't arrange morning meetings/appointments because i know I wont wake up on time.

My weekends i wake up super late so waste half the day in bed. Ffs!! I only have a few hours during the day to carry out all my errands!!

I've always been this way. Since a child. I used to be late for school everyday and constantly reprimanded.

I don't know why!! I've been tested by the GP and everything has come back fine. Ive tried going to bed super early/late/reasonable hour. Nothing works!! I've tried setting several alarms on both my phone and manual alarm.. I sleep through them all!!

I think its learnt behaviour. My mother is exactly the same and was always late. She was self employed so never really had consequences for this. She sleeps until noon most days!! Our household was a 'night owl' household. We'd all be awake until early hours despite given bedtimes and then late every morning.

I don't know what to do!! Its ruining my life!! How do i change?? Has anyone else ever suffered the same?!!

If i could just wake up at a reasonable hour 99% of my issues could be resolved!!

How do i discipline myself?!

Has anyone else ever suffered this? Its not normal!! I piss myself off!! I cant rely on myself to do anything morning related which cuts out half my days!!

Someone please advise or give me a kick up the @**!!

Does having a shower in the mornings help at all? I know that always makes me feel more human. If it does help, set an alarm clock in the bathroom and turn on the shower as soon as you go into turn the shower off. That way you can just get straight in as you're already in the bathroom for the alarm clock.

My second tip is to get a timer on your bedside light and set it to come on half an hour before your alarm goes off. It's my cheap/cheat version of a sunrise alarm.

I also only use the blackout blinds in the summer when I want to sleep past 4am because our bedroom faces east. There's just no need for it in winter so I close the thin curtains. Daylight creeping into your room does the job of shifting your sleep pattern towards waking. I still have my bedside light come on too.

I assume you don’t have kids OP? I was always exactly the same, even 9am lectures seemed “crazy early” to me at uni and with quite a free timetable I used to sleep til at least midday every day. Looking back it was such a massive waste of my life but I know that if I didn’t have any commitments or responsibilities I’d very quickly fall back into that pattern.

I completely agree with what @ChopOrNot explained. The strange thing is that although I hate getting out of bed with a passion, once I’m up and about I’d say I’m actually kind of a morning person! I never would’ve believed this until a few years ago I tested out a mood tracking app which asked you a few quick multiple choice questions to log your mood throughout the day. After weeks of tracking I discovered I was consistently happier and less irritable in the mornings compared with afternoon/evening time. It’s the total opposite of what I’d have guessed.

Also, I know some people above say avoid coffee but I only started drinking coffee after having my first baby and I’ve found it has a really positive affect on my mornings. I taught myself to steam milk properly and make good lattes with my espresso machine and that’s now my morning ritual. Along with a delicious slice of Nutella on toast my luxurious coffee gives me something to look forward to every morning.

That first paragraph should read turn the shower on as you go in to turn the ALARM off.

FFS. Pick life choices which mean you don't have to get up early in the morning. There is no moral superiority in waking up early. Some people are simply better suited to a day which starts and finishes later.

how early do you want to get up?

left to myself I am a night owl, would rather not be up before 10. But when I've had jobs where I've had to be up by 7, I've been up.

I've got the "looking smart in a short time" down to a fine art though!

I have had times where I've got home from work and had a nap, then got on with my evening till 2am. So I do get it, if you are a late person, you are, but resetting a body clock doesn't seem to be a thing, not for me anyway. I once did extreme reset - read it in a book - had about 2 hours kip for a few nights, but it's quite hard to schedule that in as I was utterly useless on the days after.

I am normally in bed by 9pm and asleep by 10 o clock.

I wake every morning at 6am.
Some mornings I am at a yoga class at 7am.
On Sundays I do my supermarket shopping, back home by 8am, all housework and food prep done by 9.30 am.
Leaves the rest of the glorious day to relax or have fun.

I see sleeping late as wasting the day.

I never get this logic. Left to our own devices you get up about two hours earlier than me and go to bed about two hours earlier than me (though I now have a baby, so am very much not left to my own devices with sleep!). We therefore have the same amount of waking time. Why am I wasting the morning but you're not wasting the evening?

agree there is no virtue in getting up early - if I can take work that avoids it, then I do.

interesting there always moral high ground about how you should be able to just do it (but never a comment about earlier risers should be able to stay up beyond 9pm)

For me, i can just about get up if I have to but left to my own devices I am slow and unfocused in the morning. Takes me about 2 hours from alarm going off to getting out the door.

What does help is no computer after about 9pm and no coffee apart from 1-2 mugs with breakfast

Yeah I'm fucking shite too, got better a while ago now I'm back to the usual..

Literally just going to bed early helped, no phones few hours before, eat reasonably close so not hungry. Oh and weirdly setting my alarm for whenever then when it went off chugging a glass of water I left out helped loads

You just need to have a shower and have everything organised night before so when you do wake up you're basically throwing on clothes and leaving.

It's one of the core tenets of mundane stupidity to believe that getting up early is somehow 'better'. There's no logic to it whatsoever. The world would simply collapse if everyone got up at 5am and had to be tucked up in bed by 9pm - think of all the professions where night and evening working is a necessity. And all the knock on industries where people need to be at work at night to cater to those who need to be at work t night...

OP you have a job where they DON'T REQUIRE you to be at work at stupid o'clock. Make the most of it rather than making yourself miserable.

I wish I had some answers because I don't got to bed until about 1am! I got into this habit when my first born was a baby and his last feed was about 1am, rather than go to bed and then wake up which I hate the feeling of I used to just stay up. 11 years on and I still go to bed at 1am I will drink coffee at 10pm and watch a box set!! I get up at 7am, I am a light sleeper so once my alarm goes off I am up. I just jump straight out of bed, I don't roll back over and never hit the snooze. I am never late for anything but I do feel slightly drained throughout the day.

OP, I could have written your post pre-children. I love my sleep and the only reason I manage to get up in time now is getting my Dc to school. The shame of having them late due to my inability is my motivation.

When I had to get up in the morning for work, (I'm self employed now) I used to have one of those bell alarm clocks that sound like a fire alarm and put it across the room. I also went through a phase of setting alarm calls.

Weekends I'm as bad now, my kids can get themselves up.
The bizarre thing is I hate going to bed, so put it off and read in bed etc. But I can't get up. However, once up, I never go back to bed unless truly ill.

I used to be like that but having had a dog for 11 years which needs walking last thing at night and first thing in the morning I am now trained not to lie in. Although dog very sadly not with us anymore and I can feel myself getting back to my lazier lie ins at the weekend already. As a teenager I was told if you knocked on your forehead the number of times you wish to wake up (ie 7 times for 7am - not sure what you do for 7.30am lol!) then you would wake up at that time.

@ChopOrNot even though I think I subconsciously knew this I had never articulated it to myself in quite that way. You have just blown my mind!

I hate going to bed early. I love my evenings, It's when I get to spend time with DH and relax. When I do an early shift and have to go bed early I really hate it and feel like I have wasted the evening.

I do not find getting up later in the day shit for the first three minutes at all. It doesn't matter how much sleep I get, waking up before 9.00am is shit and makes me feel tired for the rest of the day. My perfect time to get up is around 10.00am.

My lumie alarm clock helps me wake up as I am not in a deep sleep when my alarm sound goes. I think I will always struggle getting up but thankfully I can get up, I just feel shit for it.

I hope some of these suggestions work for you OP.

You are missing out in so much Day though. The best bits are all over at 10am. The quiet bit as people aren’t around are amazing.
You can get so much done in the first few hours that’s there’s no hope of doing when everyone else is scrabbling around. Everything from traffic to quiet phones means you get a jump on the day and can chill a bit in the afternoons when people ge really can’t be arsed with anything or evenings when no one cares.

I sympathise. I also sleep through alarms. I don’t know what happened, but in the last couple of years waking up got easier all on its own (I am 38). It’s one of the perks of ageing :) up at 7am and alert as a lark.

Before I didn’t start to function properly until after 10am. Even if woken up at 7am.

It has now been scientifically proven that circadian rhythms are largely hereditary and nothing to do with laziness. Google Russell Foster at Cambridge.

Unfortunately, you can only slightly modify what you have got, so you can’t make yourself into lark, no matter how hard you try, same as larks will never do night shifts easily regardless of how much practice they’ve had.

Lumie clocks are great. I first got one when I changed job to a longer commute and earlier start one January, and getting up in the pitch black was horrid before that.

We now have a second one for night owl, deep sleeping DCs and it helps them too. DS apparently sleeps through the vibrate alarm on his fitbit.

Good bedtime habits. Soft light, gentle relaxing such as reading. Keep sources of light in the room minimal.

Go to bed earlier. Do you sleep ok?

Make sure your bedroom is not too hot, crack a window open for a supply of fresh air, no coffee, no booze from early evening, no iPad, mobile phone or kindle from an hour before bed, no phone or iPad close to the bed and go to bed between 9-10pm. Try some relaxing reading, set your alarm and see you in the morning. If you like to ‘come to’ before you have to start, set your alarm for thirty minutes early.

Try to maintain this at weekends too, yes I know weekends are great for catching up on sleep, but your body will operate better if you keep a regular routine.

Have your clothes for the next day laid out, a relaxing bath before bed, pillow mist, do whatever helps you get a good nights sleep.

I worked one summer doing a 5am start, it literally took me two or three years to learn to sleep beyond 6am you can do this.

Get a night shift job. Perhaps your body clock is suited to later in the day or the night.
If you're determined then get some melatonin and see if you can alter your body clock.

I set it as a new year’s resolution to be on time. Now it’s a matter of principle with myself 😂

Shame my toddlers don’t always cooperate though!

You are missing out in so much Day though. The best bits are all over at 10am. The quiet bit as people aren’t around are amazing.

No, I am not missing out on so much day, because I prefer evenings. I would rather miss out on day than evening.

You can get so much done in the first few hours that’s there’s no hope of doing when everyone else is scrabbling around. Everything from traffic to quiet phones means you get a jump on the day and can chill a bit in the afternoons

I can't think of one thing I can't do after 10.00am. What exactly do I have no hope of doing when everyone else is scrabbling around? I often have time to chill a bit in the afternoons too. I rarely need to phone anyone and hardly need to use the car, so quieter phone lines and traffic holds no appeal to me.

You might think getting up earlier is amazing and it makes you more productive but it doesn't for me and many others.

I agree about early mornings being quiet and empty...but if everyone capitalised on this, I'd have to get up even earlier to escape the crowds!

I think we should establish a movement to change society so that work and school all start much later in the day.

Getting up early (especially in winter when it's dark and cold) is just a silly idea.