I've never exactly been a "morning person". I was always astounded that my mother seemed to have the ability to wake up by 6 in the morning without an alarm of any kind, and happily start her day. Sometimes she would even take a walk and have breakfast before the rest of us had even woken up for school.
That was not me. I would wake up when my alarm went off (and then snooze it), and roll out of bed as late as I could while still being sure I could make it to my first required class.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
In college I once took an 8 am chemistry lecture that met on a different campus. I rarely made it to class. My grade on my first test reflected that. And so I started bribing myself: If I got up early and took the bus to my chem class, I could stop at my favorite breakfast place and get a Taylor ham, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich. It worked! I started waking up for the sandwich, and once I was there it was easy to walk over to my chemistry lecture.
Flash forward to grown-up life. I get to work at 8 am and leave work at 5, and now that I'm taking business classes part-time in the evenings, it seems like there's no time to work out! The only free time I have is between 5:00 and 7:30 in the morning. And, normally, I use that to sleep.
After months of telling myself I'd get up at 6 to go for a run (or hit the gym or practice yoga) and failing, I found something that changed my outlook: The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg. I had purchased this book at least a year ago and finally got around to reading it in May 2018. Thank goodness I did!
https://charlesduhigg.com/how-habits-work/
Among lots of other great insights, this book details the habit cycle - how habits are formed, and how you can use that to form and change your own habits. Basically, habits are formed when a stimulus, an action, and a reward are repeated in the same sequence enough that your brain decides to hold onto it. After a while, when you experience the stimulus you'll go on autopilot to complete the action because your brain expects a reward. Think Pavlov's dogs.
The book also introduced the concept of a keystone habit, which is a habit that, once implemented, spurs the adoption of other positive habits and helps to get rid of negative habits. This is what waking up early would be for me. I couldn't successfully start a habit of working out every morning if I was still asleep. I couldn't start making healthy breakfasts if I didn't wake up with enough time to make breakfast.
So I implemented the habit cycle:
- Stimulus: I used my cell phone alarm. For added effectiveness, I left the cell phone plugged in and charging across the room, so I'd have to get out of bed to turn it off.
- Action: Go to the kitchen and turn on the tea kettle. We use a french press coffee maker, so I need the water to boil before I can make coffee. Then I hop right back into bed
- Reward: The kettle boils, and I can wake up to fresh french press coffee. I get to sit and drink my coffee and just do nothing until the cup is done. :)
I started doing this at the same time I normally set my alarm, about 6:45 am. It worked pretty well! I was still sleepy when my alarm went off, but walking to the kitchen and turning on the kettle wasn't hard. And then I got right back into bed. When I got out again, I started my day with hot coffee sitting either on my couch or out on my back porch in the early light. If I was feeling generous, I'd let the dogs out and let them snuggle with me.
Once I knew the habit was sticking, I started setting my alarm about 10 minutes earlier every few days. Eventually, I was waking up at 6:00, and I was ready to start adding in my runs. By 6:30 I was usually done with my coffee and looking for something to do, so I'd pop on my sneakers and run out the door and arrive back by 7:30 to get ready for work.
Now my alarm goes off at 5:30, and I'm out the door on my run normally by 6:20 or so, which leaves me extra time when I get back to stretch and shower and maybe even make myself a little breakfast!
It's all possible because I changed that one keystone habit and started actually waking up when my alarm went off instead of snoozing and going back to sleep.
What are the habits you'd like to add (or remove!) from your daily routine?