So tomorrow I start a new job (Saturdays and Sundays only). The downside is I have to be at work by 6am, which means I have to get up by about 5am. :eek: I’ve never had to get up that early before, and I’m not much of a morning person to begin with. Help me out!
I get up at 5:30am every day. The trick is: getting into a rhythm. Working only weekends is going to make that hard. Get yourself a loud, annoying alarm and place it far enough away from the bed that you have to get up to shut it off. That, a cold shower and coffee should do it. 
I get up at 5:15 during the week. Usually 6:30 - 7 on weekends.
Just make sure you go to bed early enough to get enough sleep. That may mean getting up early at least on Friday.
I agree that just doing it weekends will make it harder.
If you are a coffee drinker and have a pot that has a timer, then set it to brew just before you are due to get out of bed. It helps to have something to look forward to when you get up.
I get up at 5:20 to be in to work by 7. I’ll probably get up even earlier, once it gets too hot to run during the daytime.
The trick is self-discipline. Self-discipline, and 4 cups of coffee. Self-discipline, 4 cups of coffee, and a very loud alarm clock. Self-discipline, 4 cups of coffee, a very loud alarm clock, and a hot shower. I think that’s it.
At least you don’t have to do what I did last weekend – work from 3 to 10, then get up at 5 to be at work again by 6! One of my coworkers had to leave town because of a death in her family, which meant the rest of us got overworked a bit.
I was pretty out of it by the time I got off at 1:30 that next day, I can tell you!
Personally, if I have to get up early, I allow myself an hour to drink coffee, get dressed, get out the door. Less than that and I’m just not awake at all. I can get up early without too much hassle, but once early afternoon comes along I slow down a lot if I’ve had a short night.
If you drink coffee, soda, or other caffeinated substances to wake up, once you’re awake, stop. No caffeine after lunch unless you absolutely have to to stay awake.
Keep to the same schedule on the weekend, too. Don’t sleep in past eight at the latest, or you’ll just mess yourself up.
Speaking of messing yourself up, here’s the self-destructive way to do it that works sometimes: Drink a bunch of beer the night before. You’ll get to sleep earlier and have to get up early to pee.
Hey, I said it was self-destructive…
Not sure if someone mentioned this already…
Adjust your biocircadian rhythm so you’re getting up at 5 a.m. all the time–it’ll become second nature to you. (Yes, sadly, this will probably mean going to sleep earlier. ;)) I always get up around 7:00 a.m. now because that’s when I needed to get up for high school; I did it so many times with the alarm clock on it became a force of habit.
Even better is beer and melatonin. Beer, Jamesons, and melatonin.
It’s my secret “get back on schedule” weapon. And it’s fun!
I get up around 4:00 a.m. now, but I used to have to be up and out of the house by 3:15 or so. I never got to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, and the thing that helped me most was learning to convince myself before I fell asleep that I was only going to nap, then get up and go to work. Every night, I’d tell myself, “Okay, I’m going to nap for four hours, then get up and leave. I can nap again when I get home.”
Believe it or not, it really made a huge difference. I still don’t sleep more than five hours, usually, and I still use this trick if I’m going to have a really short night.
Best,
karol
Have everything ready before you go to bed: clothes and towels laid out, lunch packed, whatever you have to take with you stacked neatly beside the door. I find I can get up early, but I can’t make complex decisions, an dwhen i must choose, choose poorly.
Go to bed early. Boring, but essential for me. Clothes and lunch ready. Drink a glass of water when you get up;a lot of fatigue on arising is dehydration.
Cyn, OB/GYN RN because babies like to show up EARLY. Are they afraid of missing something?
The only thing you can do is go to bed early. I’ve worked some tough shift combinations (2-10 one day, then 6-2 the next morning) and it is always impossible for me to get to sleep until about midnight after working an evening shift. If you can start going to bed a bit earlier during the week, that might help as well. Your body won’t like it if you’re trying to fall asleep by 10 on Friday night if you’ve been staying up until midnight or 1 AM the rest of the week.
I have to wake up at 5:00 a lot. I am not a morning person at all, so my tips might help you…
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Pick the time that you want to wake up and subtract 10 minutes. Make that the time you set your alarm to. I’ve found that having that extra 10 minutes of sleep time makes me feel a little less deprived. There’s nothing better than being able to roll over and go back to bed, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Just make sure that your alarm is loud enough so that you hear it when it goes off, and put it in a place on your night stand that requires you to really reach over and shut it off.
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Have something to motivate you to get out of bed. Sometimes I promise myself that I will dress and eat breakfast while listening to a beloved CD. The promise of a super cinnamon swirl from Ms. Winners or a bowl of my favorite cereal often serves the same purpose.
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If you can, turn on the lights and let the sound of music (or TV blabber) fill your home. A quiet, dark apartment/house will make you feel like it’s still night time and that you should be in bed, asleep.
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Take care of errands and routine hassles the night before. Deciding to subtract an extra fifteen minutes to your wake up time so that you can iron a blouse or stop by the gas station will seem like no big deal to you at 9:00 pm, the night before. But it will suck tremendously when that alarm goes off at 4:45. (Anything before 5:00 is “night time” to me. I hate when I have to get up that early!)
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Red Bull tastes horrible but will wake up you during those first few weeks of getting the rhythm established. But you don’t want to be hooked on it because on the day you decide to go without it, you won’t feel so hot.
I have a variable wakeup time which ranges from 3:30 to 7:30.
Besides the above suggestions I would add to set your thermostat to heat up your bedroom durign wakeup time. This way there will be no thermal shock while getting out of bed and it will be too wwarm to try to go back to sleep.
Also hit the shower right away.
(it works for me)
Yeah, pretend you’re three years old again, and lay your clothes out the night before. Leave everything you have to take with you by the door. If you’ve packed a lunch and want to remember it, put your keys in the fridge with your lunch and put a sticky on the door that says “keys in fridge.”
Those things alone will save you five minutes and your clothes will match! (I blame the lack of sleep and poor lighting, but I once headed off in brown shoes, black pants and a navy jacket. Truly horrific.)
And chewing gum! Stick a piece of gum in your mouth as you head off. For some reason, that works better on me than caffeine first thing.
Make sure your alarm clock is not where you can reach it from the bed.
That way you’re forced to get up to turn it off. Stops you from turning it off half asleep and then going back to sleep.
I used to deliver papers and had to get up at 3 every day 7 days a week.
Have a significant other who has to get up before you. I love that my husband has to wake up 30 minutes before I do. It makes me feel like I’ve slept in, even though I really haven’t.
Barring that possibility, I recommend a big drink of water the night before (so you’ll have to pee in the morning, and thus will HAVE to get out of bed), a big drink of water in the morning (it always helps me wake up, for some reason), and a light breakfast (honestly, I think overeating in the morning just makes one feel heavy and tired. I feel much better if I just have a light breakfast, and then another light snack later on in the morning).
Two alarms set to go off within seconds of each other and both positioned so you have to get out of bed to turn them off.
Once you’re up, turn all the lights on and put on some loud music if thereare no neighbours to get annoyed.
I have to get up at 7:00 every morning for school and on the days that I work, I have to get up at 6:00. I find that I can get by on very little sleep if…
I eat a good breakfast. Like, I mean a GOOD breakfast. Get up 20 minutes earlier and cook yourself a nice big healthy breakfast. It’ll help you wake up and get you energized for the day. Also you won’t be starving come lunchtime or whenever it is that you eat.
I also take a shower immediately when I get up. It wakes you up because you are physically doing something. Also the alarm clock scares the bejeezus out of me (I’m an incredibly light sleeper) so when it goes off I’m too shaken up to get back to sleep. I count that as a good thing otherwise I’d never make it anywhere on time.