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Not advice, but some good news for those who struggle. I always had problems getting up early. I hated it. It was a running joke amongst my friends, any time w

Not advice, but some good news for those who struggle. I always had problems getting up early. I hated it. It was a running joke amongst my friends, any time we had to take an early flight or set off early on a road trip, they had to drag me out of bed. And it wasn't laziness - I just felt awful, really sick, terrible, early in the morning. One day I met someone who told me she was exactly the same when she was younger, but that it gets easier. She was right. Now, I can get up earlier than my friends. I'm more of a morning person. I don't know what happened, but it changed quite suddenly, maybe in the space of a few months, sometime in my early 30s. Nowadays I get up early and hit the gym most days, which a younger me would simply have believed impossible. I don't know if this applies to everyone, but I can tell you that none of my friends over 30 have the same difficulty I did when I was younger, but plenty of those in their 20s do.

jwdunne 11y ago
I used to be a night owl - used to sleep in past 12pm. I switched over time. Full time work shifted the pattern mostly. Weekends I still got up later. Children who wake at 7am sharp was the final step. 8am feels like a lie in after years of a daily ritual of 7am rise. No matter if I go to bed at 10pm or 2am, there isn't compromise in the morning. I guess one way of doing it is to give yourself no choice. Without children, I imagine an alarm in another room, perhaps next to a phone or computer where you need to press a button or it'll bill you for each 15 mins late. Unfortunately, these are things you can turn off.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  It reminds me of one of the more beautiful pieces of cyberware available in the Shadowrun RPG: The little device hooked into your meatware that sends a harmless electric shock to your brain at a prescribed time (or some other event), immediately bringing you from a sleep state to a wakeful state. The company that invents that would be worth a lot of money.
neals 11y ago
I actually think I'm slowly getting there. I felt the same as you did, now I'm in my 30's I wake up before the alarm and I think "I could totally go for a run". I haven't actually ran yet, but now that winter is over, I feel that I might do my first morning run ever, this week.
wpietri 11y ago
My totally unevidenced and probably wrong theory to explain this is that it's a balance between energy and exhaustion. Exhaustion always wins, but the boundless energy of youth means that it wins later, shifting one's diurnal cycle back. For me, there were other factors, though. One is that I lost my FOMO; the thought that people might be having fun somewhere was no longer enough to pull me out of the house. Another was getting in better control of my mind; now I can put down an interesting book, quiet my thoughts, and go to bed when I'm tired. A third was more experience with consequences. In my youth, the thought that I might feel shitty in the morning was a tiny, distant possibility. But experience has made that much more present to me when I decide to stay up late. Now I still do it, but it's not out of being heedless. A fourth, possibly driven by the third, is that I've become pretty serious about the effect that light has on me. I make sure to get plenty of daylight, and I have an elaborate system for keeping my evenings dim. I also suspect something metabolic; the shift for me accelerated a lot when I started running regularly. These days if I don't get enough exercise I feel distinctly uncomfortable, on edge. In my exercise-averse youth, I suspect I was always that kind of uncomfortable, enough to keep me up at night. Summary: bodies are weird, minds are weird and made out of meat, and nobody gave me enough of either to do good A/B testing to feel like I know much about mine.
carlosnunez 11y ago
You know what made me more of a morning person? Parking my car in a school zone. If I don't move it by 07:00, I'll get a $45 ticket. But parking the car there is great because I never have to spend time looking for parking (in Brooklyn, NYC). I'm much more of a morning person now. :)

jwdunne 11y ago

I used to be a night owl - used to sleep in past 12pm. I switched over time. Full time work shifted the pattern mostly. Weekends I still got up later. Children who wake at 7am sharp was the final step. 8am feels like a lie in after years of a daily ritual of 7am rise. No matter if I go to bed at 10pm or 2am, there isn't compromise in the morning. I guess one way of doing it is to give yourself no choice. Without children, I imagine an alarm in another room, perhaps next to a phone or computer where you need to press a button or it'll bill you for each 15 mins late. Unfortunately, these are things you can turn off.

fapjacks 11y ago
It reminds me of one of the more beautiful pieces of cyberware available in the Shadowrun RPG: The little device hooked into your meatware that sends a harmless electric shock to your brain at a prescribed time (or some other event), immediately bringing you from a sleep state to a wakeful state. The company that invents that would be worth a lot of money.

neals 11y ago

I actually think I'm slowly getting there. I felt the same as you did, now I'm in my 30's I wake up before the alarm and I think "I could totally go for a run". I haven't actually ran yet, but now that winter is over, I feel that I might do my first morning run ever, this week.

wpietri 11y ago

My totally unevidenced and probably wrong theory to explain this is that it's a balance between energy and exhaustion. Exhaustion always wins, but the boundless energy of youth means that it wins later, shifting one's diurnal cycle back. For me, there were other factors, though. One is that I lost my FOMO; the thought that people might be having fun somewhere was no longer enough to pull me out of the house. Another was getting in better control of my mind; now I can put down an interesting book, quiet my thoughts, and go to bed when I'm tired. A third was more experience with consequences. In my youth, the thought that I might feel shitty in the morning was a tiny, distant possibility. But experience has made that much more present to me when I decide to stay up late. Now I still do it, but it's not out of being heedless. A fourth, possibly driven by the third, is that I've become pretty serious about the effect that light has on me. I make sure to get plenty of daylight, and I have an elaborate system for keeping my evenings dim. I also suspect something metabolic; the shift for me accelerated a lot when I started running regularly. These days if I don't get enough exercise I feel distinctly uncomfortable, on edge. In my exercise-averse youth, I suspect I was always that kind of uncomfortable, enough to keep me up at night. Summary: bodies are weird, minds are weird and made out of meat, and nobody gave me enough of either to do good A/B testing to feel like I know much about mine.

carlosnunez 11y ago

You know what made me more of a morning person? Parking my car in a school zone. If I don't move it by 07:00, I'll get a $45 ticket. But parking the car there is great because I never have to spend time looking for parking (in Brooklyn, NYC). I'm much more of a morning person now. :)