Hi there! For the month of March, I decided to challenge myself to wake up before 7:00am everyday (yes, even on the weekends). I know for some of you that seems like no big deal (I mean, babies and children amirite?). But for me it will be pretty difficult. I tend to wake up around 8:00am on most days, and I probably go to sleep somewhere between 11:00pm and midnight. But I really want to try on being an early bird for a little while. I think I would actually like it a lot. Still, I’ve never tried to make a habit out of waking up early.
There were several things that influenced my self-challenge this month. When I force myself to wake up early, I’m much more likely to get up and get going more quickly. There’s something about being up early that triggers my brain to get a move on. When I sleep in, I am very slow to get going. There are days when I wake up at 9:00am and don’t manage to actually get out of bed until 10:00am (I can manage that because I’m a grad student – yay for me!) But with the slow morning also comes the tendency to go to bed later….and you know what that means: Later bed time, later wake up time, later bed time, and so on.
Also, I find that I am more productive when I wake up early. Maybe it’s because I’m quick to get up and get ready, but when I am up at an early hour I start doing productive things earlier and sustain that enhanced productivity throughout the day.
Finally, I tend to be in a better mood when wake up earlier. There’s something about the morning sunlight that makes me happy. I’m sure there’s some kind of scientific reason for that, right?
So it’s time to try waking up early on for size. I want to see if I can make it a habit so that I can sustain it after the month is over. Here are the rules: I need to wake up and physically get out of bed before 7:00am, everyday, until April 1. Shouldn’t be that hard, right??
March 1st:
Okay so my first lesson of the month is that getting up early is completely unsustainable when you go to bed late. Seems pretty intuitive. Lesson learned. I suppose a sub-challenge in this challenge will be to force myself to go to bed earlier. That won’t always be easy, but I’ll have to do it to prevent myself from becoming a sleep-deprived psychopath.
For the past few days I have been on a trip with my family. We’ve been staying in a hotel, staying up too late, and having long days. The trip itself is so much fun, but waking up at 6:30am, hours before everyone else, is pretty awful. Although I will say that I have gotten in some very restorative “me time” in the morning while everyone else is still sleeping, so that’s a plus. But still, the late bedtimes plus the poor sleep that comes from being in a hotel room has made for a pretty difficult morning today.
#currentmood
But on I go! I’m 8 days into the challenge and so far I’m pretty happy with it. Will my observations that inspired the challenge sustain for the whole month? Will I be more animated, happy, and productive after waking up early for a month? We will have to wait and see!
Thirty Day Endeavors 
Good luck! It’s hard to do when you aren’t absolutely forced to do it by a work schedule or screaming child. But there is something special about the morning, if you’re not too tired to appreciate it. I suggest melatonin an hour before bed until you get used to going to bed at 10 or whenever is best for you (9 is late for me these days).