Can you really function on minimal sleep and still have a productive day? Join us as we challenge conventional sleep wisdom and reveal the secrets to mastering an early morning routine, even if you’ve been a night owl your whole life. From personal anecdotes of childhood sleep struggles to adult victories over morning inertia, this episode is packed with honest reflections and actionable advice. Discover the key strategies that can help you leap out of bed and stay up, ensuring you’re always ahead of the game whether it’s for work, social life, or personal health.
We’ll dive into the essential habit of not just waking up, but staying up, and how it forms the bedrock of productivity. You’ll get practical tips like placing deterrents to keep you from sneaking back under the covers and learn about energy-boosting drinks and supplements that can supercharge your mornings. Ever wondered how pre-workout supplements can give you a better gym pump and a head start to the day? We’ve got you covered. The essence of our discussion boils down to one powerful act: getting up and staying up, setting the tone for a successful and balanced lifestyle.
Can you really function on minimal sleep and still have a productive day? Join us as we challenge conventional sleep wisdom and reveal the secrets to mastering an early morning routine, even if you’ve been a night owl your whole life. From personal anecdotes of childhood sleep struggles to adult victories over morning inertia, this episode is packed with honest reflections and actionable advice. Discover the key strategies that can help you leap out of bed and stay up, ensuring you’re always ahead of the game whether it’s for work, social life, or personal health.
We’ll dive into the essential habit of not just waking up, but staying up, and how it forms the bedrock of productivity. You’ll get practical tips like placing deterrents to keep you from sneaking back under the covers and learn about energy-boosting drinks and supplements that can supercharge your mornings. Ever wondered how pre-workout supplements can give you a better gym pump and a head start to the day? We’ve got you covered. The essence of our discussion boils down to one powerful act: getting up and staying up, setting the tone for a successful and balanced lifestyle.
Speaker 1:
I remember a while back I got asked something that I wanted to share. The question was how do you go to bed so late but wake up so early? So this dates back to a while Back, when I was a kid. I never really had trouble sleeping, and by that I mean I never really had trouble getting up. When you go to bed, regardless of what time it is, typically you think of when you have to wake up the next morning and you kind of base your sleep schedule around that. When I was growing up, when I was waking up was never an issue because for some odd reason I could never sleep for very long. I never set alarms. I never said all right, I have to go to bed at nine o'clock so that I can get up at four, or something like that. I never had that problem. I would just say, all right, it's 1am, I guess I'm going to go to bed, or whenever I would finish a save file in a game I'm playing, or if I was doing homework or what have you, I'd say you know what, all right time to go to bed, and then I would just go to sleep and then I'd wake up and it would either be around being on time. It would be just time for me to get up. I would wake up before my mom would come in the room. I would, you know, wake up with plenty of time to get ready. I mean, I'd never had that problem Getting older.
Speaker 1:
I was working in food actually, and I remember having multiple shifts and you know, some were different times. Sometimes it was opening, sometimes it was closing, sometimes a little bit of both, and I would always just sleep like I normally would. If I was closing then had to open the next day, I'd go home, play some video games, go to sleep. But if I was closing then had to open the next day, I'd go home, play some video games, go to sleep, then wake up and say all right time to get to work. Now I will say, you know, getting older I started setting alarms because then I started to learn the importance of sleep. But I never really took that into account. When I was, you know, in my teens, my early 20s, I was just like you know what I can go to sleep when I want and I never have trouble waking up. So why miss out on everything happening at night by going to sleep? And so I never really put too much thought into it. But when I started getting into a health journey and I started my fitness goals, then I started to realize, wow, working out, working full time and trying to maintain a healthy life balance is very difficult if there's no spacing in between. So that's kind of how I treat sleep, but that's not what this is about.
Speaker 1:
What this is about is waking up. You have to get up and get in the shower. You have to get up and make breakfast. You have to get up and go to work, go to the gym, hang out with friends, get up to watch TV I mean, you name it right and it all starts from getting out of bed. Now, that's not for everybody, but most of the time, getting out of bed is where the day starts. So if you need an alarm, if you don't need an alarm, the best way to wake up is to simply just get out of bed. It doesn't matter if it's just to get up and go use the bathroom. It doesn't matter if it's just to get up and use the bathroom. It doesn't matter if it's to just get up and walk around, get a glass of water. But whatever you do, if it's time for you to get up, just get out of bed.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes you work for a really long night, or sometimes you have a long night hanging out with friends or what have you. But getting out of bed requires energy and some people just don't want to expend that energy. I know that there are times where I just don't even want to move a muscle. The other half of it getting out of bed is staying out of bed. Now, when you get up in the morning, you have to get out of bed. That's the first part. That's the hard part. You take your first steps. Then you have to not take those same number of steps and get back in the bed. You want to avoid that because once you get back into bed, your body starts to relax and say you know what, five more minutes, man, oh man. Those are the sweetest five minutes you'll ever encounter.
Speaker 1:
Unfortunately, when you sleep or go back to sleep, or laying down or what have you, those five minutes turn into 15, 20 minutes, two hours, six days, you know, and then you miss out on everything you were trying not to miss out on. So one of the best things to do when you get out of bed is stretch, stretch your arms, stretch your legs, then get down. 10 push-ups, 10 sit-ups. Doesn't matter who you are, do the best. You can try your best to get to 10. 5 is acceptable, 1 is acceptable, just try. And then you get up and then you leave the room, whether it's to go get some water, you go shower, use the bathroom, start breakfast, just get out and get moving.
Speaker 1:
So getting up is really important because your day starts, you have things to do and the timing is also important. If you have to be at work at 8 am, you should be trying to get up at like 6 am, 5 am. If you're going to hang out with friends at 11 o'clock in the morning, you're going to breakfast, you're going to brunch what have you? Try to plan at least three to four hours in advance. This is why people get caught up in being late and you know barely making it, or sometimes you just don't have the energy to just go and do it because your day hasn't even started yet. How often have you made plans with your friends and said you know what, let's all hang out in a couple hours and then you guys actually do it? Well, that's because you're already up, your engine's already running. You're saying you know what? I could add this to my day, my day that's already started. Yeah, of course I can. It's easy that way. But when you are escaping the warm embrace of your pillows and sheets and covers, it's a lot harder to leave that and say you know what? I'm going to go outside and do this. So for anybody struggling to get out of bed or struggling with waking up, I think I'm going to have to do another episode or talk a little bit more about what it means to be early or to be on time and what being late really does to people and all of that.
Speaker 1:
But starting your day is the most important part of any routine that you can ever set up for yourself Going to the gym or going to work, going to school, hanging out, even if it's starting a hobby. What I don't want to happen is to wake up one morning and say you know what? My day can be pushed off a little bit further because, honestly, the further you go back and the further you push your day back, the harder it is to get your day started. Have you ever just slept and stayed in bed until like 1pm? Once you get up, it's like well, I don't really want to do anything else and my half my day's gone. But imagine if you had gotten up like six or seven hours earlier. And first I just want to. I want to change the whole perspective of getting up in the morning.
Speaker 1:
Waking up, opening your eyes is one thing, getting out of bed and staying out of bed is a completely different thing and we all need to start doing that and doing it a lot more consistently. It's really tough to do, but the worst thing you can do is get out of bed and stay out of bed for at least a couple hours. And if you decide to take a nap which also think is important then do that. Back when I was in young adulthood, when I was going to college, I would sleep until I had maybe 20 minutes to get to class, or I had an hour before I had to start work. I was walking at the time, so a walk would take like 45 minutes to get there. And I would say you know what, if I show up real quick, I can make it there. And that was good and well and all, but the problem was that it became a habit and despite my other habits playing video games, watching anime, hanging out with friends, just sitting alone in a room staring at the wall, thinking you know.
Speaker 1:
All of that stuff became cohesive and it became a consistent pattern for me to stay up really late, get up really early, and it's not good, it wasn't healthy. So there is a number of. There's always going to be that perfect number of hours that you need to sleep to have a perfect night. Or you know, there's always going to be that that sweet spot of waking up in the morning or getting out of bed in the morning and staying out of bed. There's always going to be that thing that people tell you. But the thing is that it's different per person.
Speaker 1:
I'm the type of person that can go to bed at 1 am and get up at 5 and say you know what? I feel super refreshed. But I'm also the type of person that can go to bed at 9 and wake up at 3, then go back to bed at 3.30, then wake up at 7, then fall back asleep around 7.45, and then wake back up at like 11, 11.30 and feel like I haven't slept in days. You know the longest time that I've slept, the longest amount of time that I can remember that I've slept at one sitting was probably about 10 hours and that had to be the longest 10 hours of my life, but it was also extremely quick. At the same time, when I woke up, I remember it was being super groggy. You felt like my eyelids were just shut. I couldn't get out of bed. I'm just like what is going on? And then when I finally rolled out of bed, I'd be like wow, I need a nap. On the other side, and just this morning I went to bed about 2.30, woke up at 6, and I have had no. It's 4 pm right now and I have had no reason to even consider going back to sleep.
Speaker 1:
So I think it really varies per person, varies on their sleeping patterns, their consistency with those sleeping patterns, their consistency with those sleeping patterns, and I think it's got a lot to do with your circadian rhythm, which is hard to maintain, especially if you have to switch schedules. I just went from actually I just went from working a 1 pm to 10, 11 pm work schedule Monday through Friday, and over the course of the weekend I had to switch to working at 10 am to 7 pm while maintaining a gym schedule. So when I was working 1 pm to 10 pm, I would get up at 8.30, maybe 9, anywhere between 8.30 and 9.30, get up, go to the gym, come back home, eat breakfast, shower, get ready for work and get to work by 1 pm, and then I wouldn't get home until probably 11.30, 12 at night. And then in two days, mind you, I had to switch it up and I had to go from waking up at 9 o'clock to 5 o'clock 5.30 really and go to the gym, come back, make breakfast, get ready, go to work. And that was probably one of the biggest changes I've had to make in a while at least, especially post-college, because you know it was a whirlwind back then. I mean, I had classes.
Speaker 1:
It was a whirlwind back then. I mean, I had classes going back and forth and I had double shifts at work, I had full-time scheduling, I had homework, I had tests, and the hardest part about all of that was you know when do I fit sleep in there? I didn't really care too much for sleep, I didn't really care to do it, but it was something that I had to do, otherwise I'd fall out, I would lose time, I would black out, and I know that that's unhealthy. So go and try to find an empty classroom somewhere where I could knock out like maybe 45 minutes to an hour of sleep before another class started, you know, and over time it's gotten a lot better.
Speaker 1:
So the importance of waking up in the morning, getting up, getting out of bed, staying out of bed is something that is essential to everybody. And when I get asked how do I do it, how do I wake up, and honestly, it's just as simple as getting up, getting out of bed and then staying out of bed. If you have to get up and get out of bed and then lay a bed of spikes under your cover so you don't get back in the bed and take them back out when it's bedtime, do that. One thing I don't do is I don't drink coffee, so that already makes things weird.
Speaker 1:
But I do like energy drinks and the like, but I only drink those when I'm going to the gym and it helped me. I've actually started going back to pre-workout, which has helped me a little bit more than energy drinks. They both kind of have the same effect for me because of the caffeine, but you get a better pump when you're on pre-workout. You know you get a better pump when you're on pre-workout, but all in all, waking up and getting out of bed. That's the home run right there. And if you can master that, that discipline of being tired but knowing that you have to get up and go, then I think you're pretty solid.
