Getting out of Bed on Schedule

Oversleeping and wasting time drowsing are common problems most of us face regularly. Well, you can get out of bed as soon as your alarm rings. Every single day. It doesn’t even have to be very hard to do so. All you need is the will to do it and some self-discipline.

Why People Oversleep

There are some different reasons for oversleeping and staying in bed for too long:

• Not hearing the alarm ring: What can I say about this one? Actually, the solution is kinda easy in this case: Get a louder alarm clock! If you regularly miss your alarm you should change something about it.
• Drugs: I don’t want to talk a lot about this point as it’s pretty obvious. If you’re too drunk to stand up, how do you think you could get out of bed on time? Same applies to some other drugs. Just don’t do drugs if you want to wake up at a precise time the following day. (Drinking a lot of coffee can have negative effects on your sleep as well.)
• Tricking yourself to stay in bed: This is where it starts to get interesting. And basically, that’s the point this article really is about. The problem with it is: This sort of tricking yourself has become a habit for most of us. Especially on weekends. You’re giving away valuable time this way. Solving this problem takes some time as you will have to replace the habit of tricking yourself to stay in bed by the habit of getting out of bed as soon as your alarm rings.

Habit Replacement

To replace a habit, you have to act according to the new habit all the time. This means you should get out of bed on time on weekdays and on weekends. Don’t allow any exceptions.

Habit forming is said to take about three weeks at least. So force yourself to stick to your new habit for the first month. Once it has become a habit, you’ll do it all naturally.

Some of you might be able to just use the new habit instead of the old one, but most of us will need some techniques to help ourselves to make the change happen. So here are some recommended methods you can apply during the habit replacement period in that particular case:

• Proper alarm clock positioning: Place your alarm clock out of reach. I recommend to place it just so far away from you that you have to get up on your feet. Once you’re standing it’s a lot easier for you to stay awake and your whole situation changed: Now you don’t need to force yourself to get out of bed anymore, you just need to force yourself to not go to bed again. That’s not that hard to do (or let’s say not to do).
• Don’t let your mind make decisions when drowsy: This requires a little self-discipline. But define your will before you go to bed and stick to it. It’s a major point. Your mind will come up with various strange reasons why you absolutely need another hour of sleep when in fact you just slept long enough to miss a whole vacation. Drowsiness is a strange mental state. And you want to make your decisions when you’re in a clear state of mind, don’t you?
• Motivation: Maybe you will need an extra motivation. You could reward yourself for getting out of bed on time for example. Any small reward will do fine. Plus, you should know what you can do after getting out of bed. Just make it hard for your drowsy mind to come up with any reasons for not getting up.

Don’t let sleep rule you, rule your sleep.