Local Night Owl Tries To Be Morning Person

As you have probably figured out from the title, I’m not a morning person. I have seen more sunrises from staying up all night than waking up early in the morning and I love it. So naturally, I decided to challenge myself and wake up at 7 am everyday, for a week. Twice.

Let me explain. Mornings for me have always been very functional, I get up at the time I need to in order to be on time.  So around forty minutes to do my stretches, get ready, eat something real quick, and get out the door for work which runs me mostly on time.

It’s a habit I’ve carried on from high school when I would get maybe four hours of sleep, so in order to maximize my shut eye I would get up at the last possible minute that still ensured I got to school on time.

Now, this isn’t my life anymore, I don’t need to be maximizing sleep. So I thought maybe I can actually try and make the most of my morning. Maybe.

I started by creating some goals, what I thought/want to get out of waking up early:

I realize this is a hefty list for someone who is the epitome of a night owl, but this is genuinely what I want to accomplish, and these are goals which means they are meant to be worked towards.

And then I decided to wake up at 7am for a week. Back in May.

Since you’re reading this in June, clearly it didn’t go well. The main reason was because I had to unexpectedly move last month and that threw everything for a loop so I ended up dropping the already failing challenge to focus on the move.

But I still want to share that experience with you because it was my honest first try at this so here’s my journaling from the 3 days I tried the challenge: 

Journal Entry Day 1: Sunday:

I failed. I could not get up at 7am even though I was conscious enough to turn off my alarm. This is a probably a mixture of the fact that I stayed up till 3am the night before and I always sleep in on the weekends and can’t motivate myself to get up if I don’t have any plans. I actually got out of bed at 12:30 pm today and am so disappointed in myself. This is not a great start to this week and I’m debating starting over next week instead. I wanted to do so many things and not being able to do them they way I wanted is very discouraging.

As you can see the first day didn’t go well at all. In fact, I failed so spectacularly that I almost scraped the whole idea for this week and considered doing it the following week instead. Then I thought that I shouldn’t let this stop me and if this is going to be an honest post of my true experience, I need to share my failure. And so even though I wasn’t happy with myself, I decided to keep pushing on.

Journal Entry Day 2: Monday:

Well something is better than nothing, got out of bed at 7:40am. I stayed up till 3:30am the previous night reading (this is really quite a trend I’ve adopted) so getting up today was harder knowing that I could actually be getting more substantial sleep.

But at least I woke up earlier than usual and did have time to do both my morning stretches and a ten-minute core workout. I also managed to journal for a little bit, including this entry, but I definitely feel the pressure of time and can’t really take things as slow as I had hoped. Nonetheless, despite feeling rushed, this is progress from before.

I used to get up at 7am when I had to actually drive to work, but in the month or so I’ve been in quarantine, working from home has pushed that time by at least an hour (and usually more). I was able to get some things done on Day 2 despite the late wake up. I know this was heavily influenced by my 3:30am bedtime, but there were times (as my alarm periodically woke me up) where I could have gotten up had I pushed myself but I couldn’t do it, feeling the need for more sleep winning over.

I knew this was a mental hurdle but it felt all the more prominent as I had trouble convincing myself that it’s worth it to get up instead of keep sleeping.

Journal Entry Day 3: Tuesday:

Well I got up at 7:30 today, almost by mistake. It’s become second nature for me to ignore my alarms but somehow I happened to check right at 7:30. The tug of sleep is real. I had a hard time opening my eyes and getting myself to actually get up and move. I wasn’t even that tired, I just really wanted to sleep…

Somehow I’ve gotten myself up, it wasn’t bad five minutes into it when I was doing my stretches though. And from there I managed another ten minute workout and have been able to journal too. It’s definitely nicer to have more time today than I did yesterday. I don’t really feel the need to pick out my outfit (since I’m quarantining) so the next 15-20 minutes or so have opened up.

Adding an extra half hour to my normal forty minute morning routine was something I had been tossing around in my head as I started this. That was what I was actually going to implement into my life after this week long challenge was over. Mistakenly, I was able to test it out on Day 3 to see if I would have enough time with the extra half hour to accomplish the things I wanted.

It turned out alright, but I was aware of the fact that I am still mostly running on time with the added workout and journaling and still didn’t have the leisure time to take things slow the way I had hoped. However, my focus and goal for this challenge was to actually wake up at 7 which as of Day 3 I had not done. But still it was progress compared to the previous two days.

As you can see it was not successful. But it taught me a lot about myself and the habits I’ve created that are the hardest to fight.

-I stay up late most nights, the true night owl shining through, and that prevents me from waking up early

-I still hold on to the mentality that if I can sleep more and still get things done then I should sleep more (hence me running on time even though I was able to get things done)

-Actually getting out of bed is the hardest part, once I’m up and active I’m okay, but that first act is the hardest

-I expect myself to snooze, always have which is why I set alarms before I’m supposed to get up so I can snooze them, but it’s created the habit of me not getting up immediately which is probably why getting out of bed is so hard

Keeping these things in mind I decided to try again, a week ago, to see if maybe I could do it better the second time around. But this time I decided to focus on only the work week, keeping the challenge to 5 days. I also decided to couple this with a morning routine of sorts to make me feel a little better, things I’d let slip since quarantine.

Now a lot of those probably sound obvious, but small things, intentionally done, create big differences. And I just needed to create a routine to hold myself accountable too. Plus. I work really well with lists so I thought this would be beneficial.

And now, for round 2:

Day 1: Monday:

I was conscious enough at 7am to know I should get up but ended up sleeping an extra 25 minutes. I went to sleep at 2 in the morning so that might have been a factor. But even then I know it has more to do with knowing I didn’t HAVE to get up that early. But I was able to get all the things on my morning list done.

Day 2: Tuesday:

Went to sleep at 3am so really couldn’t get myself up at 7am. I wasn’t even truly awake until 7:45 and didn’t make it out of bed till 8. I was still able to get my morning list done though.

Day 3: Wednesday:

Got up at 7:25 this morning, remember being somewhat conscious of my 7am alarm but once again couldn’t get my self out of bed earlier than I needed to knowing I could still accomplish my list without getting up at 7am.

Day 4: Thursday:

Got out of bed at 7:35 this morning even though I woke up at 6:30 wide awake because of some noise outside. But once I realized I had half an hour left, I went back to sleep and this happened. Once again was able to complete my morning routine. 

Day 5: Friday: 

I don’t know what I did yesterday that made me so tired that I just could not get myself out of bed. I became conscious at 7:45 and didn’t get out of bed till 8:10. I was so tired, even more so than what I usually feel when I wake up. I didn’t got to sleep that late, around 1:30 or so but I really struggled this morning. Today is the first true flop of the week. I got my morning stuff done, after I started working and if I hadn’t been working from home I would not have been able to do more than just my stretches. It’s actually really disappointing.

 (Note: I ended up staying up till 6am, had there been a day 6 I would have failed even more)

As you can see, I fell back into the same patterns. True that I’m (for the most part) able to consistently get up early, but only early enough to accomplish my routine. What I haven't accomplished is the "taking it slow" thing that morning people do. 

While there are some parts of my morning routine that do force me to slow down, it's not quite what I had envisioned. And I know this is because my morning is still very functional. I've listed out my morning routine and while it's definitely more positive, I'm still only getting up early enough to do those things. 

Then again, I’m not a morning person and I don’t think a week can change that. I still view the night as my area of enjoyment where I can relax, read, write, do whatever at my own pace in comfort.

And that’s okay. I don’t think this needs to completely change me as a person. I know that I don’t want to give up the night the way I would need to to wake up early and while my heart and mind lay in the night I will never be able to truly become a morning person.

Your mindset and intention has everything to do in developing new habits or changing old ones and I know that where I’m at and what I’ve accomplished is what I could given those two things.

So yes, I did fail this challenge, but I’ve still walked away with a better, more positive, lifestyle experience. And moving forward, I will find a compromise between sleeping in and waking up early, perhaps some days I allow myself to stay up late and sleep in the next morning and other days go to bed on time to wake up early.

And there you have it, a night owl tries desperately to be a morning person and…somewhat succeeds? It’s not a white or black answer but a shade of grey as most things in life, and it’s been my honest, real experience.

I hope you guys enjoyed! This was a long one I know, but regardless I hope you got something out of it! If you’re a night owl and want to try this challenge out then please share with me your experience! And if you’re a morning person, please share your tips!

As always, thanks for reading!

See ya in the next one!