Most successful entrepreneurs agree that one of their habits is getting up much earlier than the average person. That gives them an excellent competitive edge. Admittedly, for most people this can mean extra effort, but once we make it one of our habits, it becomes part of us.
And we’re not just talking about getting up early on working days, but also at weekends and on holiday. It’s a way of enjoying your days much more. So here are 5 reasons why you should get up earlier, published by Kate Mueller in Business Insider. At the end we’ll also give some simple guidelines for building it into our routine and becoming happy early risers 🙂
1. The breakfast of the rich
On the one hand, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and eating a proper breakfast brings clear benefits and advantages. It provides the vitamins and nutrients we need to boost our performance and concentration from the first minute of the working day, as well as a lower cholesterol level. We are obviously talking about a healthy breakfast.
In a meeting you can tell who has had breakfast and who hasn’t. You can also tell who has just rolled out of bed and who is fully awake. Don’t waste this advantage.
On the other hand, didn’t you say you wanted to be rich? Well, most millionaires are calmly having breakfast while they catch up on what’s going on in the world.
What do business champions eat for breakfast?
Most include juice, fruit and coffee as well as toast or sandwiches. The most experienced make breakfast an even bigger meal than the others.
2. Exercise
I can vouch for the benefits of doing some exercise in the morning. For some reason, once you get used to it, you head out ready to take on the world. Of course, at first you won’t be spared a few days of tiredness and even dizziness, but eventually that passes and what you feel is strength, vitality and energy.
3. Relaxation
There’s nothing worse than getting up at the last possible minute and rushing out of the house without breakfast because you’re already late. It’s a good way to get the day off on the wrong foot, and stressed.
Imagine the opposite scenario: getting up with plenty of time, taking an unhurried shower, having breakfast while you read the paper at your leisure. It’s a more relaxed way to start the day.
4. More sleep
Getting up earlier can cure people who suffer from insomnia, because they will be more tired when they go to bed at night. We should sleep as much as we need, and not fall for the idea that we can try to get by on just 4 hours because the Iron Lady and Donald Trump do; but practically every study indicates that nobody should sleep more than 8 hours a day. Anything beyond 8 hours of sleep doesn’t give us more vitality, just more tiredness.
5. More productivity
Getting up earlier translates into more productivity throughout the day. Mornings are when the brain is most alert and focused, so we can concentrate on our most important decisions and leave reading emails and checking Facebook for the afternoon.
Some will think this all sounds great, but that it takes a lot of effort. So…
How do we make getting up early part of our routine?
For the lazier among us, the way to go is little by little, adding activities progressively. In other words, if on the first day you decide to get up early you set out to rise 4 hours earlier after sleeping just 3 hours that night and launch into a workout, by noon someone will probably have to call the Red Cross to revive you.
Let’s do it in stages.
1. Each day, set the alarm 20 or 30 minutes earlier.
But don’t switch it off or hit snooze. When the alarm goes off, get up like a soldier. That’s discipline.
2. It doesn’t matter what time you go to bed.
Once several days have gone by and those 30-minute steps have brought you to the time you want to get up (for example, 6:00 a.m.), don’t focus on going to bed earlier. Go to bed when your body asks for it. Don’t force your body to sleep when it isn’t sleepy. Little by little your internal clock will adjust, and your body will ask for bed earlier and earlier.
3. Add activities gradually.
Bring exercise into your mornings gradually. Bear in mind that until you adapt to this new habit of getting up at six every morning, you will feel less energetic for days or weeks, so this is no time to throw in an hour of exercise. Try 5 or 10 minutes before your shower. Then go up to 20 minutes. In the end, 30 minutes of exercise in the morning will be enough.
4. Don’t take a siesta.
To regulate our internal clock we need to avoid afternoon naps. It’s the only way to get our body to ask to go to bed earlier and earlier.
5. Don’t interrupt the process.
Don’t make the mistake of breaking the routine you are trying to build when the weekend comes, because by the following Monday you will have thrown it all away. Remember that we are swapping a vice for a habit, and breaking that routine would be like the one cigarette an ex-smoker has that can make them relapse.
Over time you can allow some variations. In my case, I know I shouldn’t, but on Sundays I take the chance to get up at 12:00 or later, sometimes much later. It’s as if I were recharging my batteries for the whole week, but it’s also true that you practically lose the Sunday. You don’t enjoy it.
Further reading
- 7 things the world’s most successful people have in common
- The first step to success: finding the best version of yourself
- Fighting bad luck: effort isn’t everything
Featured image: Lankyrider, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
