How to Get Out of Bed
theparisreview.org
theparisreview.org
The top comment is often a poor quality one, expressing some controversial view that gets replies, starving the lower top-level comments of upvotes, and cementing its place at the top.
It would be better to collapse replies to all top-level comments, and allow people to expand the replies to the comments they find interesting.
Although I do agree that built-in comment collapse functionality would be great; I'm using a Chrome extension right now.
I hadn't thought about it when I started writing this, but I'd be curious what comment ordering results a points/time value function would produce. Although a fuzzy random ordering would still be needed to ensure that lower comments got enough viability. So maybe points/time/position-at-vote-time
PS: That said, collapsing comments to promote more equality between highly rated level 1 comments would be an excellent idea.
You have just saved me so much scrolling :D
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collap...
The discussion here is more dynamic, from multiple parties, providing different views, sometimes correcting errors and filling in any omissions of the article, as opposed to the source piece which is static and written by a single, usually biased, individual.
More simply, most people are lazy and do not have the time to read each article. They also go to aggregation sites like HN or Reddit to get all their news in a single format, and temporarily navigating away from that format can be sort of uncomfortable, especially with the ads and whatnot on most linked articles.
Of course this is not a good habit; the articles should be read, at least before you comment on them. Commenting before reading only increases irrelevant noise and defeats the purpose of the news. Yet, the reasons for why people don't read articles, remain.
Maybe HN and Reddit could balance this by providing a preview of the link in the comments section? Some subreddits already have a bot which provides summary, but it really should be a feature of the aggregation site itself.
It is known.
And I am guilty of this in this thread as well.
Yup, seems that way. Kind of depressing, isn't it?
My highest-scoring submission so far, and almost no one seems to have actually read it.
To me it makes a lot of sense, because I didn't want to wake up when there was not hope for happiness. What the author says is that adding the duty of waking up early does not help when your life is already bad, it is only one more source of remorse.
Coincidentally this very active discussion on another article is taking place and likely a good resource for anyone seeking a more relevant conversation with regards to depression:
Every depression is different, so this may not be true for others, but I'm one data point that learning to wake up early is an integral part of learning to deal with a serious depression.
I always had problems getting up early. I hated it. It was a running joke amongst my friends, any time we had to take an early flight or set off early on a road trip, they had to drag me out of bed. And it wasn't laziness - I just felt awful, really sick, terrible, early in the morning. One day I met someone who told me she was exactly the same when she was younger, but that it gets easier. She was right.
Now, I can get up earlier than my friends. I'm more of a morning person. I don't know what happened, but it changed quite suddenly, maybe in the space of a few months, sometime in my early 30s. Nowadays I get up early and hit the gym most days, which a younger me would simply have believed impossible.
I don't know if this applies to everyone, but I can tell you that none of my friends over 30 have the same difficulty I did when I was younger, but plenty of those in their 20s do.
I haven't actually ran yet, but now that winter is over, I feel that I might do my first morning run ever, this week.
Full time work shifted the pattern mostly. Weekends I still got up later.
Children who wake at 7am sharp was the final step. 8am feels like a lie in after years of a daily ritual of 7am rise. No matter if I go to bed at 10pm or 2am, there isn't compromise in the morning.
I guess one way of doing it is to give yourself no choice. Without children, I imagine an alarm in another room, perhaps next to a phone or computer where you need to press a button or it'll bill you for each 15 mins late. Unfortunately, these are things you can turn off.
For me, there were other factors, though. One is that I lost my FOMO; the thought that people might be having fun somewhere was no longer enough to pull me out of the house. Another was getting in better control of my mind; now I can put down an interesting book, quiet my thoughts, and go to bed when I'm tired.
A third was more experience with consequences. In my youth, the thought that I might feel shitty in the morning was a tiny, distant possibility. But experience has made that much more present to me when I decide to stay up late. Now I still do it, but it's not out of being heedless.
A fourth, possibly driven by the third, is that I've become pretty serious about the effect that light has on me. I make sure to get plenty of daylight, and I have an elaborate system for keeping my evenings dim.
I also suspect something metabolic; the shift for me accelerated a lot when I started running regularly. These days if I don't get enough exercise I feel distinctly uncomfortable, on edge. In my exercise-averse youth, I suspect I was always that kind of uncomfortable, enough to keep me up at night.
Summary: bodies are weird, minds are weird and made out of meat, and nobody gave me enough of either to do good A/B testing to feel like I know much about mine.
If I don't move it by 07:00, I'll get a $45 ticket. But parking the car there is great because I never have to spend time looking for parking (in Brooklyn, NYC).
I'm much more of a morning person now. :)
There is certainly some who have genuine medical problems and so who struggle. An order of magnitude just don't sleep enough though. Go to bed at 10 and it's easy to get up at 6, or whatever your actual sleep need is (it varies by individual and over time, right now mine is a hair under 8h I think).
We have all experience having really deep refreshing sleep at least once in our life. As well as fragmented or shallow sleep that makes us feel groggy in the morning. It's obvious which type is easier to wake up from the morning after
But yeah, in general this is my problem, i should go to bed BUT there's always so much more you can do before going to bed.
Mostly I stick to this routine because I get a lot more stuff done with a full nights sleep, I am a lot less good even on 7h so by now I know not to even try to compromise on that.
I also don't drink, so that's not an option (and I think a lot unhealthier anyway).
No kids make this a lot easier than for people with families though.
The best alarm I had was an old cell phone (pre-smart phone days) where the alarm would start off nearly inaudible and slowly get louder over the next minute or so. The gentle nudge awake was much better than a sudden jolt of noise.
The only better alarm would be one that is arrhythmic in nature. That's the only type of noise I can't sleep through.
1. If you need to get up early for work, leave a good handle on it the night before. Like leave detailed notes on how to accomplish the next step or steps. Detailed enough that your first half hour to hour will be brainless peace and harmony.
2. Leave an exciting reveal for the morning. Say you finished building a cool new feature. Don't try it out until you wake up. I like to leave a 3D image or animation rendering overnight.
3. If possible change your schedule so that the early morning can just be full of fun stuff.
4. Plan to lay in bed for about an hour before you fall asleep. Incentivize it with a bedtime-only iPad or a pile of good books for bedtime only.
5. Lay out your clothes for the morning, the night before.
6. Do not get out of bed cold unless you find that invigorating. I bought 5 long-sleeve cotton shirts and sleep in those and some comfy pants and short socks. If I get hot, I use fewer blankets. I also keep a coat ready to put on.
7. Make breakfast or a cup of tea/water beforehand.
8. Make a fun routine. I bought a nice radio for early morning use. It picks up stations far away and I listen to it while I work.
9. Plan to take a nap later whenever needed. Schedule in the downtime.
10. Lay out a plan for your entire tomorrow. I do a mind map on paper. With this done the evening before, there should be nothing left to avoid thinking about in the morning, making it easier to consider getting out of bed.
Edit: And yes, it will change your life and people will wonder how you do it. Also I consider this practice a great burnout-prevention tool if you can keep work out of it (or out of the rest of your day).
I can't give exact figures but even being conscious that early in the morning seems to be some sort of amazing life hack, like you are sitting there going "I did it. I did at least that much today." There is some holistic benefit outside of the spreadsheet, in other words.
But regarding planning in general, I know I have made some astounding productivity gains with planning. The first time a planning session saved me four hours of work off of a six hour estimate, I put away my hotshot coder/designer mentality, redoubled my planning efforts and started flow charting, mind mapping, etc much more frequently. I don't plan everything out with exactitude, but let's just say that while I used to laugh at those obsolete books on flow charting, now I pore through them to see if I've missed any tips. And I use them for all kinds of things, not just coding. A design agency asked for my template a while back and I made it available on the web for libreoffice users.
So as parent said, it was "brainless peace and harmony" all the way to the airport.
It was easy when everything was easy... When my clothes were laid out, when the car was full of diesel, when even my coffee was ready, just needed to boil the kettle. On those days it was really simple to just get up shower dress and leave and before I knew it the 3 hour drive was over and I was getting on a tube to work ready for some London time. But if anything tiny thing was left to be done in the morning, that I would tell myself wouldn't take 2 minutes, it always seemed to take 20.
> is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?
The mental barrier of throwing off the warm covers can inspire a lot of time wasted snoozing in the morning.
It may take some adjustment, but wearing warmer pyjamas with a lighter blanket is one of the few things that can make the very act of getting out of bed easier.
I do a slight variation of the same concept: I've set the a/c timer to raise temperature to an almost tropical heat 20 minutes before alarm time.
I sleep under heavy covers and a somewhat low temperature, which is also part of the program.
The idea here is to sleep tucked in and warm like in winter, then wake up to a excessively warm but welcoming environment. If I remain in bed, I'll start sweating profusely and I'm forced out of my covers. So getting out of bed to me is actually inviting while undressing and getting into the shower is less painful.
6. This is terrible for sex and sensual cuddling. You need skin contact. I'd say have a bathrobe ready close to the heat source so that you can sleep naked, but don't suffer from cold when you get out of bed by getting inside its heat.
4. It's terrible advice if you have trouble getting asleep. You should be in bed only to sleep, otherwise you associate bedtime with being awake. Following this advice worked wonder in reducing the time it takes me to fall asleep.
9. Naps don't work for everybody, and can reduce sleep quality for the temporary gain of efficiency, so I've mixed feelings about it.
You seem to have scheduled your life well, but I wonder how you manage things that break the routine. Friends, exceptional crunches quickly break the good patterns and I find it difficult to come back to cruise mode after a lost night.
4. I had read about this too. However, it isn't true for me, or at least I associate my bed with general pleasantry and I sleep great. The biggest sleep aid I found back when I had insomnia was writing 1,000 words before bed every night, but I don't have that problem now.
9. Not sure what to say; I read a lot about naps and as a result I think it's OK to have mixed feelings about naps. If you don't want to nap, there are lots of alternatives depending on your schedule. Some people slow their schedule and get more done. Others meditate. I hope you take whatever steps necessary to maintain optimal cruise mode.
The only advice that is guaranteed to work: "Just do it."
"I got up" -> "you just did it"
"I didn't get up" -> "you didn't just do it"
The useless homeopathic woo-woo of advice.
Someone who needs to get out of bed and struggles with it, is not helped by someone saying "just get out of bed". That's not 'advice', It admits no reasons for being unable to get out of bed, when there clearly are reasons - otherwise the person would already be getting out of bed. It doesn't care about the person or the causes of their problems, or ways of working around them. It only serves to be dismissive and make the person saying it feel better. That's what makes it smug.
Morning habits are important because when people wake up in the morning they are extremely tired which impairs their cognition and willpower, which often leads to bad decisions like the snooze button.
1. Going to bed early. I switched to 9.00 PM instead of 12 midnight.
2. No TV/screens for the last hour to help with that.
3. When the alarm rang, no snoozes. Get up no matter how shit it feels. It gets better.
4. When I get up, no screens near the bed. That stuff just left me in bed with the phone.
Took me two weeks of work, but I started getting up earlier after that. Lasted for about half a year and then I went on vacation and it lasted partway through that. I've been working remote on a different timezone for the last month and that's gone and ruined it.
Then find a kindred spirit who will provide you with a little peer pressure. The dog will be happy he got to poop, and your friend will be happy to see you at the gym.
Straight: Use your legs, flexing one under your butt, extending the other, and then flexing it down to lever your torso up.
Best: Combine them, and shoulder roll off the bed ;)
It seems like a worthy goal.
I use an alarm clock, my iPhone, set to the obnoxious "alarm" sound, and keep it on the desk across the room where the phone charges, next to it as a large glass of water. Alarm goes off, while it's still going off drink the water and look out the window at the light. I've been doing this for ~5 years and it works really well.
The day before lie down on your bed and practice standing up and starting your routine (brushing teeth).
When you wake up you shouldn't give yourself time to think because then you will start procrastinating, instead autopilot should kick in and before you know it you're brushing your teeth.
I became a father!
others considering should be aware that this approach does come with its tradeoffs as far as your productivity goes. :)
Or get a cat. No better alarm clock than a hungry cat.
By the time my actual alarm goes off the caffeine has kicked in and I really have to get up and pee.
2. Swing left leg towards the right so it dangles off the bed.
3. Plant right hand palm down on mattress.
4. Push down into the mattress with your right hand, lifting up your upper body while moving your left foot to join the right one firmly planted on the floor.
5. You should now be sitting upright on the edge of the bed.
6. Stand up.
Congratulations, you have gotten out of bed.
Thought it was pretty useless until I actually tried it for a week and realized it was a lot less jarring and stressful than an ordinary alarm clock.
I still tend to hit snooze and only get up on the second round, but by then I'm usually awake enough to enjoy real sunshine and looking forward to it.
Light tends to have a very positive effect on me in the mornings, so taking as much advantage of it as possible would be my advice.
Maybe I still am, but this year I decided I needed to mix it up. I tried to get myself in bed before midnight, then up at 7 for the gym before work. The reason being the gym is much harder in the evening, as is work (if you have offers to go out, meetups, whatever). If I don't start until midday, it removes any options I get during the day for a lazy (/alcoholic) lunch, or for socialising in the evening, because I have to work or work out.
I was moderately successful at this, but I've had a breakthrough in the last 8 or 9 weeks by getting up at 5.50 for meditation and qigong at 6am, before leaving just after 7 for the gym. Not only has the meditation helped me immensely, but I'm feeling more alive during the day. And I can leave work (or not!) in the evening with zero guilt about not having done enough, knowing I can do whatever I want with my evening (be that work, or play).
For me, and particularly when I was working for someone else, I got up because I set an alarm and had to get up. If I didn't, I'd get fired (probably). I've found over the last few months the key (mentally) has been doing something for me. If you have to get up at 7am to work for someone else, getting up at 5am or 6am means you're not getting up for them, you're getting up for you. It's harder to resent getting up and getting moving because you're owning it - it's your choice.
Anyway. I may just be getting older... Just my 2c.
I got up a little later than I used to set my alarm for, but much earlier than I actually got up with an alarm clock.
Considerable unemployment times has shown that my natural circadian rhythm is from 7am to 2pm, give or take, meaning that all those extra 4 or 5 hours are really not sleep at all, but just some state of not-sleep.
Adjusting this to normal working hours is rather difficult, but I've simply accepted the fact that there is no shame in being tired, so if I have to sleep at 6pm, just fall into bed and sleep.
Of course, I don't have kids and I don't feel like I'm missing out on life if I don't go out on Friday night.
When alarm goes off, I take 1/3 of a caffeine pill (66mg - Im pretty sensitive to caffeine). Then I turn my alarm off and let myself drift back to sleep.... 15 minutes later I'm up and starting the day.
On rare occasions that this doesn't get me up, I really needed the extra sleep.
The coffee nap sounds like a great idea.
For anybody who needs some help with sleep, take a look at cognitive behavioral therapy (e.g. http://shuti.me/), which is reportedly much more effective than ambien et al.
I sleep on the floor because it's more comfortable for me than a cushy mattress. I learned this from my migraines at an early age. If I'm in a bed when a migraine strikes I can't get into a position that makes me comfortable for enduring the pain. I always ended up on the floor. I think this is because the floor give me the solid support to allow me full control over the position of my body. Years later, I just decided to ditch the bed altogether as it seemed like a waste.
I have no blankets because I live in the tropics.
This is a bad idea for most people. Inconsistent sleep times will lead to poorer quality of sleep in most (but not absolutely all) people.
That said, I do feel that the sun is extremely important in the benefits that it gives you. So I do try not to spend plenty of time in the rays.
- get a dawn simulation device (doesn't work on its own, but still helps waking up more gently) // the more powerful/lumen, the better
- likewise for audio: volume going up slowly (I use AlarmDroid), for this, use a gentle non-continuous sound (knock knock, pause, knock knock, pause) the idea is that a continuous sound is too much annoying, forces you to go turn it off asap and go back to sleep. You may use a more brutal sound for your real wake-up time (so, at the end of the dawn simulation), the idea is that you'll have a gentle alarm beforehand and hopefully fear the brutal alarm and just get into a habit of getting up before the brutal alarm.
- best for the end: padlock your alarm in a solid case, and put the key in your mailbox the night before (hopefully not too close to your bedroom, in my case, I may meet neighbors, so it forces me to fully clothes on). A key-less alarm at the other side of the rooms does NOT work and you will just get up, shut it down and go back to sleep.
- bonus : use a very bright light (at least 5000+ lumen) on a programmable plug for the end of the dawn simulation (or just get a really powerful dawn simulation one, not sure if that exists though)
edit: added bonus
edit2: everyone is different, I just wanted to add my part to the overall list of ideas, please check out all the other comments, different stuff works for different people! (the coffee one sounds interesting, I would have tried it if I was a coffee drinker)
edit3: This should be common sense, but please don't use this as a way to sleep less. I use this because even when I sleep a fair amount (9+ hours for multiple days, I still struggle to wake up).
Definitely, it helps to be tired enough to sleep. But to be tired enough, you need to wake up early.. kind of circular. A heavy workout earlier in the day often does the trick too. If you're trying to make it a habit, then doing it gradually is probably the way to go: fall asleep earlier by 15 minutes each day.
There are also times when there are just too many thoughts in your head that won't go away - it helps to close the eyes, roll them up, do one of two techniques:
1) Consciously don't hold onto any particular thought. This is a meditation technique. Oddly enough, I think we do this naturally when we're really tired and sleepy.
2) Take yourself back to an activity that required total presence of mind and body: for me it's sky diving. I'm just falling, adjusting... and pretty soon I'm asleep and dreaming. I guess this is more of a visualization technique.
Both of those work to take the mind off attention grabbing thoughts and moving you to a more relaxed state.
They don't sound like fairy tales, they sound like things that work for them and perhaps others. It's OK that some tips are not practical for you, it doesn't make them any less useful.
I disagree. If you read between the lines, much of his message is "just fucking move, do something, get out of your current state" and from my experience, that is very sound advice for when you find yourself in a rut. (For the trolls - obviously it's not the one and only way to handle down times, nor is it "that simple" for true sufferers of depression.)
On occasion that leaks through in his writings. For instance he is usually far more concerned with "explaining" a slave's fate than with doing anything about it. Why is anyone a slave because of Marcus Aurelius ? Well, it's their own fault. They are the slave of their emotions, they drink and dance and don't think of tomorrow (slaves in Rome, especially the more skilled ones were treated very well. It is muslims that gave a bad name to the term slavery (although some Roman provinces contributed as well). In the Roman Empire, around Rome itself, it was not that different from being an employee. Sure there were bad jobs, and allowing employers to trade employees was horrifyingly bad for the power relationship, but if you compare to poor-rich relationships elsewhere in the same time, Rome comes out far ahead).
Marcus Aurelius sounds about as fair and balanced as the American Enterprise Institute explaining why there are so many poor. It seems to boil down to not being entrepreneurial enough. Never mind the obvious fact that being an entrepreneur is only common in the top 0.1% (and there, only in name, I've yet to see examples of companies started by the 0.1% that really introduced a new product. Somebody who takes over part of a bank into an independant company is not an entrepreneur in my opinion). In the bottom 50% being an entrepreneur, an independent businessman is actually far more common than in the top-50%, mostly out of necessity. I doubt any explanation for this will be forthcoming from our libertarian think tanks.
But Marcus' opinion of others is similar : if they aren't successful, that must be their own doing. If you didn't own half the farms around Rome, apparently it was because you drink too much (never mind that the Roman rich, not the poor are absolutely famous for just how elaborate their debauchery became).
Unfortunately I'm on travel right now so this system isn't accessible to me. I am now frequently finding myself sleeping in until 5:00AM.
They can do alarms, don't require a hub (they use wifi), and have a built-in feature to follow the sunrise and / or sunset (+/- 3 hrs, configurable): http://www.lifx.com/blogs/light-matters/77583043-schedule-yo...
They also have a good HTTP API: http://api.developer.lifx.com
The only bad part: $40 per bulb for the ones that do all the shades of white (very warm to very cool). Worth it IMO. The Teensy solution costs at least that much and requires a LOT more time. This is plug and play with the option to tinker more later if you need it. I'm not associated with them in any way other than being a happy owner of a few of them :)
Also, I avoid sitting in front of a computer or TV within 3 hours of bedtime. If there is something that I absolutely need to do on my computer, I use glasses that block the blue part of the light (it's the blue part of the light the influences melatonin, which again regulates sleep).
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...
(1) get more sleep, (2) develop the faculty of imagination, (3) meditate (it doesn't matter if you fall asleep; you're in bed after all).
Btw, there are some benefits of it being a website. For example, you earn bonus points if you check from a non-mobile device - this implies that you are out of bed ;)
While I like Stoicism, I wish I could go back and time and give Marcus Aurelius a day off!
It really is that simple.