I finally tricked myself into waking up at 5:30am | Hacker News Reader

I finally tricked myself into waking up at 5:30am

technicallychallenged.substack.com

29 pointskoinedad53 comments

I'm happy for the author if this works for them, but I fear this feeds into the ongoing narrative that being a night owl is somehow a negative (or "lazy").

Everyone has a natural sleep schedule, or chronotype. Instead of forcing ("tricking" in the author's words) yourself into an earlier pattern just because of the expectations of those around you, or the idea that being early is universally more productive, it’s often better to just let yourself be a night owl.

I can stay up late but I'm not productive. If I wake up at 5.30am I'm productive within 15 minutes and have a couple of hours before being bothered by family, co-workers etc.

I must have a siesta however, and organise my life to allow this. I wish siesta was far more accepted above sleeping late or rising early.

Contra this, people's chronotypes change as they get older with people (on average) becoming more early birdish as they age. I think a lot of people struggle to recognise this and try to force themselves to continue to be night owls as they age, even though they would actually fare better if they started getting up early. I speak as someone who has gone from rarely going to bed before 2am when I was a yoof, to being someone who considers 6am to be a luxurious lie in. But I'm also dead on my feet by 10pm!

In the last 10-15 years, I've moved from a 2am - 11am sleep cycle to 12pm - 8:30am, so that tracks for me too. And I'm definitely not trying to force myself in either direction.

Assuming you mean 12am here? Or do you really sleep for 18.5 hours per day?

I don't dissagree. I think it's fine to accept changing chronotypes as you age.

It's not a negative, it's just different. You're choosing more time and energy in the late evening and night, with the trade off being less energy and more trouble getting up in the morning. Most people with rigid work schedules (and not working on a night shift) would rather pick the opposite, however.

The cultural aversion to a "night owl" shedule is pretty obvious though given the historical importance of farming and animal husbandry, which are dependent on the daily cycle.

> Everyone has a natural sleep schedule, or chronotype.

It depends on how you define "natural", virtually nobody stayed up so late before the invention of electricity, screens and especially internet. People just got used to this unnatural cycle, do it long enough and you'll think that's how your body is supposed to work

People have been doing things at night forever. In studies of hunter-gatherer societies, they actually sleep less than in modern societies, and it's actually temperature (and more specifically the rate of variation) more than light that controls peoples sleep cycles. On average they go to sleep about 3 hours after sunset and use that time for activities like cooking and tool making. Some groups studied woke a little before and some a little after sunrise.

> On average they go to sleep about 3 hours after sunset and use that time for activities like cooking and tool making.

Go for a two week long hiking/camping trip and you'll see what's natural, you'll be fast asleep by 10 and awake at 7 every single day.

Most people calling themselves night owls just artificially keep themselves awake thanks to screens, what's the "tool builders" to "mindless media consumers" ration these days ?

They're too lazy to fix their schedule or too oblivious to the damage they inflict themselves, I can guarantee you people went to bed much earlier even 60 years ago compared to today

Again, the science disagrees. Perhaps going straight from a modern, industrial, likely sedentary lifestyle to two weeks of extended physical exertion for its own sake is not equivalent to people spending their whole lives in a hunter-gatherer setting.

Further, there's nothing inherently good about things being natural. Again, your patterns of exercise, your nutrition, and virtually every other aspect of your health is quite different from that of a hunter-gatherer, it would not be surprising if behavioral changes to adapt to differing circumstances would be beneficial.

This is unfortunately the kind of cultural aversion to "night owl" sleep patterns that I'm talking about. People were sleeping at different times of day even in the absence of electric artifical light.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40568997

Depends when you're talking in history. It used to be normal not to have a day/night cycle, but a split of three. So that you would wake up to stoke the fire. So, no, people did stay up very late before the invention of electricity.

Humans adapt extremely well to their circumstances. You can obviously push it too far, but adaptation itself is natural.

I remember that to be false, and just looking it up online:

In prehistoric times, night owls could keep watch and protect their tribes from nocturnal predators, and in ancient times, they could protect their cities from conquerors trying to sneak in at night. There was an evolutionary benefit to having both morning larks and night owls within our species.

I think that’s helpful to point out, I just can’t go into the night like I used to so shifting to morning has really been a game changer

Your statement supports the GP's point, just go with what works for you.

The people that he's rewarded in work are the one staying late. If you come early you don't get reward.

It is just that narrative of early people being rewarded more does not hold up to anything I see around. It is working lage everyone wants to see

This is stupid. No special tricks or apps are needed. When the alarm goes off then just get out of bed. Force yourself until it becomes an automatic habit. And if you're finding it impossible to do so then that means you're sleep deprived. You can't fix sleep deprivation with a "trick". You have to go to bed earlier, or consume less alcohol and caffeine, or exercise more, or address any medical conditions like sleep apnea.

I can wake up early if I have something to do that I believe in. Deep down, I know I don’t have enough belief in my work that I can regularly wake up early. I work for a paycheck and I can do that just fine waking up at 8:30, so I’d rather enjoy a later evening with my wife and sleep in the next day.

I wake up around 5:30am daily with this one easy and fun trick…having young kids. My wife and I don’t even set alarms anymore.

Dog for me, but yeah same. I wake up at between 6:30am and 7am after 3 years of my dog suddenly getting the urge to go out right around this time. It's so consistent in fact I've tried sleeping at 10:30pm, 12am, 2am - it doesn't matter. I am wide awake no later than 7am and usually have to take a nap mid-day.

My "one easy trick" is simply going to bed at 9pm and making it a habit

Just wanted to write exactly the same. Get a kid and you'll wake up consistently at 05:30

Had the same result with young dogs.

ha, mine wake up closer to 7a, so 5:30a is still “early”

It's always 7am on the dot for me. "Daddy, the sun is rising!"

I didn’t know there were other ways to wake up except rushed and late for everything

I built my own alarm which turns a TV on in the bedroom to some waves crashing which slowly increases in volume, while the lights are slowly dimming on. After 15 minutes it switches to the radio which increases the volume slowly to max unless you get up and journey around the house with your phone (you have to scan two QR codes in other rooms but I want to change it to NFC at some point).

It’s completely ridiculous but it works really well, only took a few hours to put together.

Sounds pretty awesome and like a fun project

And if you can’t break the stay-up-late habit, set alarms in the evening that force you to take a picture of your toothbrush, followed by a picture of your bed.

I love the idea

Something that has potential that I personally have started to use is getting exhausted under sun ie walking 4 miles in afternoon. It's so bright and if you stay out for like an hour or two. You're brain really gets the message that this is the day time. Me who has been going to sleep at 3:30am for last 10 years have started to feel groggy at just 9pm whenever I go out in afternoon for long walk

I wake up at 5:30 every morning with this one weird trick: I lived to be old. Haven't set an alarm for years.

Another way is to take a trip to a timezone several hours ahead (to the east), this gets you comfortably in the cycle in a few days.

A cheaper alternative is to go camping. Don't bring any devices with you of course. Maybe a dumb phone, paperback, and extra flashlight at most. By 9pm the eyelids will be getting droopy.

Don't you mean to the west? When it's 9am in New York it's 6am in California, so if you flew to California from New York, when you wake up at 6am it will feel like 9am to you. Flying the other way, when it's midnight, it will feel to you that it's only 9pm, and you'll lie awake until very late at night, and waking up early will have you short of sleep.

No, you go to NY and get in the groove. Then, the part I glossed over, is when you return you'll be an early bird in CA. It is the same process as the alarm clock, but now you've enlisted the sun in support of your plan.

One easy method, move. I changed country but I need to keep working the same hours so now I get up at 5am The long afternoons/evenings makes me feel like I have the whole day.

I didn't see my trick mentioned yet: add in a sunrise app to the mix. I can wake up easier in midwinter now, because there is a simulated sunrise beside my bed that starts 20 minutes earlier than my audio alarm. You can also do this with smart light bulbs but the phone light works well enough for me.

The apps I use are Gentle Wakeup for the sunrise feature and AMdroid for audio alarms with "missions" as OP puts it.

Tangential: I got an expensive 120 db clunky alarm I have to set each night since I slept through my Nokia's sound-snooze-sound period. I got a Samsung that has no time limit nor snooze, just an infinitely long ring, and I hardly use the dedicated device. I marvel how some Samsung manager frowned at a stock Android feature and proceeded to delete some code and improve lots of lives.

I’m interested in knowing more about this 120db alarm clock

Not OP, but: https://screamingmeanie.com

I bought one over 25 years ago, and it amazes me that they still look exactly the same as the one I've got lying around somewhere. Looks like they have some new models, too. I am tempted to say that you will not sleep through it, but believe it or not, I have (long story). Under most reasonable circumstances it will snap you so wide awake that you won't even think about a snooze button...a button it doesn't have because it doesn't need it. Your only thought will not be about going back to sleep, but rather "oh god, oh god, turn it off!" and by that time you might as well get out of bed.

Do not use in the same room as a spouse to whom you wish to stay married, or ever see naked again.

This summer holidays I tried to mostly ignore the jet lag on an a trip to the Caribbean from Europe. It worked pretty well. I haven't woken up so early for such an extend time in like a decade.

I did that as well, but via adopting a cat who demands to be fed at 5:30am

That’s a helpful cat!

Before I retired I had a special machine that did that for me.

Try the Forfeit app, it forces you to donate money if you don't send a photo of something on time (the gym, outside, kitchen etc)

I am struggling to fall asleep and wake up early. Its 3am, perhaps I shouldn't be browsing hn now.

The apps recommended are pretty helpful, I'll def check these out.

Add Habinator to your list. Best habit tracker available .

I'll have to check that out as well

Thanks

I would just swipe up on my app picker and kill the step out program

Ha! I think with Alarmy it keeps alerting, can’t remember off the top of my head.

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