I used to be a serious night owl: in university I commonly stayed up till 6-7am working thinking I was at my best. However, since getting into the real world and having a 9-5 I obviously couldn't keep this up, so recently I tried to switch to becoming a morning person.

It wasn't easy (especially those first few days), but slowly I managed to push my weekday alarm back to 6am (from 8am: I live just round the corner from where I work) and on weekends to 8-9am. The biggest things that worked for me were:

1. Make the alarm annoying and put it somewhere that forces you to get out of bed

2. Have a good routine that you can follow in your zombified state (e.g. get up, head straight for the shower, get dressed, have breakfast while not browsing HN/reddit, sit down to work)

3. Give yourself a good reason for getting out of bed. For me, this was only allowing myself to work on an exciting new project in the morning before work

I still lapse occasionally, but it has made me realise that being a night owl or a morning person is entirely my choice.