The 2 Snooze-Proof Wake-up Strategies I Learned in School Times
By: Sanjeev Yadav
Tags: Sleep, Health, Wellness, Lifestyle, Mental Health

You never realised, but you were [probably] a morning person in your late childhood—the age where you stopped crying in the middle of the night and soft-snored instead. School started around 7 am, and you had to be on time. Unlike college ( at least the one where I went ), there is a fine for getting late.

To make sure I waste no time in the morning and get school, I applied two tricks. My father imposed the first one. The second one I made up myself when I was a kid and use an updated version of it now.

1. False Alarm

I hated my dad for forcing us until I realised how rewarding his technique was. My mother died when I was 7. I wonder how my father used to manage. He had to wake up every day at 4 am for eight years continuous.

Every day, we had to wake up around 6 am, get ready and leave for school around 7.

But we always slept late at 11 pm. Yes, 11 was late during our school years. In the morning, the gravity of the bed is so strong that we want to bunk by making some excuses.

He is our dad. He knows about all these tantrums. No excuses worked with him, and this is how he waked us up every day to make sure we are never late.

Around 5 AM often, he would say it’s 7 AM. We would wake up and get ready in flash speed. By the time we are available to check the time, it was 6 AM.

We’re still mad at dad about ruining our sleep and the dream about school crush. But when we came back from school, we felt good because we did not pay the fine for being late in waiting in line. We attended the school assembly every single day.

I still do it now. But since I am a grown-up, I use it as an insurance. I want to wake up at 4:30 am. I set the alarm for 4 am and 4:30. If I think I need more sleep, I stop the 4 am alarm and wake up 30 minutes later. Otherwise, I wake up at 4 am and remove the second alarm.

While doing this for a long time, I realised I don’t need to alarms. I just one alarm that goes off 30 minutes before I want to wake up. That way, I am ahead of time while still having a quality sleep.

2. Preparation one night before

If you want to convert the feeling of waking up in the morning from dread to energising, plan the initial morning activities in advanced. For example, if you wish to exercise in the morning, keep the gear ready. If you want to go running in the morning, keep you running shoes next to your bed. If you're going to start working on your side hustle, keep the to-do list ready in advance.

I still use this strategy for my morning exercise. I set up my workout clothes one night before. When I wake up, I already know what to do. I don’t have to go through the cupboard and choose the activewear. They are already in front of me. I’ve eased the decision-making process for the morning.

Imagine your class teacher announced the time table in the first period every day. It would not be easy to carry all the books every day, right? Same way, if you don’t know how you’ll start your day, you’ll end up sleeping because that’ll always be the more natural choice than making a plan in the morning.

Final words

Waking up in the morning is what you’ve been doing when you were a kid. Now it has become difficult because you keep yourself hyperactive. You keep telling yourself that it is difficult to wake up in the morning because of your lifestyle choice, but the reality is you used to do it all the time.

You’ll find many techniques that will work for you. But the most effective are the ones you learn by looking back to your childhood. Why does it work better than any other method? Because you have done it earlier, you have some experience, and if you have done it in the past, you can still do it now.

I know you also must have some techniques that helped you wake up in your childhood. Incorporate it now and see how it is relatively manageable than the new methods you learn from scratch now.

I have recently completed my daily writing challenge of 150 blogs, and this one is the 151st blog. The next target is 200. Here is the first blog that started the streak.

Thank you for reading.

~ Sanjeev