I automated waking up at 5:30 AM without feeling miserable when I had a remote work job[0]

It's not terribly sexy and was really simple to get working. I purchased the highest wattage LIFX RGBA bulbs and a high wattage (350W Incandescent equivalent) to replace all of the lighting in my bedroom, where I worked most days[1] and replaced the lighting in my bedroom with them.

I then used IFTTT to do the following:

(1) Over a period of 45 minutes ending at 5:30 AM, all of the LIFX bulbs gradually go from 0% to 100% in a cool blue-white hue. At 5:30, the 350W equivalent turns on (using a Belkin WeMo switch). The 350W turns off at 8:00 AM.

(2) At sunset, but no later than 7:30 PM (northern summers can be much later than this), the lights eliminate the blue hues and shift to warmer colors over a period of 45 minutes

(3) Over a period of 45 minutes ending at 11:15 PM, the LIFX bulbs go from 100% to 0%.

It took me a few weeks to arrive at the exact times and timings for each of these steps, as well as color. I kept a daily log of when I started feeling tired at night and a (very subjective) log of how tired I felt in the morning and what time I actually got out of bed (I had an alarm set, but only as a failsafe which was set for 8:00 AM while "testing" the settings). The 45 minute time frame was landed at after trying as low as 15 minutes. 45 minutes is the longest duration that's allowed or I would have tried longer, but it is just about right. It's really difficult to detect the brightening/dimming while it's happening and impossible for me to tell the color is changing during the day.

Unrelated, but as an aside -- quality of sleep and waking up early is something I struggled with all of my life until I started doing this a few years ago. In my 20s, I was jealous of my friends who regularly went out until 2:00 AM and somehow functioned the following day at 8-9AM when they had to be at work. I could never do that -- I'd literally fall asleep every time my eyes closed if I made that mistake. And worse, I could go to bed at 6:00 PM and 7:00 AM would still feel awful. I followed a few other techniques: Whenever possible (most of the time), I'd follow the rule to "go to bed when I am tired". If it was the afternoon and I started feeling exhausted, I'd go to bed -- sometimes just a nap, on rare occasion, a full afternoon-night's sleep. If I woke up in the middle of the night, I'd get up and do something until I was tired again, but for the first several months, regardless of the day or how tired I felt, I woke up at 5:30 AM. If I awoke within 45 minutes of that time, I'd stop trying to sleep and just "get up"[2]. I'd tried all of these techniques in the past and failed horribly, but after setting my lighting up, I noticed I was waking a lot easier and with a lot less effort. I added back in these techniques and the result was perfect. It's now just "habit" - I am up early, I'm in bed between 9:00 and 11:30 every night and I rarely wake fully in the middle of the night. I'm rarely tired. All of that said, if life and job circumstances would allow it, I'd prefer doing 8:00 PM to 5:00 AM over a day-job, but doing the day-job shift doesn't bug me a bit anymore.

[0] I'm in an office job, now, so some of what I did doesn't affect me like it used to. I was waking this early, originally, because my team was in the UK and I wanted to maximize the amount of time I spent with them despite the 5-hour time skew.

[1] For whatever reason, working from bed turned out to be very relaxing and helped me to put in longer hours without feeling like I was putting in long hours.

[2] One observation I made was that if I awoke and there was less than an hour before I had to be up -- even if I was still very tired and could fall back asleep within a few minutes -- falling back asleep resulted in me feeling substantially worse when that alarm sounded (and it would stick with me most of the morning). If I get up when my brain wakes up the first time, that tiredness wears off within a half-hour. I ditched the "snooze" habit. I don't get right out of bed, but gradually work myself out every morning (I have the time, after all, since I'm getting up so early).