Every sleepover party I attended in my younger years, along with my sleeping bag, 12 bottles of nail polish and Tiger Beat magazines, I’d always bring a Pop-Tart. The toaster pastry was a precaution for the event in which I would wake before the rest of the girls and be left with a growling stomach for hours before the next stirred. This event happened most every sleepover and has continued to exist in my life much to former roommates’ and boyfriends’ annoyance. I always have likely always will be a morning person.

When all my classmates pulled all-nighters during college, I opted to take an evening nap and wake in the early morning hours to finish the task at hand. I always felt more “with it” during early classes than I did during those after dinner.

My alertness, creativity and overall productivity runs at the most high in the morning. I don’t know why, but I’ll blame genetics. Although I am nowhere as extreme, both my parents have no issue rising before the sun. As a result, I’ve spent most my life irritating the hell out of anyone pre-coffee with my suffocating enthusiasm, often despite a late night before.

I do have some off-mornings, I’ll admit. (Read: Hell-born hangover, crapola day ahead, whiny cats.) I also don’t think everyone has the untapped potential to become a morning person in the sense of the term meaning someone who especially excels then. But I do believe anyone can get the hangfire outta bed a little more easily and earlier with a few tips in mind.


Tips you probably guessed:

  1. Don’t go to bed super drunk. OK, OK. Yeah, sometimes this just happens, unplanned or maybe planned or whatever. Booze can lead to restless sleep meaning you’re basically wasting your time snoozing on a gin-soaked belly. Anyway, in an effort to decrease the morning beast and make it to your early shift on time, you can still do a little damage control. Try to eat a little toast or something else bland but porous (soak that poison right up) before calling it a night. Take two ibuprofen with as much water as you can stomach. Do the same in the morning, too. Consider an additional elixir like Blowfish to round out the remedies. But if possible, just try not to get wasted the night before an unavoidably early morning.
  2. Turn in earlier. Hours ahead sometimes isn’t reasonable to ask, and I get that. Even if it’s an additional 15 minutes you can carve out for rest eye (by sacrificing another Internet short, etc.), that’ll help.
  3. Don’t set your alarm with hitting the snooze button in mind. Instead of setting a first alarm a bit before you actually have to rise, just set it for the actual time and get up then. The last tidbit of sleep won’t give you any more va-voom and might leave you more beat than before.


Perhaps new tips for you:

  1. Wake up to good tunes. Hawking for sometimes as low at $25, a CD-playing alarm clock can get you started on the right foot — that is, when loaded correctly. Pick an upbeat tune that you’d typically reserve for your pre-gaming playlist. That way, the first sounds of your conscious day won’t be a droney AM station or an infuriating alarm beep. Start the day in a good mood and challenge yourself to carry it for another 12 hours.
  2. Get out of bed immediately. Hitting your alarm to silence while simultaneously snuggling back into the covers is such a bad idea. Lurch yourself from the cozy as soon as possible so you’re not tempted to hit snooze. And if you followed tip No. 1 of this list, you have an excuse to start dancing a little, too.
  3. Reserve a treat for getting up on time. Be it a quick cup of take-out from the coffee shop by your train station or a luxurious lotion post-shower, reward yourself with something with an appeal strong enough to shoot you sitting up early. I know my boyfriend and I try to get up early so we can leisurely sip coffee and watch The Colbert Report. If we slept in, we wouldn’t get to have this special time together. Find something that’s possible and enticing to you and ingrain it as a daily prize for reaching your goal.
  4. Map out a morning routine. Just like you don’t have to exercise much brain muscle to get a bike propelling (I hope), with enough practice you’ll be able to hazily drift throughout your morning duties without a snag. So even if your energy levels sink way beneath E, you’ll still be able to resemble a human being by the time you arrive to your early appointment.
  5. Set your alarm clock up far from your bed. Throughout high school, I slept on the top bunk (no one slept on the bottom… I was just very cool, OK?). My alarm clock lived on a shelf on the other side of the room, absolutely out of reach from my high-perched bed. To make it even more appealing to get out of bed, I completely disregarded No. 1 of this list and tuned the clock radio to just a few clicks off from the local country radio station. So when my wake up time rolled around, I was alerted via very fuzzy, very loud VERY contemporary country music. It worked every single morning. I only recommend this to Lovelies who don’t easily grow annoyed. Because it is annoying — but that’s also why it worked.

Waking up earlier will help make sure you get where you need to be — and on time. Sometimes it feels good to do the adult thing, huh?

Are you a morning person? Do you have issues waking up early? What tips have you found helpful in making sure you rise at a certain time?