A Student's Guide to Early Rising

How I Wake Up Early Every Day Without Feeling Miserable

I’ve always found it hard to wake up early, but as students, we have no choice. It doesn’t matter if you’re a morning person or a night person; if class starts at 7 a.m., you've got to be up. I just hate how it’s always so hard to wake up early every single morning. Or is it?

After researching the science of sleep and circadian clocks, I learned that by sticking to an evidence-based morning routine, consistently waking up early can actually become bearable. So, in this blog post, I’m going to share with you a simple yet highly effective morning routine that takes only five to ten minutes to do. It’s effortless, so you won’t miss any days. It’s completely free; you don’t need to buy any new equipment. And it becomes easier over time, the more consistent you are.

The Science Behind Waking Up Early

The first few pieces of science come from Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University, and from the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, a sleep researcher and professor at UC Berkeley. And it involves a chemical in our body called cortisol.

We get a cortisol spike once a day, when we wake up. And as the day goes by, the cortisol comes down until we sleep, and then the whole cycle starts again. The cool thing is that we can influence when this spike happens, and we do this with light.

When light hits our eyes, it sends a signal to our brain to support that cortisol spike. The goal is to use light to line up high cortisol when we’re awake and low cortisol when we’re asleep. Basically, we use light to anchor our circadian rhythm.

But there are going to be days when, for example, I’m feeling lazy, I snooze a lot, and I’m unable to convince myself to get out of bed for the entire morning. And sometimes, I don’t even see light in my eyes until like 11 a.m. or noon. But what happens is that my cortisol spike will be shifted to later, and I’ll still be wide awake at midnight, when I’m trying to sleep.

So, the goal is to get sunlight soon after waking, and doing this consistently will anchor our circadian rhythm and make it easier to wake up around the same time every morning.

How to Get Light Into Your Eyes

But how exactly do we get light into our eyes? We’re not taking a flashlight and literally shining it into our eyeballs. We’re also not going outside and staring at the sun, either. That would cause permanent damage.

Getting light into our eyes simply means seeing light. If I go outside in the morning, I’m surrounded by light and all the photons around me. Being physically outside is better than seeing light through a window, which is better than seeing artificial light from a lamp or something. And even if it’s cloudy or foggy outside, it’s still best because you’re getting it directly.

But honestly, we’re going to do whatever we can. When I'm working in the hospital or on night shifts, I’m wide awake when the sun isn’t even up yet. So I just have to make do with artificial light.

So, for our morning routine, the goal is to see as much light as possible within one hour of waking up, at around the same time every day, for five to ten minutes. Definitely go outside if you can; let the light hit your skin and get that vitamin D as well. But if you can’t, then open the curtains or turn on all the overhead lights. That’s the first part of the morning routine.

How to Boost Your Energy

Next, let’s talk about energy. You know that groggy feeling you get in the morning? Some of that is your body trying to get over the chemical adenosine.

Adenosine triphosphate, also known as ATP, gives our body energy. But when we use ATP throughout the day, it’s broken down, and we’re left with a buildup of adenosine. So, the more that builds up, the more tired we get. Then, when we’re sleeping, our body gets rid of the adenosine, and the whole cycle starts over again.

So, with that morning grogginess, we can just try to endure it. But we can also help our body wake up faster. One way is through exercise. It doesn’t need to be a full-on workout, either. Five or ten minutes of something simple, like jogging or jumping jacks, is better than nothing. In fact, a study from the book Sleep Smarter found that early morning exercise, even for just five minutes, will help you get better sleep the following night.

Another thing that people like to do to block the effects of adenosine is to drink caffeine. The science here is that caffeine blocks adenosine, but it doesn’t get rid of it. So, for me, a common thing that happens is that I used to drink coffee the moment that I woke up, to help me get over that groggy period. But since coffee only blocks adenosine and doesn’t get rid of it, when the coffee wears off, all the adenosine comes flooding in, and I get that crash during midday.

So, for our morning routine, Dr. Huberman recommends that we delay drinking caffeine for one to two hours after waking up to help us prevent that midday slump. It’s not easy to do, so you can start by delaying it for 15 minutes and then going up from there.

How to Hydrate Your Brain

Next, let’s talk about water. We can lose about one liter of water overnight while we’re sleeping. And by the time we wake up, we’re pretty dehydrated. Our brains are about 80 percent water, and even a two percent deficiency can lower our mental capacity.

So, when we’re sleeping, we lose water from our sweat and from the humidity in our breath. Plus, when we wake up, a lot of us use the toilet, and we lose even more water.

So, what does that mean for our morning routine? You want to drink a glass of water right when you wake up to rehydrate your brain and body.

How to Adjust Your Temperature

Next, let’s talk about temperature. A higher temperature helps us wake up, and a cooler temperature helps us go to sleep. We’ve already mentioned sunlight and exercise, which can both raise our body temperature. But another thing that some people do is to take cold showers.

The cold water causes our core body temperature to go up, causing a counterbalance. So, it helps us wake up even more. Plus, we’re shivering.

But let’s be real: I’m not disciplined enough to be taking a cold shower every day. And I know that not everyone takes showers in the mornings, either. So, if you’re like me, what you can do is just enjoy your nice warm morning shower, and then for the last 30 seconds, you can turn it to cold water before you get out.

How to Implement Your Morning Routine

So, we just went over three to five simple things that we can do for our morning routine, depending on whether you drink caffeine or if you take morning showers. You could pretty much do all of these things at the same time.

So, for me, within an hour of waking up, I try to go outside for sunlight, or I just go next to the window with my glass of water. I do about five to ten minutes of light exercise. And all these things—sunlight, water, exercise—have the added bonus of elevating my mood.

Contrast that with the lazy version of myself, right? The person who stays in bed for like an hour after waking up. I’m still on my phone; I’m in the dark; there’s no light; there’s no water; there's no exercise; I'm just kind of lying there. That’s what I used to do a lot on weekends. And I realized that I was able to be more productive and win back my weekends by sticking to a simple morning routine every day.

So, make sure you prioritize light, energy, water, and temperature in your morning routine for the best effect throughout the day. It’s super easy to implement right now, or tomorrow morning if you want to. And guess what? Our simple nighttime routine follows the same scientific principles as well. So, check out my next blog post if you want to get that quality sleep to rejuvenate your mind and body.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and learned something new. If you did, please share it with your friends and leave a comment below. And if you want to get more tips and tricks on how to improve your productivity, health, and happiness, subscribe to my newsletter and follow me on social media. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one.