This is a question many of us have asked. It is an important question. Each moment we
spend in bed deliberating on whether or not we should get up adds up to quite a few wasted minutes. Shaving ten minutes off our time to get out of bed each day adds up to two and a half extra days each year. I decided to research this question, to find practical methods that actually work. While doing so, I found three unusually powerful keys to unlocking a solution. These are not the traditional “don’t eat anything before bed” type of ideas. Those are great, but let us look a little deeper. Spoiler, one of them involves activating your internal day and night clock with a $12 Amazon item.
The first thing I discovered was that most advice on this matter attempts to answer the question "How do I get out of bed faster." The solutions to this problem are almost comically extreme, involving borderline medieval torture. While sleeping in beds that dump us on the floor and solving algebra problems to turn off alarm clocks will indeed wake us up, these methods also double as a way to shower us with stress and anxiety during one of the more vulnerable times of our daily existence. The barbaric question "How do I get out of bed faster" creates short-term results, but not long-term solutions.
Here we have a classic example of how asking better questions will get better answers. A better question would be, "How can I find a way to get out of bed faster while exerting the same amount of effort?" The solution to this question requires the same amount of input while producing more output. After some intense research with this question in mind, I started to find some better answers.
First of all, we have to understand that we are working with our subconscious minds. When we wake up, our conscious minds have very little control over decision making. This is why we know “know” we should get up, but still go back to bed. We have to speak the language of our subconscious. Here we unlock the first of three keys.
Key #1: Removing Friction
Our subconscious mind tries to move us in the direction of least resistance. After the alarm goes off, the path of least resistance is obviously to go back to bed. We need to make it as easy as possible to avoid going back to bed. Removing any and all friction from those initial moments of decision is essential to automating the waking process. Here are some ideas I found.
The night before, lay out your outfit; it’s one less decision to make in the morning. Next, define what you want to accomplish tomorrow. That way, your day begins with a destination in sight.
Another important idea is finding a way to kickstart your internal clock: a.k.a. turning on a light. I did this by buying a smart lightbulb from Amazon for a few dollars, and setting it to turn on five minutes before my alarm goes off. The cool part of this is that our skin can pick up light waves; even if we are still asleep, the light signals our bodies to reduce melatonin and start the wakeup process. Most of the hacks I found fall into this category. Honestly, I was a little annoyed, because at first glance this was all I found. I knew there had to be more powerful ways of doing this. There is, it turns out; we’ve been working against ourselves.
Key #2: Pain vs. Pleasure
Dwayne Johnson gets up at 4:00 a.m. every morning. He says that it is his anchor, defining him as willing to outwork anyone, no matter what. There is something here that makes him get up every day, something he has found that the rest of us can just as easily tap into. It is another aspect of the subconscious language.
The key is pain and pleasure. Our subconscious instinctively moves us away from pain and toward what is pleasurable and comfortable. When that annoying beeping yanks us out of dreamland, the instant response of our subconscious is to view it as a threat and as something that should be eliminated as quickly as possible. We respond by turning off the alarm and going back to bed. Why doesn’t Dwayne Johnson do that? Because for him, going back to bed means he is not willing to put in the hard work needed to beat the competition. Therefore, to him, getting back in bed means incredible pain, because it goes against a massive standard for his life. This seems drastic at first, but it turns out the principle is applicable.
I found all this very interesting, and it got me to thinking; what if I could convince my subconscious that going back to bed was painful, and not pleasurable? Doing this requires internal or external drivers. External drivers would be something like, if I don’t get up within five minutes, I don’t get to have coffee. On the other hand, if I do get up in five minutes, I can enjoy the relaxing ritual of making and drinking coffee. Internal drivers, however, are much more powerful. For example, one of my standards is that I try my best to push outside my comfort zone on a regular basis. Going back to bed would be going directly against that, but getting up right away would be proof that I’m living up to my standard.
You can be creative with this. A standard could be that you spend quality time with your children. Ok, by getting up in time, that allows you to finish enough work that when they get up, you can eat breakfast with them. Not getting up would go directly against who you think you should be as a parent. Another way of doing this is to picture the kind of person that goes back to bed and snoozes versus the kind of person that gets up immediately. Which person do you want to be? You have the ability to choose.
Key #3: Commitment Devices
Lastly, we need to find a way to prevent our future selves from backing out of our commitments. This is the final master key: a commitment device. A commitment device locks our future selves into following through on some past commitment. This is a powerful and essential tool, and not just for getting up in time. Because there is so much to cover on this subject, I will not elaborate here. I made a video on commitment devices. If you are interested in taking this to the next level, check out the video below.
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