In my goal to build 8 health habits this year, I am once again challenging myself to get out of bed at 5am.
Growing up, my dad always woke me up at 5:30am. My sister and I rode a school bus service that came to our house at around 6am (and possibly earlier than that in my last year of high school because we were already in school before 6am).
In college, my classes started on different times of the day, so I woke up when I needed to. My commute time was exactly 1 hour from the minute I step out of the front door to the minute I enter my classroom.
With my first job, I woke up between 5am-5:30am. I rode with my dad until just before Pasig Boulevard, so I’d make it to the office before 8am. In my previous job, I got out of bed between 5:30am-6am, left the house by 6:30am to make it to the office before 9am. For both of those jobs, I slept on public transportation and I know everyone in Metro Manila does it, but it’s very dangerous. I’m so thankful that nothing bad has happened to me for sleeping in a public vehicle.
The daily struggles of a Filipino worker. Photo from the Philippine Star.
But when you work from home, you can wake up any time. These days I wake up between 7-8am, when the sunlight hits my room.
Morning glow is here!
Why 5am? I like being a morning person. I feel that my day is longer and I can get more things done. I feel that my mind works best in the morning. Also, I got sick last year, and one of my doctors advised me to sleep before 11pm.
To prepare for this, I pulled out this infographic that I’ve saved on Pinterest.
How to Get Up Early
I’ve set up my alarms (on my alarm clock and my cellphone), and for the last 7 days, this is what happened:
Day 1: I woke up at 5am, but I fell asleep again because it was so cold. Being wrapped in my blanket felt really good. When I woke up again, it was 7am. Oops.
Day 2: I woke up at 5am, got out of bed maybe at around 5:30am, but I felt really sluggish. I’ve taken 3 cups of coffee and I was still sleepy. It took me all morning to get through work (which I felt, I could’ve finished in 2 or 3 hours). By 5pm, I seriously felt that the day was super long.
#IDiscovered that I’m lazy to feed myself breakfast. I’d wake up at 7-8am last month, drink a cup of coffee, and wait until lunch time to feed myself, or a late breakfast.
Day 3: I fell asleep with the lights on, woke up at 1:20am, fell asleep again and woke up at 5am. I didn’t get out of bed until 6am, and because I fed myself breakfast immediately, I felt that I was able to accomplish so many things in 1 hour.
Day 4: I woke up at 4am, because I wasn’t able to finish work the day before. What surprised me was how fast I got everything done. Starring at the computer hurt my eyes though, so as soon as I finished what I needed to do, I ate something for breakfast and went back to sleep for another 2 hours.
Day 5: I woke up at 5am, but I didn’t get out of bed until 5:30am. I made myself a cup of coffee and started working on content for this blog. I anxiously went to bed last night because of work, and maybe that anxiety helped me wake up.
Day 6: My phone died and I wasn’t able to set my alarm to 5am, so I woke up at 6:30am. I didn’t wake up at 5am, but I woke up feeling refreshed.
Day 7: I woke up at 5am with another headache, so I didn’t get out of bed until 8am.
What worked:
A sense of urgency gets me out of bed.
Putting my phone and alarm clock across the room. Silencing the noise gets me out of bed.
What didn’t work:
I felt sluggish on some days, but I realized that I wasn’t counting my sleep hours. I’m too focused to waking up at 5am, neglecting the amount of sleep that my body needs.
What I plan to do for the next 30 days:
- Track 7 hours of sleep. Maybe I should change the goal to 6am instead of 5am? I don’t think I can commit to sleeping at 10pm to wake up at 5am because of work. I need to be awake until 11pm, and I can’t oversleep either because I wake up with headaches that way.
- Drink a tall glass of water before going to bed.
- Establish a morning routine. I’d rather not talk about it, but to keep the long story short, my morning routine is messy.
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