15 Hacks to Wake Up Early & The One Question You Must Answer First

Wouldn’t be amazing to wake up refreshed and not struggle to get out of bed each morning? We’re going to break down how to wake up early and how it starts by asking yourself, “What time should I wake up?”

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, “What time should I wake up?” Trust me on this…we have.

As adults, we have the option of sleeping the day away or getting up super early to get a jumpstart on the day. And truth be told, both options have their pros and cons.

What we’ve learned throughout the years is that the body tends to tell us when we’re doing something right and when we’re doing something wrong. This doesn’t mean it’s always right on the nose, but it does tend to keep us on our toes and let us know when we’ve pushed too far or aren’t giving our bodies what it needs to function.

If you’re looking for some simple tips to know how to get a night of great sleep, you first need to understand how much sleep you should be getting.

How do you wake up feeling refreshed?

This is the million-dollar question. If it were that easy, we’d all be doing it, right?

The truth is, it’s all about establishing a routine. If you want to wake up refreshed, you actually have to start preparing the day or night before.

We all know (but don’t like to openly admit) that staying up late means that we’re going to be dragging the next day.

It’s just how it is.

So if you’re wanting to take the first step to waking up and feeling refreshed, you need to make certain that you’re getting to bed at a decent time the night before.

Why can’t I get up early in the morning?

We’ve all been guilty of making excuses to not get up in the morning at some point in our lives.

Once you hear that alarm, you might suddenly feel as though your body is full of heavy weights. There’s literally no way possible that it’s already the morning time, right? Wrong. But we know that feeling. We’ve been there.

If you want to be a “morning person”, you can actually train yourself to be one. It takes a little bit of time, but just like anything, with enough work and persistence, it will pay off.

Creating a routine for an earlier bedtime and fueling your body with good foods and water will have you feeling more energetic in no time at all.

What this then means is that when that morning alarm goes off, you’ll be ready to get up and start to tackle your day.

What Time Should I Wake Up?

If you’re wondering what time you should wake up each and every morning, think about it in a different way.

Instead of just setting your clock for a random time during the morning —

You need to instead realize that your body needs a certain number of hours each night to wake up feeling refreshed.

For adults, most tend to need anywhere from 7-9 hours of sleep per night.

This is the optimal range that has shown that adults function better when they’ve achieved that sort of rest.

And even though that might be the best range for your sleeping needs, make certain you’re also listening to your body as well.

If you’re feeling overly tired, you might need a little bit more sleep time here and there. (and that’s totally okay!)

There are different things that we’ll do in our lives that will cause us to be more tired, and we have to understand that and appreciate that as well.

Our bodies are under an enormous amount of stress every day, and when you pair that up with exercising or running errands constantly, the body is bound to need to get some rebooting of energy somewhere along the way.

15 Tips to How to Wake Up Early

1. Set a Bedtime

The reason we say to ask yourself “What time should I wake up?” is to make sure you’re always getting 7-9 hours of sleep a night.

So if you know you have to be up at 7AM, you know should have a bedtime between 10PM and midnight.

Setting a bedtime will help your body adjust faster and give you mental cues to wind down each night.

We allow our bedtime to move 1-2 hours at most to feel our best. So we may go to bed at 10PM Sunday-Thursday. and then we can stay up until midnight on Friday and Saturday.

Anything more than those 2 hours gets our system off whack personally.

2. Know Why You Want to Get Up Early

Knowing why you want to wake up early can help motivate you to skip the snooze and commit to it!

The first few days are the hardest to retrain your body and mind to a new sleep schedule.

You’re going be tired at first.

That’s okay, and it’s temporary!

Set a plan and make your morning routine something you look forward to!

If you’re interested in our morning routine, we actually did a podcast about what we do first thing in the morning!

3. Outline Your Tasks The DAY Before

Some people suggest doing a brain dump right before bed, but that usually gets my mind running in dozens of directions.

Instead, we suggest writing down anything you need to do tomorrow before you head home from work or close your laptop for the day.

Knowing what is on our schedule the next day is one of our productivity hacks to getting the most done we can in a day!

4. Put Down Your Phone 1 Hour Before Bed

We’ve all heard about how the blue light from our phones and TVs can throw off our circadian rhythm.

If that isn’t enough to encourage you to put down your phone, think about what you get from surfing social media or checking your email after 8PM.

Probably nothing good.

If it’s after 8PM any notification can wait.

I don’t know how many times I’d check email and see something “urgent” or that was bad news late at night, and it would ruin my sleep or keep me up too late!

Just put it down.

5. Skip The Alcohol & Big Meals Before Bed

Both can limit how well we sleep, and lower quality sleep is one reason we feel constantly tired.

6. Have An Exercise Program

We love working out at home and streaming our workouts!

Not only does it help with our weight, but it also helps our mindset, mood, and even our hormones — hello endorphins!

Exercise can also help you get rid of extra energy in the body if you’re sitting a lot of the day like we do.

7. Reward Yourself First Thing

Waking up early needs to have some immediate reward attached to it.

Sure, long-term you’ll be one of these perfectly put together morning people, but until then – what’s something that will get you up and out of the bed?

Taking 10 minutes to enjoy a really good cup of coffee or tea or doing a 10 minute prayer walk or stretch can give you a boost first thing!

8. Use an Affirmation

Along the lines of a reward, saying a daily positive affirmation to yourself first thing in the morning can help you get out bed!

Instead of thinking, “I don’t want to get up!” or “I’m so comfortable!” tell your mind, “STOP.” and repeat your affirmation!

These thoughts are habits – whether it’s a thought to stay in bed or jump out of it. Habits can be changed and an affirmation is a great one to start!

9. Accountability Partner

If you know you’re a hardcore struggler in the morning, ask a friend or family member to call or text you each morning.

You could also schedule a morning meeting or workout first thing so that you HAVE to be there because others are depending on you!

10. No Snooze

We all KNOW to skip the snooze button. It messes with our sleep cycles, and it never really helps people struggle less to get moving first thing.

11. Buy a Good Alarm Clock

With that said, it’s time to get a good alarm clock.

If you can, we suggest putting your alarm clock away from your bed so that you have to get up to turn it off.

If you are using your phone and don’t want to change your routine, you might like the Mathe Alarm Clock. It makes you solve a math problem before it stops beeping. So you’ll have to at least wake up more than a normal alarm.

We also love waking up to music versus an annoying beep!

We like this alarm clock on Amazon! It’s bluetooth-friendly, has the option for a light and music, and has great reviews!

12. Be kind to yourself

Starting any routine can be challenging! Know that it’s okay to be tired or struggle with waking up early at first.

If you can, even try to make your schedule your week to be a little less intense so that you can ease into this one habit.

So many people try to start so many habits at once, and that’s one reason they fail.

Don’t try to mix eating better, waking up early, and working out all in one week if they’re new habits!

13. Set up nighttime habits

Night time habits set up mental cues to let your body know it’s time to wind down and get sleepy.

Your habits could be as basic as, walk the dog, brush your teeth, and wash your face before crawling into bed.

14. Prepare the Night Before

When you first walk into your house from work, we suggest looking at the to-do list you made and getting anything you need for tomorrow ready.

That way once you’re done, you can settle in for the evening and also wake up with what you need first thing done!

This could be laying out your clothes, getting a programmable coffee pot, and setting your alarm for the next morning.

This is definitely habit that may take a week or even a month to get used to.

We suggest keeping a journal to track how you are doing. We like to include a little bit about our mood and habits (workout, eating, etc) from the day, as well as, when we went to bed, woke up, and our energy level through the day.

This can help you find patterns that are helping you sleep better (or worse).

It is possible to sleep too much?

The jury is out on this one, and it’s more of a personal question.

From personal experience, if I take too long of a nap or oversleep, I tend to feel as though I’m a bit groggy and cranky the next day or later on in the afternoon after I wake up.

Is it because I slept too much, or is it because I’m now feeling behind on all the tasks that I wanted to accomplish that day? I’m not really for certain, but I do notice that it’s a trend that does seem to happen.

Now that you know that you need a good 7-9 hours of sleep, you can use that information to plan accordingly to know what time you should be waking up.

Some days it might be 6 AM, while others might mean 7 AM. And if you’re lucky, you might even get to sleep in some on the weekends to recover from staying out a bit later the night before!

Do you wake up early or ask yourself, “What time should I wake up?”

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