I tried to become a person in the morning and this is what happened
I tried to become a person in the morning and this is what happened
How I stopped being a loser in the morning:
I was a Late Larry.
Running every morning, I hurried to shower, I forgot to shave, I put on my wrinkled clothes, I skipped breakfast and panicked when I sat in traffic, knowing that I would lose my train and arrive late to work again.Internally I was extremely motivated and wanted success.
Externally, I looked like an unmotivated jerk who had just gotten out of bed and did not give a shit.
This morning the "behavior" impacted my work and almost got me canned, more than once. The snowball affected my physical and mental health, caused anxiety and left me with the syndrome 'busy' without 'time' for friends, family or even to date someone.
I read countless books, blogs and anything about how to fix it, but I could not.
Most of the councils were condescending and critical, as if they chose to be like that.
Everyone told me I had a problem and that I needed to fix it uhhh no shit.
Surprisingly, once I came across a solution, it was so simple that I invested everything almost instantly and created a solid foundation for success.
The negative impacts of the life of the latitude of the morning:
Being late affected my work, health, mental capacity and social life All because my morning started badly.
After a typical early morning, I tiptoed by my boss and slipped into my desk hoping no one would notice (they always did). Then I watched my monitor for an hour while I undressed of my trip caused by the panic.
The rest of the morning I would be stuck to my desk, too scared to have breakfast or even throw myself a dumpster. I'm not sure if it was the fault of being late or the paranoia of being watched. If the missing breakfast was not bad enough, I would work for lunch to show my "dedication" (My first meal of the day would normally be after 1 pm!)
I felt compelled to work late, and I often missed drinks with friends, time with my family, potential appointments and gym time (after a while, everyone stopped calling to hang out since I was always "too tired"). or "too busy"). But, no matter how late I worked or if it worked well, a negative impression was already imprinted on my boss's mind and my brand was damaged. It became an uphill battle. He looked at me like a hawk and looked for mistakes. During the performance reviews, he almost told me it stunk. It swelled even more. I gained weight from inactivity and stress, I seemed exhausted and I felt tired and isolated.
I arrived home exhausted and stressed the next morning.
This impacted my dream. I woke up with a cold sweat from the dreams of being late!
It was a vicious circle. The next morning I felt tired by a terrible dream and repeated the same thing over and over again.
Then one day I did a simple experiment that changed my life.
Insert a chip in my brain?
Attending a 65-week training camp?
Do you drink cabbage and plum juice mixed with cricket urine?
Do not
I started using the timer on my iPhone.
Yes, this has practically changed EVERYTHING
(WTF is what this idiot is talking about ? Stay with me, I'll explain!)
What was the underlying cause of the latitude?
My problem was basically that I would fall asleep when I prepared in the morning.
Brushing his teeth became 10 minutes while he looked in the mirror while he was half asleep.
The 5 minute showers turned into 15 minutes when I retired and I continuously rubbed the soap on my forehead.
Even the simple task of finding socks and underwear became a routine of more than 10 minutes.
These little steps add up quickly. A 20-minute morning increased by one hour.
This caused me to lose my breakfast, to look disheveled, to lose my train and finally get to work late. Without a solid base in the morning, everything else collapsed and triggered a negative domino effect for the day.
What is this magic solution?
Well, back to the iPhone Thing thingy I never wanted to be late and I was not lazy.
I just went to sleep and I kept losing the notion of time (it felt like a morning ADHD).
So here is what I did, which only took a few seconds:
1. Drafted each morning task in the morning + amount of time required
Example: Teeth with brush (1 minute), Urine (1 minute), Shower (6 minutes), Dry (1 minute), Dress (3 minutes), Hair (2 minutes), etc.
2. Add the total
3. Set the timer to the total number of minutes
4. As soon as I woke up in the morning, the timer started and it was time to go.
That was the essential.
Psychologically, knowing how long I had stayed on the road and leaving in the morning.Disclaimer: You really have to wake up in the morning to make this work!
And then what happened?
After about a week of trying this, the result was Total Awesomeness.
First, I have to work in friggin time!
Once at work, I no longer felt stress or paranoia on my head.
I felt energetic, organized and with more confidence.
I stopped skipping lunch and left with my colleagues. I knew them better and I realized that labor relations are more important than real work.
I no longer needed to stay up late and pretend to work. I had time to meet friends / family, go to the gym and go to appointments.
It took me a while to fix my negative impression at work. But, after a while, I got a new job, thanks in part to a solid reference from my boss. I felt healthier and happier than ever, and in control of my day.
While the timer was not the beginning and end solution, it established a solid foundation for a great day. A productive morning began the rest of my day, reversing the snowball effect. Then I was able to implement additional hacks to improve even more.
It still seems a little crazy that such a small mental change would create an exponential return.
How do I become a person in the morning? What are some tips, tricks and tricks of those who made the transition?
Can a simple plan become a person in the morning? I test the indications of a sleep doctor.
Start with an idle question for my husband: "Should I try to become a morning person?"
"Do I have to live with you?" Question. "Or can I get a hotel room?"
For most of my life, I woke up with at least two alarms, one next to my bed and another on the other side of the room to make it difficult to nap. He walked from one place to another, hitting the nap in each one, for an hour or more. Any person with whom I have lived, and many of whom I did not, became my wake-up call, checking me for important events.
The children will change that for you. I have not put an alarm in six years thanks to my first children. They wake up around 6 am (or 5 in especially brutal times) and that's it. But, have I become the morning sunbeam that says "good morning, children! Are we going to play the legos? I have not done it.
Sometimes I imagine that I am still asleep and I pray that my husband will get them. Sometimes I go to them and I walk away while they play, present but inert. Sometimes I lie under the sheets of my 6-year-old son, waiting for full consciousness or the opportunity to sleep, whichever comes first.
This is not something I love about myself. And although I am an expert in the implementation of rules and routines at bedtime for my children, somehow, when I try to do it myself, I fail. The day tells me "Go to bed before! Try to exercise in the morning!" But when the time comes, inevitably the night says " Oooh, there's something to read on the internet!" And when I wake up, In the morning he tells me strongly: "Go back to sleep."
The Internet is full of advice on how to become a person in the morning, and at this point you may have read everything: Have a healthy breakfast. Exercise in the morning and put all the clothes in your gym the night before. Drink a glass of water, maybe with lemon. Start a gratitude journal. To meditate.
I have also read the arguments against: that changing the natural rhythms of your body is not possible or desirable. Some people will wake up at 4:30 to achieve something. Others prefer to stay up late to do the same, and that's fine.
Change is possible, especially if there is an external factor such as children or pets that get up early and if I am "militant" with respect to my routine.
And yet, like most people, I live with limitations: children, an office job and a life in a world centered in the mornings. So I start by talking to Dr. Dianne Augelli, from the Weill-Cornell Sleep Medicine Center, to find out if it's possible to change. She tells me that as someone who sleeps around 11, I have what she would call "mildly delayed sleep phase".
"Will you be excited to get up in the morning and get up and want to start your day and be productive in the morning? " He asks. "That may not happen for you." But change is possible, especially if there is an external factor such as children or pets that get up early and if I am "militant" about my routine. She establishes a four-step plan:
1. TAKE MELAMINE TWO HOURS BEFORE THE BED.
Melatonin is not a sedative, but a hormone that the body secretes naturally to indicate that it is at night. Taking it two hours before bedtime can "help synchronize your circadian clock and this sleep time you want to have," Augelli tells me .
It recommends taking the pills for a short time to start the process, starting with a low dose of .3 mg and rising as necessary to 1-3 mg. (Anyone with a family history of melanoma should not take it for a long time).
I can do that! I put $ 8 , 99 for a bottle of supplements and started that night.
2. ELIMINATE THE "BLUE LIGHT" BEFORE THE BED.
Looking at a smartphone or a computer at night means that we are flooded with "blue light" that prevents us from sleeping before going to bed. And bad news: night owls are even more sensitive to this stimulating blue light , as it encourages our natural tendencies.Therefore, Augelli suggests cutting exposure to blue light from telephones and computers completely one to two hours before bedtime. (Television, she says , is a minor problem because it is generally farther away).
This is a bit more difficult. Part of the way I have established a certain balance between work and life is to disconnect work during my children's bedtime and then log back in after they go to sleep.
But, in truth, the verifications of my phone have become more compulsive than necessary. I still think I should check, but I can not find anything that needs an urgent response. And sometimes my checks are counterproductive because I read something and I think I'll answer in the morning, but I often forget it because (as you may have noticed) I'm not the best in the morning and an email already read does not get my attention.
That first night, I stopped checking my phone, but I felt nervous. My husband makes fun of me: "Oh no! Someone said something snarky on Instagram and you 're missing it! "I hope, a little too fast," Instagram is serious! Twitter is snarky . " And, punished, take a book.
The next morning, I wake up to 42 emails. But it was not necessary to see anyone the night before.
3. LEAVE IN THE SUN SOON AFTER AWAKENING.
This is where it gets really hard. Augelli recommends 30-45 minutes of exposure to the sun within one or two hours of waking up.My usual work routine includes a quick walk to the subway, then staying in the subway for about 30 minutes and then walking through more underground tunnels to the downtown office building. Until recently, I worked in a windowless office, stayed inside for lunch and would not see the sun again until I left the subway after work, often when the sun was low. (This explains my vitamin D deficiency).
Clearly, this was not ideal. But with sunrise around 6:45, would it be possible to get some sunlight and keep running on time? I decide to put it to the test with a trot at dawn, which I think should earn me some additional credit in the karma of people who are not in the morning. I get up at 6:15, sell the children, arrange the 2-year-old girl with some puzzles and the 6-year-old girl with a video of "Carpool Karaoke" and let my husband handle the breakfast. My children are confused. "I do not like shoes," says the little boy, pointing to my shoes.
With the sun rising, the air is gray , my body is sore and in my hurry to leave the house, I have not made contacts and see the world as a blur. I feel like I'd rather be sleeping. I know my usual run would take an hour, and my husband could really kill me if I leave with the children both before work, so I make a shorter route.
I set my music to run more inspiring. It takes me about 10 minutes to really wake up and start enjoying it. The sky becomes a little clearer when I see that the yellow glow rises over the trees. I am at home in 40 minutes feeling more alert than usual, having met my exercise goals and half of my water goals for the day before I even finished my coffee. Everyone is fed and my husband does not seem to want to kill me, although without my contacts I can not really see him.
That's why the people of the morning feel presumptuous.
I promise to keep this routine, but buy a "happy light" on Amazon, just in case. (Augelli also suggests portable devices such as the Re-Timer or Luminette).
4. GO TO A REGULAR SCHEDULE.
This is the true problem. On weekends, I'm desperate to sleep or take a nap. As a working mother, it is one of my few moments of true rest. That is hard to leave.On my first day of rest, my children get up early at 5:20. And it's raining, so the routine morning sun will not happen. I'm not completely alert until around 9 am, taking care of my second cup of coffee and reading "Rosie Revere, engineer" to my 2-year-old daughter in the glow of happy light . I realize that I have already spent about a quarter of my waking hours in a haze.
The next day, the sun is back and in the hours that I normally slept, I manage a longer race and finish the grocery shopping of the week.
But as the days go by, this morning routine feels more like heavy work. I do not feel as much as if I had become a morning person, since I feel like I am using an enormous amount of will to force myself to go through my steps.
On the eighth day, I get up before my children. But I come back from my career to find my husband irritated. The child has a cold and is screaming for handkerchiefs. The house is a mess. And I realize that disappearing during a 45-minute race is not much better on the scale of good mother / wife than in sleeping, except that now I do it almost every day.
CAN THE SLOG BE A HABIT?
I am writing to Gretchen Rubin, author of "Better Than Before" and an upcoming book on how to change habits, in search of help. Instead of cuddling me with ways to make this morning a habit, she tells me that I'm doing this too hard on myself. Since waking up is in itself a challenge, she believes that waiting for me to exercise also is preparing me for failure.ubin has drawn "four trends" for people who want to change, and I am what she calls a debtor: someone who finds it easy to make changes for another person (a boss, my children), but a harder time to follow my own resolutions She suggests some options that could help me: find a partner to wake me up, keep track of my progress and, this is diabolical, establish a consequence that would punish another person, like my husband. (There's no dessert for him if I fall asleep, for example).
It also suggests some personal mantras when I feel reluctant:
"I'm modeling the good behavior of my children: showing them that I can fulfill my commitments and that exercise is an important part of life, and it is worth making an effort to incorporate.""This is an important moment for my husband and children every day. It's different when I'm around. I want to make room for them to have their own relationships with each other, their own routines, internal jokes, behavior patterns. "
"If I exercise, I will be better father and wife. I will be healthier, I will handle anger better, I will have more energy. This time it will help me do a better job during all the other parts of El dia. "
I continue with the exercise routine and address the mantras. I also modify things a little , reducing the number of days I run and, sometimes, I take the 2-year-old girl in the cart to make things easier for my husband. I even try to take my 6-year-old son to the park for a "training camp" in the morning.
And as the days go by, I realize: I like this. I want to keep running in the morning. When I miss a few days, I feel especially dizzy and wonder: How did I function like this in the mornings at work and at school for decades?
So, am I a morning person?
After more than two months of following this routine, am I a person in the morning? The answer is drumming please something like that?
I do not wake up happily with the song of the birds. I do not want to set my alarm to wake up before my children and do things. My most productive time is still in the afternoon. So I am not what would normally be considered a "morning person".
But have I changed? Absolutely. And here are some secrets that I have learned:
NIGHT OWLS CAN EXERCISE IN THE MORNING AND YOU WILL LIKE
I never thought I could train in the morning. I was so tired and dazed. The fact that other people enjoyed the morning workouts puzzled me. I thought we were connected differently. And science suggests we are. But this experiment showed me that mornings could actually be the perfect time to exercise if you're not a morning person.
But most important, I think, was that running when I was not alert meant I had less competitive priorities to excuse myself from doing so. If you plan to exercise when you feel motivated and alert, you will use your motivated and alert time to exercise instead of achieving the other 80 things you want to achieve during your motivated and alert time.
For me, the completion work always took priority over the workouts. Now that my workouts are discreetly hidden at a time of the day when I would not otherwise be achieving much, I am much better at actually doing them. I have not been so consistent with the exercise in years, and that feels very good.
YOU HAVE MORE TIME THAN THINK
Adding a workout to my schedule in the morning was not as difficult as I had imagined. Although our mornings had always felt rushed, I realized that my husband and I often moved awkwardly inefficiently, both trying to do the same. Going out for 40 minutes did not cause the house to collapse. Making other arrangements for my husband prevented him from resenting me too much.And it turns out that cutting the email one hour before I went to bed did not change anything at all for me at work, even though my boss told me "it must be nice" when I explained the limit prescribed by my doctor.
I've recently relaxed on the night screens, and the blue light before the bed has slipped again. I'm using Night Shift for iPhone to filter part of the blue light : f.lux for computers does the same. Augelli says those programs help a little, but not as much as actually turning the thing off.
The power of just doing it
My 2 year old son is deep in his "I did it! " Phase . As he becomes more independent, opening a door alone or putting together a Lego tower, he will turn to me with a smile and say with pride: "I did it!"I am a thinker by nature, and I had almost forgotten the power of that simple sense of accomplishment for me. Forcing me to pass the "but I do not want" - I do not want to get out of bed! I do not want to run in the rain! - I worked those muscles and it made me feel that simple and satisfying sense of "I did it!" And the less I think about it, the easier it is.
That is a lesson that I hope will be maintained, even if my morning routine does not. I do not want to become my own drill sergeant, but it can be easy to take a break because you're tired or busy, when you might feel better about meeting your goals.
My personal awakening call
My 6 year old son was doing some brainstorming for Gifts Mother 's Day when he told me this: "Let 's see. Mom likes to cook, mom likes to snuggle, mom likes to lie down. "
Biology is powerful, and for me that includes an impulse to knock me down more than I would like. I do not think I've become a person in the morning at any other time in my life. In college, I really did more things at 2 am than I could have done if I had woken up early to study or finish a job. In my 20 years, I did not have to take "album naps" to have fun with friends in bars .
Nor could I achieve this now if it were not for healthy work hours and a husband to help us prepare breakfast and lunch for our children. (If that's possible).
But right now, I can do this. I ask my husband how he thinks he was.
"You're still not a morning person," he says, "but you've fought in an impressive way and with great effect on your inner nature, I say it's a draw . "
My hope is that for the next Mother's Day, my son has a new list: "Mom likes to cook, mom likes to run, mom likes to wake up and play with me".
But maybe just for Mother's Day, I'll take a nap.
