Tim's Goals in Real Time

Goal description:

Ever wanted to be an early riser? This is my first goal that i am posting on my blog which is exciting for me.  I want to achieve this goal to create a habit of getting up early everyday and starting the day early. After doing this everyday for 30 days I hope to be in the habit which i can continue without effort until i decide i want to change my sleeping habit again down the track.

Visit and subscribe to my YouTube Channel

I am interested in waking up early and starting my day early for many reasons. First i am currently on holidays and have slipped into the sleeping pattern much like what i had a university where i would stay up and go to bed between midnight and 2am and wake up between 10am and noon which cannibalizes my day which i want to use productively. The second major reason is that I have read and heard in a lot of books and other materials on success and productivity that the majority of really successful people get up very early and start the day early. I have tended to believe this is true since i opened a twitter account and started following some really successful people and i have noticed that I often see many of them tweeting consistently when they get up which can be as early as 3 am! (you can follow me at www.twitter.com/timsgoals).

Goal S.M.A.R.T. :

Specific:

• who – me
• what – wake up at or before 5am and start day at or before 6am (showered and dressed and had breakfast)
• where – my home
• when – every day for 30 days straight
• which – bed, alarm clock,
• Why – 1.Fit more into the day & 2. develop success trait which will improve other areas of my life

Measurable

• I will log my wake up time and the time I have completed my morning routine every day. When i have logged that i have completed 30 days straight waking up early and starting the day early then i will have completed my goal

Attainable

• Yes I believe it is

Realistic

• Yes

Timely

• 30 days

My Strategy:

I have done a small amount of research on how to complete this goal and my initial strategy is a little peculiar. I have tried waking up early before the way most people try to do it by deciding when i want to get up and how much sleep i need then going to bed earlier to fit in the required hours of sleep (eg. going to bed at 10am and waking at 6). I have not had much success doing it this way as i would often cheat and stay up or go to bed and could not sleep because i was not tired yet. Then i came across an article on the website stevepavlina.com  which says that you should practice getting up early during the day. The article suggests that you go to bed during the day and set your alarm to go off in a short amount of time. While in bed pretend you are asleep and then when the alarm goes off stretch yawn and get out of bed and pretend to go do what you would normally do after waking. rehearsing this a few times a day is supposed to program you to wake up as soon as your alarm goes off so you do it automatically no matter regardless of how late you stayed up the night before (within reason). This strategy is one of the few that i have not yet tried so i am going to try it out and see how effective it is.

Edit 15/9/09 (day

Strategy Part II

In addition today I have also added another tool to my strategy. As my alarm I use my mobile phone’s built in alarm to wake me up which has a snooze which when pressed switches off the alarm and sets it to go off again 10 minutes later. I find that after I wake up and my morning brain fog convinces me getting up is not a good idea I hot snooze and fall back to sleep and then 10 minutes later I am no more awake and so hit snooze again and this cycle can go on for an hour or more depending how tired I am. In my phone however I can set up multiple alarms which allows me to set as many wake up alarms as I want. So what I have done is set an alarm at 5am and then another at 5:01, another at 5:03 another at 5:05, others at 5:07, 5:10, 5:13, 5;15. This causes a constant barrage of alarms that ensure I cannot get back to sleep at all no matter how many times I hit snooze. After 10 to fifteen minutes of this I am definitely awake enough to get out of bed and start my morning routine.

I will track my progress:

YouTube: weekly – Subscribe to my channel
Blog: Every few days
Twitter: Often – Follow me on twitter

Updates

Day 1
Days 2-4
Days 5-8
Video update #1
Days 9-11
Days 12-14
Days 15-21

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Wake up early (5am) for 30 days :)zZ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.