4 Simple Steps to a Perfect Early Morning – Advice from a Night Owl

I am a night owl. Well, not literally. I don’t have wings, live in a tree and swivel my head around 270 degrees.

Rather, I am genetically predisposed to getting up and going to bed later than most people. My body clock is set slightly later than the average.

Now is not the time to go into this, but I can assure you, this is a very real thing that’s been repeatedly proven with sciencey stuff over the years.

Of course, that doesn't stop most morning people (or “morning larks” if we’re sticking with the ornithological pseudonyms) thinking this genetic phenomenon is a load of old cobblers because, for them, mornings are relatively easy.

But the night owls out there will sympathise.

For us, we don’t need science to tell us what we already know; early mornings are mini-traumas that take 24 hours to get over.

It wasn’t until my 20’s that I realised not everyone found mornings horrendous. Before then, I thought summoning a Herculean effort just to get out of bed was part and parcel of being human.

My epiphany came when I was working away from home, myself and two others in my team were spending a few nights a week in a hotel.

At the start of each day, I’d drag myself to the hotel breakfast table for 8am, fuzzy-headed and shattered, whilst my two colleagues bounded up, chipper and energised, like over-excited labradors waiting for their owner to put on boots and take them out for a walk.

Both colleagues told me they didn’t use an alarm clock because they “woke up naturally”. On hearing this, I could have thrown a pot of tea over the pair of them.

I’ve battled with early mornings since I started school at 5. I can assure you that a night owl doesn’t just "get used to" rising early.

My 3 year old son is the same. His average wake up time is well after 8am and I often have to rouse him for nursery as he puts his head under the covers and says “Tired Daddy! I don’t want to get up!”

I’m sorry my boy, but you have my genes. For you, mornings are always going to be hard. I suggest a job where you can dictate your own hours because trust me, it ‘ain’t ever getting easier.

However! Night owls, I bring hope.

This isn't just a lament about early mornings, I may have just cracked the problem. Well, as much as early mornings can be cracked for the forever nocturnal amongst us.

I’m going to explain what I do to make mornings bearable, and if you too struggle to get up, this will undoubtedly help.

I’m not a sleep guru and I don’t believe getting up early is some sort of holy productivity hack (besides, I’m most productive in the late evenings, I’m currently writing this at 1am), but in a world obsessed with the early bird getting the worm, this advice will help night owls start the day right.

Sidenote: Who wants to eat worms anyway? And what does the late bird get? What are they hiding? Perhaps it’s a continental breakfast with bottomless coffee and french toast. Food for thought.

So, here are the simple, but not necessarily easy, tips to make your morning great.

1. Drink a pint of water when you wake up

Easy! I have one by my bed and when I wake up, it’s the first thing I do.

It rehydrates me in one blast and means I don’t need to worry about it again for an hour or two.

I’m not a doctor (nor an owl as previously mentioned, please stop going on about it) but it feels like the water gets my system moving. It just feels right.

I dehydrate a lot at night and so this works for me. It kick-starts my system. I have no more to offer than the anecdotal evidence of n=1 (me), but it sure works well.

I’m a big believer in feeling is knowing and my body tells me this is a good start to the day.

2. Have a cold shower

This is as simple as it gets, but I concede, it’s anything but easy.

I’m sure you’re thinking “I was with you up until ‘cold shower’.”

I understand your reluctance, but let me make my case.

Along with being a chronic night owl, for years I hated the cold. I was a hat, coat and gloves man in the middle of spring. I was the sole male in the office who moaned about the air con. I couldn’t even stand a cool breeze coming from an open window.

I started cold exposure about 2 years ago as part of the Wim Hof Method to improve my immune system. It had nothing to do with helping me wake up, but one of the many benefits I found was that it suddenly made mornings manageable.

After I got out that shower, I felt great. Not just awake, but great. Imagine that!

A good mood. Energised. Ready. Focused. All that stuff. All the things I'd never felt before in the morning. It was like I had tapped into a superpower.

I’ve tried going to the gym in the early hours and all that did was exhaust me for the day, but a cold shower is different. It seems to take nothing from me and gives everything back.

I realise a cold shower might sound like self-flagellation but it's the opposite. It's giving yourself a boost. Besides, the hardest part of a cold shower is the first minute. After that, the body adjusts and it’s fairly normal.

Compare that one minute of discomfort to an entire morning of feeling like you’ve been dug up from the dead.

It’s a great trade-off.

With a cold shower, you’ve done the hardest part of your day just after you get up. You feel proud, resilient, strong.

If you want easy mornings, you have to do this one hard thing. Do give it a try. If I can do it - the man who’d wear a coat in the height of summer - then you certainly can.

3. Skip Breakfast

I intermittent fast. Yes I know, I’m one of those people. Cold showers, fasting, all that “life hack” stuff that’s currently clogging up the internet.

I’m sure you wouldn’t be surprised right now if I linked you to my $197 course on human optimisation, but I’m not going to. I don’t have anything to sell, only free information to offer.

I’m not saying you need to fast, but I find skipping breakfast stabilises my energy levels. It has endlessly improved my mornings.

Here’s how I do it: I don’t eat between 9pm to 1pm the next day. It’s that simple.

One of the benefits is that I no longer get tired at my desk in the AM. At all. No 11 o’clock slump. No nodding head. It just doesn’t happen anymore.

After lunch, that slump still happens. But in the morning, I’m great. It sure is worth exploring.

4. Think Positive

Ok, this last one sounds woolly, but bear with me. For the night owl, mornings are a mind game as much as anything else.

When I first wake up, I basically feel like shit. Battered, hazy and at my most vulnerable. I found I was getting up frowning and miserable. I had the whole “why is this happening to me” victim mentality.

I didn’t realise I was doing it.

I’m not unfamiliar with the idea of positive thinking, in fact, I’m a big believer in it, but default is a bitch, and in the mornings I defaulted back to negativity.

Then I watched a video by comedian Steve Harvey, extolling the virtues of waking up “right”.

It’s a funny story that’s worth a watch, with a great message. As Steve says:

You’re going to be sheer greatness because you’ve learned how to wake up.

And that’s what night owls need to do: learn how to handle the mornings.

Now, when I wake up, I think of Steve Harvey’s story and I deliberately lift my mood. I make the effort to not let the fuzzy-headedness get the better of me and consciously decide to be happier. I do that mental work right off the bat.

And you know what? It makes all the difference.

I don’t know if it’s a chemical or physiological thing, but starting right seems to make feeling good the rest of the day easier. There is no hill to climb if you’re starting at the top anyway.

A good tip I have found that helps with mindset is being present. When working your way through the morning routine, don’t let anxiety about the day ahead get to you. Drink your water and concentrate on how it feels going into your body. Focus on the cold in the shower, feel your body tingle afterwards.

Make first thing in the morning your time. You don’t need the carry the weight of the day’s responsibilities on your shoulders just yet. Stand guard at your thoughts until you’re ready to open that door and let the day in.

Final Thoughts

And that’s it. I have suffered a thousand difficult mornings so I wanted to share with you the best map I’ve discovered to navigate the start of the day.

My experiences aren’t yours. We’re all guessing, making it up as we go along, but I hope the take away to this article is that you’re not alone in finding the morning challenging and it can get easier.

For every morning person who says "you just need to grow up and act like an adult” (I’ve heard that several times before), remember a night owl is struggling to get out of bed before 10am.

Try some of these steps. They work for me. Maybe mix it in with what works for you already, including what you might do at night before bed, but one way or another, let’s reclaim the mornings. It is, after all, a large chunk of our lives.