Mornings can be tough! Especially when you’re a college-aged student who gets less than optimal amounts of sleep. Most mornings I wake up, roll over and start to daydream about how nice it would be to go back to bed. I mean really, why get up and walk across campus in the cold when I can stay swaddled in my big fluffy blankets?! But still, despite my body begging me to stay in bed, my mind somehow manages to drag me out of it. If you find yourself in a similar situation, here are some simple things you can do to make keep you from feeling like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
1. Set a Nice Sounding Alarm
One of the easiest ways to make waking up in the morning a more pleasant experience is to choose an alarm that won’t make you want to throw your phone across the room as soon as it starts. Are these alarms effective? Yes. Do they make me angry as soon as I wake up? Also, yes. According to an article by the MIT Technology Review, waking up to such abrupt and unpleasant alarms can actually induce stress and leave you feeling groggy. Instead, they recommend gentler alarms that will help you ease awake. I tested out this theory myself and even if you try nothing else from these tips – try this!
2. Have Breakfast and Coffee
You’ve probably heard this advice hundreds of times before. But have you tried it? I spent the majority of my life skipping breakfast and trying to get through my days without coffee. It wasn’t until recently that I started taking the time to eat in the morning and having the occasional cup of coffee to go with it. At risk of sounding overly dramatic – it changed my life. I found that on days when I took the time to eat a good breakfast and drink coffee I felt a lot less hangry and felt energized, no matter how much sleep I got the night before.
3. Make Your Bed
Unpopular Opinion: I love making my bed every morning. It’s not for everybody, but after a friend recommended it to me it quickly became a part of my everyday routine. According to this friend it would be “oddly satisfying” – and it really is! I think it may be because making my bed gives the illusion of having my life together. But regardless of the reason, it’s worth giving a try! It may not give you the same satisfaction it gives me, but at least you can look forward to coming back to a nicely made bed at the end of the day.
4. Prepare the Night Before
I’ve added doing a little prep for the next day to my nightly routine and it has made my mornings a lot less chaotic. How much prepping you need to do is going to depend on how much time you want to give yourself in the morning. On days when I don’t have anywhere to be I do no prep, and enjoy taking my time as I get ready. But on days when I have early morning classes I like to get as much sleep as possible, so I also do as much prepping as possible. That means packing my backpack, laying out the next day’s outfit, and writing myself a to-do list so I hardly have to do or think about anything when I wake up. This is nice because I can snooze for a few extra minutes and don’t feel like I’m frantically rushing out the door.
Implementing these small changing has really changed my mornings. I used to start my days groggy, hungry, and frantically rushing out of the door. And I’ll admit, I do still have those days sometimes, but only when I don’t take my own advice! I can’t guarantee that all these tips will work as well for you as they did for me, but you should definitely give them a try if you want to make your mornings a little bit better.