As a fourth-year undergraduate student, I have had a range of schedules each semester that vary in terms of morning, afternoon and night classes. After only having classes between 11 am and 8 pm the past two years, I have become accustomed to being my most productive at night and recently decided that I want to change my schedule to become a morning person. Even from a young age, I have been a night owl so I created some steps and strategies to make this transition successful. Several methods I included in this goal are forming a nighttime routine, developing a morning routine, improving sleep and eating dinner earlier.
My first step is to go to bed earlier so I wake up well-rested and prepared for the day. As someone who always falls asleep between 12:30-2am, going to sleep before 11 pm was a big change. Since I did not make this a gradual process, I started this new habit on a day that I had to get up at 6 am so I would be tired enough to go to bed two hours earlier than usual.
In creating nighttime and morning routines, I wanted to include motivating factors that would encourage me to maintain this schedule. I am a very routine driven person so I keep daily tasks but also include “fun” tasks that are different every day. At night, I add alternate relaxing tasks such as cooking a favorite dinner, doing extra skincare or FaceTiming my parents or friends. The daily tasks I implemented include working out, writing down my goals for the next day and reading for 20-30 minutes before going to bed.
In the morning, I set my phone alarm across the room to force myself to get up quickly and then I completed a 10-minute beginner yoga tutorial on YouTube. After this, I get ready for the day and fix myself coffee and breakfast to eat as I review my plan for the day and check my email. I genuinely enjoy being productive and checking off items on my to-do list earlier in the day, so that I have free time at night to relax.
My next step is to improve my sleep habits, so I stopped drinking caffeine after 2 pm and I started using a white noise machine. The 20-30 minutes of reading before bed forces me to relax and makes me fall asleep faster. I do not ever take naps during the day but if you do, I would recommend not taking naps if you want to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier.
I was surprised to find that the most difficult step for me was eating dinner earlier. Since I have class and meetings Monday through Thursday from about 5 to 8:30 pm, I wanted to eat dinner before class but 4 pm seemed so early. I realized I needed to change all of my meal schedules to fix my dinner schedule, so I began eating breakfast earlier (even when I wasn’t hungry yet), having lunch before my 1 pm class, and then eating dinner around 4:30 pm and having a snack after class. After meal planning and finding quick dinners, this strategy became easier and now I am really happy with my schedule and routines.
I was very excited to shift my schedule to become a morning person because it makes me feel less stressed and anxious to complete my to-do list in the morning rather than the evening. I have wanted to fix my sleep schedule for the longest time and implementing each of these strategies made me feel really happy and motivated to do it.