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Lucie has been wanting to wake up earlier for awhile now and she is finally taking the steps to change her routine to become a morning person.
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00:00I'm Lucy Fink and this week is 5 Days of Becoming a Morning Person.
00:04Hey guys!
00:05Welcome back to Try Living with Lucy where I challenge myself to live a better life
00:08and sometimes do weird things like eat only pizza for 5 days.
00:12This week's challenge is very near and dear to my heart
00:14because it's honestly a topic that I myself have been really into recently.
00:19Even Michael can tell you that I just don't stop talking about it.
00:22Hey Michael.
00:23What's up?
00:23Can you tell the camera what's the one thing that I don't stop talking about?
00:28The thing I want to do.
00:30The thing you want to do is most definitely wake up early.
00:34Why do I want to do that?
00:37Because you want to be a morning person.
00:39Do I ever stop talking about it?
00:41Never. I'm really sick of it.
00:43So this past week I finally took some early steps to start becoming a morning person.
00:47So now let's go back and I'll show you what I did.
00:51Let me start off by saying that I myself have never ever been a morning person.
00:55If you leave me undisturbed in the morning I can probably sleep comfortably
00:58until about 11 a.m., sometimes even noon.
01:01And anytime I need to wake up early and get out of bed I find myself snoozing my alarm multiple
01:06times.
01:06So for someone who's not a morning person but really wants to become one,
01:10I've heard that the biggest change needs to take place in your nighttime routine.
01:13Mark my words, you will not be able to wake up early if you do not go to sleep at
01:17a reasonable time.
01:18My typical bedtime is around midnight, sometimes a little bit earlier, sometimes a little later.
01:23But instead of going all in and trying to push that bedtime up hours at once,
01:27I decided this week to gradually move my bedtime up piece by piece so that each day I was going
01:32to sleep a little earlier.
01:34Slow and steady wins the race.
01:35So on Sunday night to get ready for this entire week I made sure that I was washed up and
01:39in bed by 11 p.m.
01:41so that I had a little bit of time to read before I shut the lights off and got to
01:44sleep by 11.30.
01:45Just 30 minutes earlier than normal, you gotta start somewhere.
01:50When I woke up on Monday morning at 6.30 a.m., I woke up to a good old-fashioned
01:55alarm clock.
01:56Right now you can see it next to my bed, but actually for this entire week I did not sleep
02:00with it next to my bed.
02:01I put it opposite the bed, which meant that I had to actually get out of bed to shut it
02:05off.
02:05And also using a real alarm clock instead of my phone meant that I didn't have to rely on my
02:09phone to be the alarm,
02:10so instead I could just turn it off entirely on Sunday night.
02:14And turning it off had some other benefits because I didn't run the risk of waking up on Monday morning,
02:18grabbing my phone, and just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, which you know I tend to do.
02:22So once I was up, I just did a full morning routine in my apartment.
02:26I made breakfast for myself.
02:28I made a fresh juice.
02:32I read the newspaper from the physical, actual newspaper, the one that's thrown in front of my door every morning.
02:38And I just used the extra time to be productive, so I did a little bit of work in the
02:42morning.
02:42I did a little meditation.
02:45And then I also popped in one of my favorite podcasts.
02:49Monday felt really great, but to be completely honest with you, the first day of a challenge almost always feels
02:54great.
02:54I'm always so into it, and I'm really excited to try it, and I have all this adrenaline pumping.
02:59So it's not really trying it out for the first time that's hard, it's sticking to it.
03:02So on Monday night going into Tuesday, I shifted my bedtime up in another half-hour interval,
03:07and I moved it from 11.30 to 11.00.
03:09I set an alarm for 9.30 p.m. to make sure I was off my computer,
03:12then another alarm for 10.15 to make sure I was in bed,
03:15and the final alarm was for 11.00 p.m., lights out.
03:18One issue that I had on Monday morning when I woke up at 6.30 was that the room was
03:23incredibly dark.
03:24And I don't know about you guys, but when I wake up and there's no sunlight in sight, it's difficult
03:28to get up.
03:29So on Monday night, I decided to open up the shades and sleep with the windows wide open
03:33so that in the morning, all of the light would leak in.
03:35Hey!
03:36And it was actually a really cool view because I live around a ton of other high-rise buildings,
03:40so the lights from different apartments were coming in,
03:43and it was kind of like I was going to sleep with this shimmering city next to me.
03:46I'm also finding that it's just not the easiest thing in the world to put myself to sleep earlier
03:50because I'm used to going to sleep kind of late.
03:52If I try to put myself to bed earlier, I wind up just lying there and telling myself,
03:56sleep.
03:58But it doesn't really work like that.
04:00So on Monday night to help with this, I tried out these new melatonin gummies that a friend recommended.
04:05Refinery29 has a whole article about melatonin and how it affects different people in different ways.
04:10Some people experience some pretty weird side effects from it.
04:13Other people swear by it.
04:14But at the end of the day, melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone in our bodies,
04:18so if you use it every once in a while, supposedly it's okay.
04:23My alarm clock went off on Tuesday morning,
04:25and because the room was already bright from the shades being open,
04:28it was actually a lot easier to get up.
04:30I just went the cheapest route and used the actual sun,
04:33but if you don't have good sunlight in your apartment,
04:35you can also try a wake-up light, which mimics the sun.
04:38I also didn't feel any weird side effects from the melatonin, which was good.
04:41After I got myself out of bed on Tuesday, I popped in a productivity podcast,
04:44and I brought myself to the gym bright and early.
04:47I just couldn't believe how much time I had in the morning to do everything.
04:51So by the time I was ready to go to work, I had already eaten breakfast,
04:54gone to the gym, taken a shower, meditated, soaked up an entire podcast.
04:59It was honestly more than most people do in a full day,
05:02and I had done it between the hours of 6.30 and 8.
05:05Gotta be doing something right if that's what's happening.
05:09Jeff Sanders is a person that I think we all should know.
05:12He's a productivity coach, and he's the author of The 5AM Miracle,
05:15and he suggests that we all set a stop time for ourselves.
05:19So this is going to be the time at the end of the night when we turn off all of
05:22our technology
05:22and we start getting ready for bed.
05:24The reason why it's not a great idea to use technology just before you want to go to bed
05:28is that the blue light from our screens can suppress our body's natural melatonin production.
05:32And remember, melatonin is the hormone that helps us go to sleep.
05:36He suggests powering everything off at 8PM for a 5AM wake-up call,
05:40but since I'm not waking up quite as early and I'm doing 6.30 instead,
05:43I set my stop time to be 9PM.
05:46On Tuesday night, I discovered that there's a setting on both your computer and your phone
05:49that allows you to reduce the amount of blue light that's emitted from your screen as the day goes on.
05:54So by 9PM at my stop time, I closed my laptop and turned off my phone.
05:58I was in bed by 10PM and lights were out by 10.30.
06:04Wednesday morning was not an easy wake-up call.
06:06I was feeling very tired.
06:09But I did love the way I felt after going to the gym on Tuesday,
06:13so on Wednesday I pushed myself and I went again.
06:15One thing that I found that works for me is going to the gym early in the morning feels better
06:19for me
06:20because it's a time of day when I'm not really motivated to do anything else.
06:24Did you get your heart made nothing else?
06:25The end of the day is a time when I feel extremely motivated and I actually wanted to sit down
06:30and get a ton of work done. So when I go to the gym at the end of the day,
06:33I feel like I'm going to the gym when I could be doing something else.
06:36But if you go to the gym in the morning when there's really nothing else to do,
06:39you won't feel like you're wasting time.
06:44Wednesday night we had a bit of a problem,
06:46so I got stuck at the office a lot later than I had hoped for.
06:49It's nighttime and I'm still here.
06:55So the post-production department is basically all still here,
06:59but absolutely none of the producers are here.
07:02It's 8 p.m. Time to go home soon.
07:04And I actually didn't get home until I think about 8.30 p.m.
07:08And of course when I got home I still needed to cook and eat dinner,
07:11and I had a little bit more work to do.
07:12I had been aiming to get to bed by 10 p.m. on Wednesday night,
07:15but then I quickly realized that was just not going to fly by any stretch of the imagination.
07:19I actually wound up not even closing my laptop until 10.30 p.m.
07:23But if I'm realizing anything about my new schedule,
07:26it's that this whole thing I'm doing here and trying here is not going to work out every night.
07:30Some nights I might have more work to do, other nights I might be out late with friends,
07:34and I'm not going to come home early to put myself to sleep at 10.
07:37Life is just going to keep on happening around me,
07:39and the conclusion that I'm coming to is that as long as I stick to this schedule on most nights,
07:43it's going to be okay.
07:44So on Wednesday I wound up not getting to sleep until midnight,
07:47but that is okay.
07:48We're all good.
07:50Still moving forward.
07:54Personally, I think that a major reason why many people struggle to wake up in the morning
07:57is because they don't have much to look forward to in the morning.
08:00Either they have to get ready for another long day of school,
08:03or they have another tough day at their job ahead of them.
08:05So I came to the genius conclusion that if I have something to look forward to in the morning,
08:09it will be easier for me to get out of bed.
08:11Do you ever notice how on Christmas morning,
08:13or maybe the morning you wake up and you're about to go off on vacation,
08:16you have so much adrenaline coursing through your veins
08:18that it really doesn't matter how many hours you slept the night before
08:21because you are up and ready to open presents or get on that plane.
08:25So when I started thinking about what to plan for myself that would excite me,
08:29I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that I'm always excited to go on a date with Michael
08:32after a day in the office.
08:34I'm usually at work, typing away, wrapping things up really quickly
08:36because I'm so excited to get out of there and to see him and to have a date.
08:40But who ever said dates need to be in the evening?
08:42So I made a morning workout date with Michael and the two of us woke up and we were so
08:47excited.
08:47We worked out side by side and it was just a little morning date
08:50that truly kicked off the entire day on the right note.
08:53That is definitely something that will wake me up and get me out of bed in the morning.
08:57So now I want you to ask yourself,
08:59what is one thing you can set up for yourself in the morning that will really get you up
09:02and get your blood flowing and get you excited for the day?
09:08On Thursday night, I got to bed nice and early at 10 p.m.
09:11My computer was closed by 8 p.m.
09:13I had two long hours to read.
09:16I took a nice warm bath.
09:17I was actually really wiped out from the entire day.
09:19So by the time I got in bed at 10 p.m.
09:21my body went to sleep very easily.
09:26When I woke up on Friday morning, I decided to add in a meditation practice
09:30that I've been doing to my morning routine.
09:32So it's a 21 day meditation challenge led by Deepak Chopra.
09:35It's free.
09:36It's on YouTube.
09:37As you know, I love challenges and I love challenging myself to stick to something for
09:41a long period of time.
09:42Because challenges like that give me something not only to look forward to, but to track.
09:47So enter my bullet journal.
09:48I made a brand new 21 day meditation tracker in my bullet journal.
09:52And now not only am I excited to wake up and actually do the meditation practice,
09:56but I'm also excited to track it because it means I get to watercolor in my bullet journal.
10:00I've read a few articles at this point that are sort of against the idea of trying to become
10:05a morning person.
10:06They say that changing your body's natural rhythms is neither possible nor desirable.
10:10And while some people might wake up early to accomplish something,
10:13others would prefer to just stay up late and accomplish the exact same thing.
10:16And that's okay.
10:17But I really do feel that there is something to be said about rising when the sun rises
10:21and going to sleep when the sun sets.
10:23It's like getting your body onto the natural cycles of the earth.
10:26It feels like the right thing to do, you know?
10:28I've now spent far too many nights just jamming away on my computer long after the sun has set.
10:33And this week has really helped me let go of that.
10:35Even when I was in the middle of something, I would just ask myself,
10:38does this really need to get done right now?
10:40And more often than not, the answer was no.
10:42So if the answer was no, I would just close my computer and do it when it's daylight.
10:46Bye guys!