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It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
- Aristotle

Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon.

But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high correlation between success and rising early, even in my own life. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticed a significant feeling of well-being. So being the proactive goal-achiever I was, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 5AM…

… and the next morning, I got up just before noon.

Hmmm…

I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. I figured I must have been born without the early riser gene. Whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that blasted noise and go back to sleep. I tabled this habit for a number of years, but eventually I came across some sleep research that showed me that I was going about this problem the wrong way. Once I applied those ideas, I was able to become an early riser consistently.

It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it’s relatively easy.

The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep you’re getting now, and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from midnight to 8am, you figure you’ll go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable, but it will usually fail.

It seems there are two main schools of thought about sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same times every day. It’s like having an alarm clock on both ends — you try to sleep the same hours each night. This seems practical for living in modern society. We need predictability in our schedules. And we need to ensure adequate rest.

The second school says you should listen to your body’s needs and go to bed when you’re tired and get up when you naturally wake up. This approach is rooted in biology. Our bodies should know how much rest we need, so we should listen to them.

Through trial and error, I found out for myself that both of these schools are suboptimal sleep patterns. Both of them are wrong if you care about productivity. Here’s why:

If you sleep set hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that you’re assuming you need the same number of hours of sleep every night, which is a false assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day.

If you sleep based on what your body tells you, you’ll probably be sleeping more than you need — in many cases a lot more, like 10-15 hours more per week (the equivalent of a full waking day). A lot of people who sleep this way get 8+ hours of sleep per night, which is usually too much. Also, your mornings may be less predictable if you’re getting up at different times. And because our natural rhythms are sometimes out of tune with the 24-hour clock, you may find that your sleep times begin to drift.

The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches. It’s very simple, and many early risers do this without even thinking about it, but it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.

I go to bed when I’m too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldn’t read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I’m ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, I’m asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately I’m drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9:30pm; other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If I’m not sleepy, I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when I’m too sleepy to read.

When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up. I don’t think about it. I’ve learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I don’t allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.

After a few days of using this approach, I found that my sleep patterns settled into a natural rhythm. If I got too little sleep one night, I’d automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasn’t tired, I’d sleep less. My body learned when to knock me out because it knew I would always get up at the same time and that my wake-up time wasn’t negotiable.

A side effect was that on average, I slept about 90 minutes less per night, but I actually felt more well-rested. I was sleeping almost the entire time I was in bed.

I read that most insomniacs are people who go to bed when they aren’t sleepy. If you aren’t sleepy and find yourself unable to fall asleep quickly, get up and stay awake for a while. Resist sleep until your body begins to release the hormones that rob you of consciousness. If you simply go to bed when you’re sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, you’ll cure your insomnia. The first night you’ll stay up late, but you’ll fall asleep right away. You may be tired that first day from getting up too early and getting only a few hours of sleep the whole night, but you’ll slog through the day and will want to go to bed earlier that second night. After a few days, you’ll settle into a pattern of going to bed at roughly the same time and falling asleep right away.

So if you want to become an early riser (or just exert more control over your sleep patterns), then try this: Go to bed only when you’re too sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning.

Need to get fit but don't know where to start?

Many people don't bother even attempting a fitness program because they dont know where to start. Running is one of the most effective ways to get fit and it doesn't cost you anything providing you have the right gear, like shoes.

All you need to do is get up a little earlier before work or put aside some time after dinner to go out in your neighbourhood and just run around. You are almost guaranteed to get fit and lose weight from doing this a few times a week for a number of weeks.

This all sounds good but as most of you are not real fit to start out with your stamina is very low and it would be very hard for you to start running for long periods of time. This is why I have created a short guide that will help you with this problem.

In the tables below I have created a simple guide for you to follow so that you can start running in no time. At first it is very simple with only short bursts of jogging but as the weeks go on you will start running a lot but you will hardly notice the difference as you not only get used to it but as you get fitter from the exercise.

If you are already doing a bit of exercise and you believe you can skip the first few weeks then go ahead but don't go to far otherwise you will not be able to keep up with the pace.

This program will only take you one hour a day for three days a week for 3 months. 3 sessions must be done per week with a day in between but if you can't do that just do the three over a week period. The guide follows:

Week 1
Session 1 (35 mins)Run 30 seconds. Walk 4 mins 30 secs. Repeat 7 times
Session 2 (40 mins)Run 30 seconds. Walk 4 mins 30 secs. Repeat 8 times
Session 3 (40 mins)Run 30 seconds. Walk 4 mins 30 secs. Repeat 8 times


Week 2
Session 1 (45 mins)Run 1 minute. Walk 4 minutes. Repeat 9 times
Session 2 (40 mins)Run 1 minute. Walk 4 minutes. Repeat 8 times
Session 3 (40 mins)Run 1 minute. Walk 4 minutes. Repeat 8 times

Week 3
Session 1 (50 mins)Run 1 min 30 sec. Walk 3 mins 30 sec. Repeat 10 times
Session 2 (40 mins)Run 1 min 30 sec. Walk 3 mins 30 sec. Repeat 8 times
Session 3 (50 mins)Run 1 min 30 sec. Walk 3 mins 30 sec. Repeat 10 times

Week 4
Session 1 (55 mins)Run 2 minutes. Walk 3 minutes. Repeat 11 times
Session 2 (45 mins)Run 2 minutes. Walk 3 minutes. Repeat 9 times
Session 3 (50 mins)Run 2 minutes. Walk 3 minutes. Repeat 10 times

Week 5
Session 1 (60 mins)Run 2 mins 30 sec. Walk 2 mins 30 secs. Repeat 12 times
Session 2 (50 mins)Run 2 mins 30 sec. Walk 2 mins 30 secs. Repeat 10 times
Session 3 (50 mins)Run 2 mins 30 sec. Walk 2 mins 30 secs. Repeat 10 times

Week 6
Session 1 (65 mins)Run 3 minutes. Walk 2 minutes. Repeat 13 times
Session 2 (50 mins)Run 3 minutes. Walk 2 minutes. Repeat 10 times
Session 3 (55 mins)Run 3 minutes. Walk 2 minutes. Repeat 11 times

Week 7
Session 1 (60 mins)Run 4 minutes. Walk 1 minutes. Repeat 10 times
Session 2 (54 mins)Run 4 minutes. Walk 1 minutes. Repeat 9 times
Session 3 (54 mins)Run 4 minutes. Walk 1 minutes. Repeat 9 times

Week 8
Session 1 (60 mins)Run 5 minutes. Walk 2 minutes. Repeat 10 times
Session 2 (48 mins)Run 5 minutes. Walk 2 minutes. Repeat 8 times
Session 3 (54 mins)Run 5 minutes. Walk 2 minutes. Repeat 9 times

Week 9
Session 1 (63 mins)Run 7 minutes. Walk 2 minutes. Repeat 7 times
Session 2 (54 mins)Run 7 minutes. Walk 2 minutes. Repeat 6 times
Session 3 (50 mins)Run 8 minutes. Walk 2 minutes. Repeat 5 times

Week 10
Session 1 (44 mins)Run 10 minutes. Walk 1 minute. Repeat 4 times
Session 2 (42 mins)Run 20 minutes. Walk 1 minute. Repeat 2 times
Session 3 (46 mins)Run 22 minutes. Walk 1 minute. Repeat Once

Week 11
Session 1 (52 mins)Run 25 minutes. Walk 1 minute. Repeat Once
Session 2 (62 mins)Run 30 minutes. Walk 1 minute. Repeat Once
Session 3 (51 mins)Run 40 minutes. Walk 1 minute. Run 10 mins.

Week 12
Session 1 (66 mins)Run 45 minutes. Walk 1 minute. Run 20 mins
Session 2 (66 mins)Run 50 minutes. Walk 1 minute. Run 15 mins
Session 3 (45 mins)Run 45 mins


Week 13
Session 1 (50 mins)Run 50 minutes
Session 2 (55 mins)Run 55 minutes
Session 3 (60 mins)Run 60 minutes


So there it is. A simple guide for you to follow to get you into shape by running. Just take a couple notes to work and you could knock some off during your lunch break. It really isn't that hard.

Hope it can really help you.