Morning Person in Progress

This is going to be a new series where I document how I am turning myself into a morning person. I don’t know if it’s because I’m rapidly approaching 30 or for some other reason, but I feel like I need to conform to our society of morning people and also just adjust my sleep pattern to be more suitable to my life.

I am naturally a night owl. I think in an ideal world I would have a job that would allow me to work from like 10-6 (although when I was in high school I would sometimes get 6-2 and 7-3 shifts and I really liked how much daytime I had left each day so idk). But I have always more naturally been a night owl, even when I was a kid I would have preferred to stay up late and sleep in a bit later. However, our world is built to the schedule of morning people and I am tired of being tired all the time and feeling super rushed in the morning.

Last week I got up at 6am on Monday for work, as in that was the very latest time I could get up and be on time for my work flight. And then I decided to just keep doing it for the rest of the week (except Thursday, I was really tired on Thursday so I decided to sleep a bit more instead). I didn’t force myself to work out or exercise or go outside. I just get out of bed, make coffee and sit on the couch, journal, and read 10 pages of non-fiction.

I would really like to keep it up, it’s been very nice, although it hasn’t made me any earlier for work which is a side effect I was hoping for.

I would like to really continue this little experiment, especially since last summer I started getting up at 6 and walking to the beach every morning, it was a really nice way to spend each morning.

The only problem that I foresee is how to balance all of the things that I need to do every evening: clean the litterbox, vacuum, make dinner, wash the dishes, tidy the kitchen, do any other little chores, and wind down so that I can actually go to sleep when I go to bed.

I’m also unsure of how to solve my “revenge bedtime procrastination”. If you haven’t heard this term it’s a name for the idea that people who don’t have a lot of control over how they spend their days tend to stay up later because they are doing things they actually like or just rest.

There is a part of me that feels like I am caving into society’s rules and expectations about “the early bird gets the worm” and morning people being more productive and successful than night owls.

I’m intrigued to see if I can continue this. I saw a quote a while back and it’s been showing up on Pinterest and TikTok a few times “Self-confidence is keeping promises to yourself” and I have never been very good at that, I’m very externally motivated, if I tell anyone else that I will do something for them, I will absolutely stick to it.

Here’s to waking up early in 2023,

Laura