Waking up Early

"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." - Benjamin Franklin

We've all heard it, and several of us have noticed the link between all of these things. It's not that waking up early turns your bath water into vitamins and your clothes into gold, but waking up early gives you the opportunity to be much more productive each day. It is said that Sam Walton woke up early in the morning to travel to other retail outlets in search of good deals. When he found one (and he often did), he would be able to get the merchandise back to his store before the day's rush. As easy as Ben's quote is to say, it certainly seemed difficult to wake up early - at least for me.

Then, I Googled one day for How to Become an Early Riser, and found an excellent post in Steve Pavlina's blog about the subject. He informed me that to get up early in the morning, you have to follow three simple guidelines:

Set your alarm for a specific time to wake up EVERY DAY.

For example, I set the alarm for 5:30 AM. This gives me time for a long shower, breakfast, and a good hour and a half to work on my projects before getting ready for work.

Condition yourself to automatically get out of bed once your alarm goes off.

OK, so this is a bit more difficult. I literally practiced getting out of bed when my alarm went off. I'd set it for 5 minutes from now, and lay down and get comfy. When it started blaring, I'd turn it off and go stand in the shower (not turn it on, for the practice sessions). It may sound silly, but it really works!

Go to bed when you're tired.

This is an easy one. Find a good measure of how tired you have to be in order to fall asleep within a few minutes of hitting the pillow. Go to bed at that point.

Those three things, when put together, really help you wake up early! If you mess up and sleep in, you'll stay up a little later, which means that the next day you'll just be a little more tired. Your body knows how much sleep it needs, so if it needs to adjust, it will. If you really want to wake up early, I suggest starting by conditioning yourself to have an automatic response to your alarm. Then, give the process a try for 30 days and see if it works for you!

If you're like most people (the odds are in my favor in guessing that), you realize that there's too much stuff to do, and not enough time to do it in. This is especially true of young entrepreneurs because you're being pulled in every direction all the time. It's suprising how much time is wasted each day because people don't realize that there are faster ways to do common (and necessary) tasks to increase the time you have to accomplish your goals. Here are three things that I've made a conscious effort to improve that resulted in more usable hours during the day:

• Becoming an Early Riser

  I was curious about how those early morning folks did it, so I Googled it and found a great article on the subject. It took a little practice automating my awakening (so that I couldn't talk myself out of it), but the results were excellent. I sleep between 5 and 8 hours, averaging 6.5 each day. Assuming that most young entrepreneurs feel sleep deprived at 8 hours, let's say I'm gaining 1.5 hours a day simply by being an early riser! That's a gain of almost 3.5 times the normal work-month in my year!

• Learning to Read Effectively

  "Does it really work," you might ask. Yes! My freshman year of college, I found a little flyer on my desk as I walked into class. On it, it promised that I could read up to 3 times faster by taking this course. I thought about the benefits and decided to attend the 1 hour "seminar" advertised on the flyer. The presenter explained that she could teach me how to read much faster, and study more efficiently, by attending her course. She then showed proof that it worked by running me through a few exercises. Just in that hour, my reading bumped up by 100 words per minute. After taking the course (at a minimal cost compared to its savings), I was at around 1000 words per minute with no loss in comprehension. Don't let any non-speed readers tell you that it doesn't work if they haven't tried it! I know I have saved several hours a year using this skill, and I've been able to obtain more information than I could have beforehand.

• Getting Things Done

  Since I never really cared to be the most organized person in the world, there were a lot of things I was supposed to do that slipped through the cracks when they shouldn't have. Mostly, homework. I finally got tired of it and wanted to figure out a way to keep on top of all of the things that I had to do. I'd read about Getting Things Done in a few different places, and thought I'd give it a shot. I bought the audiobook from iTunes, and listened while I was out and about. Unlike many systems that only work when you do everything to the letter, Getting Things Done gives you several productivity enhancing ideas. In my opinion, the two most helpful are defining a next action, and reminding yourself of pending actions. If you are even the least bit unorganized, consider buying the book, or renting it from your local library. You'll stop wasting your time recovering from dropped balls, unnecessary planing, and trying to remember what's on your plate.

There are a few more things that I do to find more time, and between them all, I feel like I am much more productive than I could have ever been otherwise. I will write more about each of the three ideas above in the future.