I’m always so exhausted, I can take an hour to wake up. How do you wake up quickly ?
I’ve struggled with this for a while too, and I’ve found that the only ‘secret’ is to go to sleep earlier so that you either wake up earlier, or wake up feeling more refreshed. You should also do this in conjunction with getting up and out of bed as soon as your alarm goes off. I’ve got an alarm that doesn’t turn off until I go into the kitchen and scan a barcode because otherwise I’ll turn the alarm off and go straight back to sleep. Someone also suggested opening your blinds which works really well if you don’t need the privacy and you wake up after the sun rises.
I get out of bed immediately after turning off the alarm and I go wash my face. I find it helpful to fully wake up faster.
I start reading something on my phone. Might not work for everyone, and depends on whether or not you’ve had enough sleep and don’t have a lot of sleep debt.
If you can’t get up quickly, plan to get up slowly. My alarm goes off and hour before it needs to just so I can get some extra snoozes in before I’m ready to get up.
Cold Shower.
Maybe a cold shower that has to be as long as the time it takes you to get into the shower from your bed. If it takes a minute to get into the shower, then you owe a minute of the coldest water.
As others have stated, good sleep hygiene. Are you putting in good hours for sleep, 7-8 hrs? That will help keep you healthy over the years and make it easier to get up.
When a certain time hits, don’t stare at your phone in bed. I put on a simple podcast before bed with a sleep timer; it’s perfect for me.
DO NOT consume caffeine for the first 30 mins of wakefulness; this is not helpful & it will train your body to need that caffeine/stimulant in order to wake up. No. Wake up naturally, after some good sleep, throw on some music & start your day…allow your body to “boot up”. As it were. I slam caffeine after being awake for at least 30 mins, if not an hour.
Put an annoying alarm in a place you can’t reach it from your bed. Works for me, I wake up in seconds
Keeping the bedroom cold. It will kickstart your circulation as soon as you get out from under the blanket.
Conventional wisdom is to keep a balanced circadian rhythm. Sleep at regularish times. Your body clock is set by when you first see blue light from above, so going outside first thing and looking up. Meal times too. Consider your diet and pre sleep habits - sugar, tv, caffeine tend to mess with sleep. Alcohol disables your adrenaline and helps fall asleep but then lowers the quality. Weed largely removes dreams and helps feel rested, but then there’s a slight hangover that encourages you to keep smoking
In short, it’s a holistic lifestyle thing. Everyone is different, so keeping a journal and experimenting helps. And of course your daily level of stress is a factor
There are also bedside lamps that slowly turn on at defined times, so you can wake up slowly. I’ve also built a blue light with a pi zero for my kids, that slowly increases in intensity over 10 minutes
I would also suggest something like a very bright Philips hue light (or other smart bulb). For me personally the bedside lamps can be problematic when sleeping sideways. And with smart bulbs you can just use whatever lamp you want.
I did this as well. I put 3 in the ceiling fan above my bed.
I get up an hour before my partner, and I also wake up easier, so I have them turn on at a low orange-red sunrise type color. They then later gradually brighten to a higher level of bright white when it’s time for her to get up, so it’s more intense, but still not harsh.
We still have alarms to actually get us up, but they can be quieter and less harsh, since the light helps the actual waking effect.
Falling asleep at the right time. Not getting into bed, falling asleep.
Use a sleep calculator to work out when you should be in bed so you can wake at the right part of your sleep cycle.
Any good sleep calculators on android? Preferably libre?
Sleep For Android
Exercise, meditate, eat healthy food, hydrate.
Are you doing all these things already and still have the issue?
The trick that worked for me was to have a really fucking obnoxious alarm sound at a consistently specific time. My subconscious adapted to wake me up earlier than it to prevent hearing it.
Sleep with caffeine pills next to your bed. Set an alarm for 20 minutes before when you want to wake up. Take the pill with the alarm, and go back to sleep. You will magically wake up super awake at the time you want to be up.
This is obviously a lot less good than the healthy solutions here, but I work a rotating shift schedule and this trick has been working for me for over a decade.
People say you shouldn’t have caffeine until about an hour after you’re awake. Something about letting your body chemicals settle before, you know, fucking them up.
That’s an interesting one. Are they 200mg? I find that too much but it seems to be the standard amount in caffeine tablets I’ve seen.
They’re Jet Alert 200 mg—but the pills are oblong so I break them into smaller doses based on how I’m feeling. Feeling really awake? Don’t take any. Slightly drowsy? A quarter of one (50mg). Normal level of drowsy? 100 mg. Etc.
There’s something about the going back to sleep that seems to have a stacking effect—you wake up feeling really well rested.
Personally I think it’s normal to take awhile to wake up slowly. Evolutionarily I don’t think we popped up ready to hunt. We gradually woke up.
For the exhaustion, you probably simply need more sleep.
For gradual wake-up, get one of those light-alarm clocks. They light up over a period of 5 to 40 minutes (whatever you set it to) to mimic a rising run. Especially important at this time of year.
