Waking up early is the worst, right? Well, to give you some motivation right off the bat, it’s DOES get easier, and you may actually look forward to it! It’s also probably one of the most powerful things you can do to ensure you have a productive and happy day.

Waking up early has all the benefits in the world: increased free time, the ability to plan your day, and peace and quiet. Unfortunately, waking up early can be one of the hardest habits to create, and one of the easiest to break.

This can be especially difficult if you set your own schedule, and you don’t have early commitments. However, even those who have to be in the office at 8AM can seriously benefit from an extra hour to themselves every morning.

That’s why we’ve created these eight biohacking strategies to help you fall asleep faster, recharge better, and wake up easier.

1. MANIPULATING YELLOW AND BLUE LIGHT

Studies are finally becoming popular that show the dangerous (or at least obnoxious) effects of blue light on our sleep patterns. Our eyeballs and our bodies are optimized for sunlight. You’d wake up when the sunrise got too bright, and you’d run out of things to do when the sun went down, so you’d sleep. Now, we’ve got Netflix we can hold 5 inches from our face while we lay in bed until 2AM.

At least an hour or two before bed, either turn off your screens, or try these blue-light blocking glasses. They’re not so stylish but they get the job done and it’s worth it. Pro-tip: drive at night with these on. The difference is unreal; it’s like sitting in your living room watching a boring but relaxing TV show. Except in this living room, lunatics are flying by you in a halogen-light induced mania.

(You also might want to install F.lux or something similar on your computer. It keeps your screen at a gentle yellow all day long, and increases the strength at night. Your iPhone also comes with a night mode, where you can turn the yellow light way up.)

2. USE SLEEP CYCLE APPS TO WAKE UP OPTIMALLY (AND SLEEP BETTER)

Most people have heard of REM sleep: it’s the good stuff. REM cycles are the deep sleep that really matters when you get a good nights rest. A full sleep cycle lasts about an hour and a half. When you take a quick 20 minute nap, you never get into deep sleep, so you wake up relatively easily and refreshed. But have you ever taken a two hour nap, where you wake up drooling and wonder what year it is? REM sleep.

Apps like Sleep Cycle use the microphone or accelerometer in your phone to monitor how much you move around or snore during the night. You set an alarm range, like 6:45AM – 7:15AM, if you usually wake up around 7AM. The Sleep Cycle app will set off the alarm when you are in the lightest possible part of your sleep pattern, which definitely makes waking up easier.

This app also comes with some awesome tracking statistics, like how your sleep quality is effected by the weather, your eating and exercise, or even the day of the week. Looking at this data is just plain fun, but it can help you make much better choices to get the best night’s sleep you can.

3. STRATEGIC PHONE PLACEMENT

This strategy is meant to help you in a few ways. First, it eliminates the habit of late night browsing, or reaching back for your phone when you’ve tried to fall asleep for just five minutes and couldn’t do it. You’d be surprised how weird it feels at first, and how attached we are to that thing.

Second, you have to get out of bed in the morning to shut your alarm off. This can be enough for some people to get going, but many dedicated sleepers walk right back into bed to fall asleep. We can help with that in the next strategy. Also, since the jury is still out on how electronic, radio, and wi-fi signals might affect our bodies over the long term, it might be best not to sleep next to a hotspot night after night.

(By the way, pick your favorite song for your alarm! The Sleep Cycle app uses gentle noises that slowly get louder to wake you up gently as well. No sense in the first thing you hear being a loud, screeching beep, unless you really need it. That seems like a great way to make your flight-or-flight cortisol system the very first thing your body kick starts in the morning. That can’t be good. Actually, let’s talk about that.)

4. TURN DOWN THE DIAL ON MORNING CORTISOL (THE “STRESS” HORMONE)

Everyone has cortisol. It used to help us survive, when we were in desperate need of finding food or shelter. It kept us awake, alert, and on edge. Now, we have things like gridlocked traffic and employee evaluation meetings. It’s created a chronic cortisol epidemic.

The Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR) is the process of a sharp cortisol increase during the mornings of healthy adults. In this case, it is activated by the hippocampus (in charge of remembering your plans for the day) and not the amygdala (stress creator).

Waking up extremely early (4:30AM – 5:00AM) increases and prolongs the CAR. CAR is greater when you wake up in daylight than darkness, which may explain why it is so much easier to get out of bed when the sun is up. Your CAR is always higher during weekdays, especially when you have a heavy workload. So, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But if you always have terrible mornings and leave the house with a bad attitude, try this exercise.

A. Stand with your feet separated a bit wider than your shoulders.

B. Exhale and slowly bend forward with your arms crossed around your chest. Squeeze your hands into fists to relieve tension in the spine. Feel the muscles that are stretching, and rate your exertion between 1-10. Don’t go past 7.

C. Inhale and gradually “roll” upward to standing position, vertebrae by vertebrae. Raise your arms outward and upward in a V, even stretching your fingers to the sky. Fill your lungs to capacity, and hold your breath for a few moments in this position.

D. Exhale, and slowly let your arms drop while extended. Let out as much air as you possibly can while you repeat this process for at least a few minutes.

This exercise works for a few different reasons. The forward bend signals a relaxation response. Concentrating on your stretches and ratings inhibits your panicking amygdala. Stretching muscles oxygenates the blood, lowers body acidity, and releases tension.

5. MAKE YOUR BED A SACRED SPACE

This is a common one, and all comes down to creating an unconscious habit. When we watch TV in bed or play on our phones, we are telling our brain this is a place to stay engaged. Keep your bed sacred, and use it only for sex and sleep.

If you must wind down for the day with a screen, use it on the couch. Grab a blanket and treat it like bed so you feel comfortable, but when you move to your actual bedroom put the phone away. If you can’t sleep after 15 minutes of trying, get back up to the couch and read a book for a bit. You’ll quickly feel tired.

Imagine getting into the front seat of your car every morning. Inserting the key into the ignition and backing out of the driveway becomes instinctual; your brain knows that the front seat means time to drive. Give your brain the same assistance when you hop into bed.

One of the most important things you can do to wake up well is hopping right into a daily routine. When you know what you’re going to do the next day, everything goes much easier.

That’s why we created “Sustain”, a collection of custom Conquer daily routines, along with the routines of the best and brightest through history.

Before you keep reading, download Sustain and pick a routine that helps you accomplish more than ever.