No one can wake up at 6 am with a big smile on their face every single day.

It doesn’t happen.

There isn’t some secret way to sleep, or something you can eat that will transform you into the person who jumps out of bed and goes straight into doing 100 push-ups.

But, there are habits you can start that will make mornings manageable, it takes discipline but you can get to the place where once the initial tired 15 minutes are over you’re awake and alert and ready to get going, even if you’re waking up at 5 am.

But what are the habits you ask?

Well, you’ve got two halves to win, going to bed and getting up, let’s take a look.

Going To Bed

Step 1. Move your alarm.

This is the most important one, I can get up at pretty much any time with this alone, and whenever I forget I stay in bed.

Don’t have your alarm bedside your bed, especially if it’s your phone. Move it to the other side of the room and turn up the volume so you have to get out of bed to turn it off.

Once you’re out of bed it is far easier to stay out of bed. It also means you don’t snooze which is the worst thing you can do, morning people don’t snooze, they wake up and get up.

The bonus if your phone is your alarm is that you won’t be able to use it while you’re in bed! No screen time ruining your melatonin or Instagram distracting you when you should be sleeping. Read instead, then you’ll get double the productivity bonus.

Step 2. Stick To A Bed Time

You need enough sleep, most people don’t do well on 6 hours or less of sleep, and it’s straight-up bad for you to get that little sleep, so aim for 7-9, so if you want to get up at 6 am, you want to be in bed about 9-930 and asleep by 10.

Which sucks.

But getting up early and feeling good far outweighs the annoyance of going to bed earlier and watching a little less tv. Because you’re not doing anything important by that time at night, your productive hours are behind you and you’re vegging out. So why not go to bed and get a head start on tomorrow.

Tell a friend you’re going to get up early and go to bed early, that puts a little social pressure to get it done because you don’t want to be embarrassed when they ask if you managed. Tell people and then do it, only you can do this after all.

Step 3. Tidy Your Room

As Jordan Petersons said, if you think your bedroom is hell hole then you’re a denizen of hell. So tidy your room!

Make it a nice place to go when you go to bed, and make it so you’re not looking at piles of shit when you get up in the morning. You don’t want to get out of bed, fall over your piles of dirty clothes into a pile of misc shoes. You want to get up, put your slippers on, grab a towel and jump in the shower.

Tidy your room and make it a room you want to go into at night and that makes you smile when you walk into it. That way you can wake up in the morning and start the day feeling good.

Likewise, make sure your bed is made, it makes it much more appealing to get into if it’s made and looking comfortable.

Getting Out Of Bed

Step 4. Make Getting Up Appealing

I work from home primarily on this blog and part of that means I can roll out of bed and start working. And you know what sucks? Rolling out of bed and starting work.

It made me dread waking up in the morning knowing I was immediately going to be engaged in my work, even though I like it!

No, I needed something much more worthwhile getting up for and so do you, now I can’t figure out what that is for you but for me, it was reading. I get up and sit for 30 minutes with a non-fiction book and read in my dressing gown in a chair in the spare room.

To me that’s worth getting up for, it’s something I can do while a little dopey still and it wakes up my brain ready to face the day.

I love it but you might not, maybe you want to have a nice long shower, play Xbox for half an hour, go out and get coffee somewhere, doesn’t matter as long as it’s something you can look forward to, and now you’ll have time for if you’re getting up early.

Step 5. Make It Comfortable

I live in Scotland and there’s nothing worse than trying to get up into a freezing cold bedroom. If you live somewhere warmer you might have the opposite problem but there’s nothing that makes me want to stay in bed more.

So, I’ve got my slippers at the side of the bed for when I wake up, I can swing out and put them on, then when I stand up to turn my alarm off my dressing gown is to hand so I can put it on. It doesn’t suddenly solve the cold room and there’s still a shiver of two but it sets up for a win a lot easier.

Step 6. Be Consistent

If you’re serious about being a true morning person you want to get up early every day, even on weekends.

But at the very least start working on the discipline, you need to get up consistently early every weekday. It’s hard, no one said it wouldn’t be, and if they did, they lied, but it’s necessary, and if you can commit you can start winning the mornings.

Are Some People Naturally Better at Mornings?

I was going to look into this and find out the science, but you know what? It doesn’t matter, becoming a morning person is on you, no excuses, you can choose to do it and get it done, just keep powering through the shitty mornings and they’ll get easier and easier.

You can do everything here to set yourself up for success, but the last 10% is on you and your decision to get it done.

So get it done and good luck!