28-Day Trial To Wake Up Early
by Celes | 
Email This Post
This is part of the Early Riser Series. Be sure to check out the other articles:
- 28-Day Trial To Wake Up Early
- 21 Tips To Wake Up Early
- Why I Wake Up Early (And 9 Reasons You Should Do So Too)
- Cultivate Good Habits in 21 Days
Are you an early riser? What time do you wake up every day?
All my life, I have never been an early riser. When I was in university, I would purposely choose classes in the afternoon so I can chat and play online games (namely Gunbound, Ragnarok Online, Maple Story, Warcraft 3) with my friends till the wee hours and sleep in till the late morning. There were often times when I notoriously overslept and had to skip lectures/classes; I was late for tests/exams before as well and even missed a test because of the same reason (as luck would have it, I was able to get the test rescheduled).
When I was working, I would generally sleep at 1~2am and wake at 9~10am, depending on whether I was working in the office or from home (my previous company has a very flexible work culture). If there were 8 or 9am meetings, there was a certain likelihood I would oversleep and be late, as much as I tried not to be. During the weekends, I’d sleep in until 1~2pm.
Generally, whenever there was no external need to wake up early, I would sleep until very late.
Now that I’m not tied to a day-job, my sleeping hours have gone bonkers. Some days when I make a conscious effort to, I’d sleep at 12am and wake at 6am. However, if I have no coaching sessions or activities or with friends for the day, chances are I would sleep at 10:30am and wake up at 5:30pm. I’ve pretty much evolved into an owl!
If you are a regular reader and you read my 2009 goals before, you might recall one of them being cultivating the habit to wake up at 6am.
To be honest, waking up early had never been an interest of mine. I usually turned in late because there was always so much I wanted to do every day and I just hated it when I had to end the day off. By putting off sleep, it made me feel like I was being much more productive than if I had chosen to sleep earlier. Besides, I had friends from all around the world whom I could spend more time chatting with if I was up in the wee hours.
Whenever I heard about my friends waking at 6am, 7am, or even 8am on days where there was no obligation to do so, I would look at them incredulously. To me it was just an impossible task. Uh-uh. Why wake up so early for when you could sleep in late?
I’d long embraced my destiny as someone who slept late and woke up late. And I didn’t see anything wrong with that too. I didn’t see how waking up early or late would change anything about my life or make me any different as a person. I didn’t see how my success or accomplishments in life would, in any way, be hinged on a tiny little nuance like the time I wake up. I had been sleeping in late and waking late for the bulk of my life and it didn’t seem like it had in any way hindered me from achieving success in things I set out to do.
However, whenever I read personal development materials from critically acclaimed authors/teachers/gurus or interviews with highly successful and conscious people, they always talk about waking up early being a key building block for their success. Always. To date, I have never read any one of them mention they sleep in late or that waking up early did nothing for their lives.
As someone who is passionate about being the best I can be, it is simply too hard for me to ignore this. Waking up early sounds like it is part of a gold mine for a more conscious, productive and better life. For a benign habit like this to seemingly be able to generate such powerful benefits – it has made me really curious. As much as I enjoy turning in at a later hour, it would seem that I have to at least try this out for myself, to see if the merits of waking up early are really as good as everyone raves about.
For the month of February starting 1st Feb, I’m going to conduct a 28-day trial to wake up at 5am every day. This is an hour earlier than 6am I initially stated in my 2009 goals, because hey, might as well go all the way if I’m diving into this! 
The main objectives of this experiment are:
a) To identify the benefits (if any) of waking up early, at 5am
b) To identify how to successfully cultivate the habit of waking up early
If waking up early does indeed turnout to be as powerful and life changing as it is purported to be, then I would have found something that aids me in my quest for personal excellence. If it isn’t, then at the very least I would be able to tuck this behind me, knowing that I have tried it and it didn’t work for me. The worst thing that can happen is I had spent 28 days waking up early when I could wake up later. Not such a big deal to me.
As hard as it is going to be for someone like me (nocturnal for the past 11 years of my life) to cultivate this new habit, I’m going to do everything I can to pull this off. This is also going to be a great exercise to train my self discipline, which is also one of my 2009 goals.
I will drop in every now and then with updates on how the experiment is going in, via my site announcement updates and Twitter (if you have Twitter, feel free to follow me as a friend and I’ll do the same! 
) At the end of the experiment, I will determine if I want to continue the habit based on the results and wrap up the findings, results and conclusions of this trial with a follow-up article
Want To Join In This Trial?
If you have been meaning to try to wake up early – hey, why not join in this experiment together? After all, if you are not going to do it now, when are you going to do it then? It will be much easier doing it here as a collective group effort rather than doing it individually by yourself somewhere down the road. We will be using this page will be used as the single platform to update each other on the progress, post learnings and results 
5am is my personal waking target; feel free to select a target that works for you and you consider ‘early’.
Update (12 Feb, 8:45pm GMT+8): The sign up for the trial has officially closed. We have a full team of 20 participants on the trial Stay tuned for the round up of the trial soon!
(It’s actually 4:22am right now on my end as I’m posting this – needless to say, the last of the days when I’ll be sleeping late since the trial starts in 2 days )
Free Subscribe |
Related Posts |
| Filed in: Cultivate Habits | Posted on Jan 30 2009 | |
Just got up at 5. I can already tell that this promises to be a long day :|
I’m on my way to go drink some much needed caffeine.
Joseph, Tim@ Great!! I have included you on the list too
Let us know how your progress goes!
RCB@ I LOVE your enthusiasm! Indeed, it’s all about the choices we make – and I’m so sure that in no time, we will be looking back and wondering why we even took so long to wake up early because it’s not such a hard task when you really get down to it!
Marcus@ Excellent!
I’m in on my 2nd day @ 5am – it’s 7am now and I’m getting ready for my writing for the day 
You’ll find that you are likely to sleep earlier today – that’s what happened to me yesterday (slept at 8pm) and I’m all energized and revved up when I woke up!
Hi, Cel and Everyone, I am happy to report that I got up at 6 this morning, went out side and jogged for about 30 min.
Since it is a Sunday for me, I didn’t end up doing much else so I went back and took a nap from 9 – 11. I do feel a little guilty about that. I will have to do away with that tomorrow. But I set out to get up at 6 and I did it, first day of Feb, feeling very accomplished
i’m a day late
but count me in for 630! 
Edward@ Excellent!
Congrats on your progress! 
I found I became more productive in the past couple of days as well when I woke up earlier.
Joseph@ Congrats on the success on your first day!
Don’t worry about taking a nap; the learning from this is probably to set up an agenda/schedule so you can get going after you wake up.
George@ You’re in and the 17th participant!
Keep us updated!
HI all
Day one for me and up at 6:30
Kawaii, now I understand why 5am. It’s a very good initiative. Coincidentally, I have been waking up unusually early for the past 2 days to offer food to monks. (In Thailand, we follow Theravada buddhism. We practice “Sai-bat” which is the activity whereby buddhists/ followers can offer food to the monks in the morning) What I notice is waking up early does wonder to my awareness. I feel sharper during the day and much less lethargic. I will join you in waking up as early as I can but for me 5am seems too early. thank you for sharing!
Hi Celes & Everyone! It is one of my goals this year to get up earlier and work out or at least just be more productive and enjoy the quiet that only morning can bring. I saw this & thought… perfect!
My goal is to get up at 6am, right now I’m at about 7am. I even told my 2 cats about my goal and they try to help me by causing all sorts of noise around 6am
Good luck to everyone!
Hi All,
Wake up early trial is going well so far for me and my housemate – we had a slight hickup yesterday when we were both hungover, but managed only half an hour late! Managed it today though!
Celes,
Although I will respectfully decline with respect to the challenge, I would like to make a comment on this issue nonetheless.
I never used to be an early waker, but now that I have acquired the habit, I can fully appreciate it’s benefits.
During the course of the week, I get up early three times per week (usually at around six o’clock) in order to do some work on my blog before work. I find this gets me off to a really good start to the day and instead of going to work feeling uptight, I go to work feeling positive that I have already achieved something worthwhile that day.
On Saturday mornings, I love to get up early and go for a sunrise walk. I live in a small country town in Korea, and I just particularly enjoy walking through the nearby hills, listening to the roosters crow and watching the sun rise over the nearby countryside.
Aww. Too bad the challenge didn’t pick up. I was just checking in to comment on my progress. I’ve also acquired the habit, and the benefits are wonderful.
I owe you my gratitude . . . had it not been for this challenge it may have been years before I got motivated to take control of my sleep schedule.
Monda@ You’re in! Welcome and let us know your progress
It sounds really serene where you live – I’d love to be there, being up close with nature and all.
Matt J@ Sent you the congrats msg via Twitter but congrats again!!! Are you seeing any changes after you switched to rising early?
Anonymous@ Thank you for sharing the upsides of waking early; I’m sure this is serving as added motivation for everyone on the trial
Marcus@ I’m glad to hear that you’ve successfully acquired the habit!
The other participants are giving me the same feedback too (via twitter). I’m experiencing wonderful benefits myself which I will be blogging about at the end of the trial. Do share what are the benefits you have been seeing after you switched to being an early riser 
Ooooooh, hahaha. I misread the comment above me thinking it was you saying that you were cancelling the challenge rather than an ‘anonymous’ user addressing you about it!
Well then, I’m glad the trial’s still up and running and I’ll keep up the feedback : )
Marcus@ Hehe no worries! You confused me a bit there when you said too bad the challenge didn’t pick up!
Yes, continue to keep everyone here updated with your progress!
[...] 31 2009, Sat by Celes [ | Email this post ] This is a follow-up post to 28-Day Trial To Wake Up Early. Check out the article to understand how I decided to cultivate the habit of waking [...]
Hey Patty,
I was unsure of doing this 28 day trial because its already late and I’ve been kinda lethargic today, but your post just inspired me. Here is why.
I recently thought about what I would do if I could do anything in the world and I came to the conclusion that I’d visit Thailand and do a silent retreat there and also an intensive martial arts training and teach ESL there.
I came across this: “To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.”
So, I decided to do so in order to improve body & mind and grow in my spirituality.
(I’m all about becoming a better person, but I’ve got ways too go.) My goal is set for summer 2012 and I’ll save money each month to make it.
Reading your post from Thailand about serving monks was the perfect reminder of this.
I’m really tired right now it’s 1:50 am here in Kansas City in the U.S. but that’s the exact reason why I’m on this page.. I’ve been tired and absent-minded for the past few days and in general need more focus in my life so I came here to this site in the search of a solution to my lack of focus, but what I found was the reason that I can start living the life of my dreams today.
Making a decision is so powerful. I will reap the benefits of getting up at 6am each morning for at least 28 days
You’ve inspired me to do so because I believe in omens and that “when you want something all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it”
It’s not a coincident that a person from Thailand helped me realize that I don’t have to put off becoming a better person till 2012. I can start right here, today.
Thanks,
Miro