It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom. - Aristotle

Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and Id almost always sleep in late. I usually didnt start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon.

But after a while I couldnt ignore the high correlation between success and rising early, even in my own life. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticed a significant feeling of well-being. So being the proactive goal-achiever I was, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 5AM

and the next morning, I got up just before noon.

Hmmm

I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. I figured I must have been born without the early riser gene. Whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that blasted noise and go back to sleep. I tabled this habit for a number of years, but eventually I came across some sleep research that showed me that I was going about this problem the wrong way. Once I applied those ideas, I was able to become an early riser consistently.

Its hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, its relatively easy.

The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if youre going to get up earlier, youd better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep youre getting now, and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from midnight to 8am, you figure youll go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable, but it will usually fail.

It seems there are two main schools of thought about sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same times every day. Its like having an alarm clock on both ends you try to sleep the same hours each night. This seems practical for living in modern society. We need predictability in our schedules. And we need to ensure adequate rest.

The second school says you should listen to your bodys needs and go to bed when youre tired and get up when you naturally wake up. This approach is rooted in biology. Our bodies should know how much rest we need, so we should listen to them.

Through trial and error, I found out for myself that both of these schools are suboptimal sleep patterns. Both of them are wrong if you care about productivity. Heres why:

If you sleep set hours, youll sometimes go to bed when you arent sleepy enough. If its taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you arent sleepy enough. Youre wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that youre assuming you need the same number of hours of sleep every night, which is a false assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day.

If you sleep based on what your body tells you, youll probably be sleeping more than you need in many cases a lot more, like 10-15 hours more per week (the equivalent of a full waking day). A lot of people who sleep this way get 8+ hours of sleep per night, which is usually too much. Also, your mornings may be less predictable if youre getting up at different times. And because our natural rhythms are sometimes out of tune with the 24-hour clock, you may find that your sleep times begin to drift.

The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches. Its very simple, and many early risers do this without even thinking about it, but it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. The solution was to go to bed when Im sleepy (and only when Im sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.

I go to bed when Im too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldnt read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, Im ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, Im asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately Im drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9:30pm; other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If Im not sleepy, I stay up until I cant keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when Im too sleepy to read.

When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up. I dont think about it. Ive learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I dont allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.

After a few days of using this approach, I found that my sleep patterns settled into a natural rhythm. If I got too little sleep one night, Id automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasnt tired, Id sleep less. My body learned when to knock me out because it knew I would always get up at the same time and that my wake-up time wasnt negotiable.

A side effect was that on average, I slept about 90 minutes less per night, but I actually felt more well-rested. I was sleeping almost the entire time I was in bed.

I read that most insomniacs are people who go to bed when they arent sleepy. If you arent sleepy and find yourself unable to fall asleep quickly, get up and stay awake for a while. Resist sleep until your body begins to release the hormones that rob you of consciousness. If you simply go to bed when youre sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, youll cure your insomnia. The first night youll stay up late, but youll fall asleep right away. You may be tired that first day from getting up too early and getting only a few hours of sleep the whole night, but youll slog through the day and will want to go to bed earlier that second night. After a few days, youll settle into a pattern of going to bed at roughly the same time and falling asleep right away.

So if you want to become an early riser (or just exert more control over your sleep patterns), then try this: Go to bed only when youre too sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning.

Edit (05/31/05): Due to the (mysterious) popularity of this post, Ive written a follow-up with some extra detail and clarifications: How to Become an Early Riser - Part II.