Before I move on, let me first clarify what I consider “early riser”. To me, the term is completely relative to the time at which you’re required to wake up. For instance, I’m currently waking up at 5:20am every morning. I know there are several of you our there who have to be up earlier than that, so you don’t consider it that early. But here’s the important part: 5:20am is 2 hours and 40 minutes before I’m supposed to be at the office. It is the mere fact that I’m not required to wake up at this hour that makes it “early”.

While this may sound excessive to some people, I cannot stress enough how amazing it is to have time to relax in the morning before you start your day. This morning I woke up, took a shower, updated my Xbox 360, purchased, downloaded, & played 40 minutes of Shadow Complex, made breakfast, and prepared my lunch for the day. Now here I am writing a blog about it, and I still have another 20 minutes before I even have to finish getting ready to head to work. The best part is that by the time I finally make it into the office, I’ll be long past that groggy, morning-time phase and I’ll be able to start the day refreshed. It’s just a wonderfully awesome feeling.

It took me less than a week to completely transition into my new sleeping schedule, but the benefits far outweigh the first  few days of tiredness. Though I’m sure the prospects of waking up 2 hours earlier than you need to may sound intimidating to some people, I’d urge them just to try it out. Start with baby steps. Wake up 30 minutes early for a week or two just to see how it feels. In fact, as I’m sitting here writing this I’m thinking that I just might push my alarm up 20 minutes and just start waking up at 5:00am every morning from here on out. Sleep well everyone

posted by Christopher Schnese

Update
I just noticed from the “related posts” plugin I have installed that I’ve written a similar post before. I wrote that post back when I moved into my current house and I changed my sleep schedule to link up more with my roommate. That was a while back and this time around, it was just a conscious decision to try to give myself more relaxation time in the morning…

This morning I awoke suddenly, laying on my side, eyes open, staring across my room to the far wall. There was a strange noise that I couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t especially loud, but it didn’t belong in my room. That much I was sure. It was a weird, almost sticky tearing noise. My anger (at being woken up) quickly turned to confusion as I lay there trying to decipher the strange noise.

I began to rotate onto my back, as if some how the position would allow me to think more clearly. And that’s when it hit me. Literally. As soon as my back was firmly pressed to the mattress, SMACK. The tap light that I had fastened directly above my head (the one I installed so I could read in bed each night) came crashing down right onto my forehead.

And then. Just as the pain and frustration were about to boil to the surface. Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep. My stupid alarm went off.

posted by Christopher Schnese