How to Wake Up at 6am Every Day

so it takes about 3 days to shift the biological mechanisms to make you a morning person we are all more or less a slave to these mechanisms 3 days of pain the rest is easy if you are a very strongly genetically determined Night Owl that's a thing so there are genetic mutations they call them polymorphisms that make some people night owls they feel best psychologically and physically going to sleep at about 1: 2 or 3:00 a. m. and waking up somewhere around 1011 a.

m. or noon that exists not just during development or teen years but that exists not just for social reasons other people are true morning people they feel absolutely best going to sleep around 8:00 p. m.

or 900 p. m. 10: p.

m. would be late for them and they feel great waking up at 4:00 5 or 6:00 a. m.

okay most people feel best going to sleep somewhere between 10:00 and midnight and waking up somewhere between 6:00 a. m. and 8:00 a.

m. or so maybe 5:30 to 8:00 a. m.

so those are three bins of the night owl the morning person and then the more typical schedule but it's heavily weighted toward that typical schedule if you look at the general population so if somebody wants to get up earlier you need to stack the four primary what are called zeit gers or timekeepers so named because some of the early chronobiologists that discovered this stuff and the underlying mechanisms were German so the number one zit Gaber the number one way to shift your circadian clock which is this cluster of neurons that sits a few centimeters above the roof of your mouth is to view bright light at a time when you want to be awake aka the morning okay so that's why I say get outside look at the sun toward the sun don't force yourself to stare at it don't damage your eyes blink as needed no sunglasses eye glasses corrective lenses and contacts are absolutely fine even if they have UV protection okay however if you combine that with another zeit Gaber the second most powerful zeit Gaber is exercise or movement so if you do some jumping jacks you skip some rope now you're starting to stack different zit gers and I'll explain the mechanisms in a moment if you then also add caffeine you can entrain as it's called the circadian clock to be alert at that time a bit more and I'll be honest if I'm going to exercise first thing in the morning I need caffeine I can't wait that 60 to 90 minutes if I need to jump right into exercise I find it's easiest for me to do 30 minutes after waking 3 hours after waking or 11 hours after waking and a lot of people find that the same but of course exercise when you can because it's that important but if you want to quote unquote optimize your energy levels for exercise typically people will notice that has to do with your temperature Rhythm Okay so we've got sunlight we've got exercise or movement of any kind it could be jumping jacks could be walking you don't have to do a full workout and then caffeine and in some cases food I'm not big on eating first thing in the morning I don't like to eat until 11: a. m. or noon that's when my first meal arrives for me just naturally that's when I get hungry it's all caffeine and hydration prior to that but if you were to eat something first thing in the morning you that's part of the way you entrain your circadian clock to wake up to essentially wake you up earlier and then the fourth one is a social Rhythm if you're interacting with other people you going to entrain your clock to that as well so there's a socially there's a social component to circadian entrainment now the pathways for these are from the eye in the case of viewing light to the circadian clock the supermatic nucleus in the case of caffeine it's more General in the case of exercise there's literally a brain stem to circadian clock connection a big Super Highway of neuronal connections that then so-called entrains your circadian clock remember your circadian clock generates an intrinsic 24-hour Rhythm such that if we put you into constant dark or constant light you would still sleep for a given bout and then be alert for a given bout with a little bit of a nap it just is what we call Freer run it would drift a little later each day this is what happens when you go to Vegas this is what happens when you're in an environment without a lot of cues about the day uh the sunlight uh rising and setting cycle sunlight EX excise caffeine and eating and social interactions bring your circadian clock into alignment with all of those zeit gers so when I said it takes 3 days if tomorrow you want to start beginning the process of becoming an early riser you'd set your alarm for 5:00 a.

m. no matter what time you want to sleep the night before you're going to get up and you're going to do the four things that I described maybe leave out food if you don't want to eat maybe leave out caffeine if you want to delay by 90 minutes it's going to hurt and then by the early afternoon you'll be dragging a bit and you just have to be careful to not overindulge in caffeine which will then cause you to fall asleep later then you want to go to sleep at your now naturally slightly earlier sleep time the next day you'll notice you'll it'll be a little bit easier to do the morning routine I just described and by the third day you ought to be waking up with or before the Alarm by a few minutes or moments because your circadian clock has phase shifted okay it's phase Advanced as we say your circadian clock intrinsic to you generates a 24. 2 or a 24.

3 hour Rhythm it's not perfectly 24 hours and that we believe we don't know but the just so story is that it's that it's such that you're able to then shift that clock in one or the other direction you can phase advance so you wake up earlier and go to sleep earlier you can phase delay how do you phase delay well you're probably doing this already everyone nowadays pretty much qualifies as a shift worker by the strict and not so strict criteria of shift work which is are you doing any kind of cognitive activity after 9:00 p. m. are you viewing any kind of bright lights after 9:30 p.

m. most people would say yes so the the Diabolical thing about the Circadian Timing System is that it requires a lot of bright light ideally from sunlight but a lot of bright light early in the day to make you a morning and daytime person but it requires just a little bit of bright light even from an artificial Source after the hours of about 9:30 p. m.

till 4:00 am. to quash your melatonin make it difficult to sleep or if you sleep to make that sleep not as effective there's a simple remedy however which is and this is a beautiful study published in science reports in 2022 if you view sunlight in the afternoon even for 5 minutes or so could be late afternoon could be sunset take off your sunglasses look in the direction of the Sun so now looking West you adjust the sensitivity of your retina the neurons in the back of your eye such that bright light later at night doesn't have quite as much effect to suppress melatonin and it reduces the Melatonin suppressive Effects by about 50% or offsets those so I think of this afternoon viewing as well first of all it's nice to look at a sunset if you're indoors in an environment like this even if there are bright lights on get outside for a few minutes before the sun sets this is especially important in Winter even if you can't see the Sun as an object get some sunlight in your eyes and that will at least partially offset the effects of bright light in your eyes at night partially and I refer to this more or less as your Netflix inoculation so that that night you can be on your phone or watch your Netflix and it's not going to disrupt your sleep as much but it will still disrupt your sleep somewhat but let's you know unless like Rick rubin's very diligent about wearing the uh red lens glasses I've started doing that as well um but if you don't do that you I'm guessing he also sees the sunset in the evening um he's very attached for good scientific reasons uh to the sunlight thing but these are little things that take just moments right they're essentially zero cost that can really really improve your sleep but that's how you become a morning person if you want to become a night person you do the opposite you view bright light between the hours of 4 p. m.

and 10 p. m.