Harry Ramsay

You’re reading this because you’re probably up late now…

… and are really wondering how to wake up early when you’re going to bed late at this hour.

You might want to wake up to:
– Go to school early
– Get to a meeting early
– Or catch a flight

Whatever it is, it’s important that you wake up NOT feeling groggy.

Even when you’re going to bed late in the night, it’s important to NOT wake up feeling groggy the next day so you have a clearer head and are able to focus all day long.

But the problem is…

Most experts & modern science agrees that an average human needs 6 – 7.5 hours of sleep per night, and anything less than that – is NOT – an ideal fit for you.

While that’s the optimal strategy to follow, not all of us are blessed with the freedom during certain times.

It could be because of late night work, socializing all night long, or maybe, it’s just that you’ve been watching Netflix or Playing games.

So what’s the solution?

How do you wake up early even when you go to bed late in the night and not feel groggy?

There’s a solution for that.

I first came across this in the book, The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz in 2014 when I read his book.

In his book, Tony goes into detail about the various sleep cycles that we fall into right from Stage 1 to State 2 and to REM induced sleep.

On any given day, we sleep through 5 or 6 of these sleep cycles and each of these cycles last 90 minutes.

If you wake up during the middle of a sleep cycle using an alarm or a noise and force yourself to get out of bed, you end up waking up groggy because that sleep is incomplete.

And when you’re groggy & tired, it’s really difficult to get your focus back until & unless you wake yourself up fully with a workout & a lot of endorphins, dopamine and caffeine.

The trick & solution, therefore, is to plan your sleep and set your alarms in such a way that you wake up at the end of one of the sleep cycles and NOT in the middle of the sleep cycle.

Imagine going to bed at 4 PM and waking up at 7 AM & feeling alert and energetic, how amazing that would be?

Well, you can do that when you follow this process.

Luckily, there is a tool to help you wake up early when you go to bed late at night.

It is called Sleepyti.me

With this tool in hand, it will exactly tell you what time you need to wake up based on when you are going to bed.

Or you can also plan to wake up at a specific time & find out the time to wake up.

How Did Sleeping In Cycles Work For Me & Did It Help Me Wake Up Early?

Initially, I thought this wasn’t possible, but as always, I am an experimenter and so I decided to give it a try…

Back in 2015, I had a yoga class that I’d need to attend to which was at 6 AM.

Prior to attending the class, I wanted to finish my morning routine as soon as I wake up, so once I finish Yoga, I’m ready for the day.

Until then, I always used to wake up at 5:30, 5:45, 5:00 or 6:15 and feel really frustrated when I used to go to the Yoga Class.

It wasn’t working.

After I started using this structure, I planned my sleep cycle accordingly.

I would need roughly about 6 hours of sleep in the night in order to go through 4 sleep cycles.

7.5 hours for 5 sleep cycles.

And it would take me about 12 – 18 minutes to fall asleep.

As soon as I started implementing this method, on days I was early, I’d hit the sack by 9 PM and wake up at 4:45 going through 5 sleep cycles.

During other days, I’d use the same method to go to bed at 10:30 PM and still wake up at 4:45.

But if I went to bed at 10:00 PM, when my alarm went off at 4:45, I’d wake up groggy and would want to sleep more.

And on days, when it was over 11:00 PM, I’d take until 12:00 Am to turn myself in.

This in turn helped me wake up refreshed & recharged and allowed me to consistently attend Yoga for many weeks and months.

And I tried this method yesterday when I was going to bed at 3:30 so I could wake up at around 7:00 ish, and it worked.

I woke up feeling refreshed and it is about 1 PM today, and here’s what I have done:

• I woke up early
• Followed my morning routine perfectly without experiencing any sluggishness (which I experienced as I did not follow the above method for the last 2 years or so)
• I cooked a full meal – I’m a newbie to cooking, and still learning
• I am writing this blog post
• And I’ve been patient, focused & sharp throughout the day…

As we are all going through the COVID 19 Lockdown, we all know staying focused at home is harder, and I’ve been a victim to that as well.

But today, my feeling & energy levels are completely different. I do have the occasional yawn, but it works for me.

So what do yo think? What time do you want to wake up tomorrow and how are you going to plan yourself?

Type it in the comment box below.

See you soon.

Fortune favors the brave,

Harry Ramsay

As a fully grown mature adult who’s responsible for all areas of your life…

… there’s one lesson that you’ve got to learn & reinforce to yourself over and over again.

And that is – if you aren’t moving forward, growing new skills & developing new resources, you are stagnating.

… as you stagnate, depending on the environment around you, you may have the fortune of stagnating for a bit more than someone else.

However – there ALWAYS comes a point of time when you’ve stagnated enough and it will be a situation of life & death (or in other words, a fight for survival).

This is true in terms of your career, your relationships, your health or any thing else for that matter.

Got a nice paying job that pays you well & keeps you happy?

It might be nice to enjoy it for a while, but there comes a time when you need to start planning higher – whether in the same organization or outside.

And if you don’t, there will come a time when the people you work with start devaluing you.

Recently, I attended a special session conducted by Ian Faria at the TILT India forum organized by Talk Temple.

And this was the lesson that was emphasized.

Growth is critical. And in order to grow, you have to plan & approach for the NEXT level in your career, work or relationships & need to start working at it.

It’s also important NOT to look at growth from the perspective of a gradual increase – but you have to look for ways to create exponential growth in all areas.

Now you might be wondering, how you can create exponential growth & where should I exactly focus on?

… and this is where a self-assessment or an assessment from a professional comes in handy.

Doing a self-assessment or getting an assessment from a person who’s been there & done that and is on a higher level than you – can really help you identify where you’re stuck and how you can build new skills to move forward.

Now, in this blog – I am going to share an internal assessment that I had done over myself and how you can do a similar assessment for yourself so you can focus on your dreams, achieve your aspirations & create the life that you’ve always wanted.

One method of doing a self-assessment is to look at your Strengths, Weakness, Fears & Dreams.

And here’s my example for my Health which is something I haven’t focussed on & have neglected the past few months due to work and other responsibilities…

Strengths:

I am tall, strong & naturally well-built – as a result, my body can handle a lot more load than it does.

Given my fitness journey in the past, if I start the journey & make a commitment, I can be incredibly disciplined & create a massive transformation for myself.

Weakness:

The amount of responsibility I take at work ends up creating a lot of stress – which leads to cortisol production – and which in turn can cause a lot of other negative parameters to shoot up. I end up having to rely on junk food, sugary drinks & a lot of other things to help alleviate my energy.

I always let work & other responsibilities get in the way of me getting a good workout, eating healthy or sleeping well.

Fears:

If I keep doing this, I might as well end up developing a lot of unnecessary illnesses. My body may breakdown like it has broken down before & I might find myself going through a tough space emotionally that prevents me from working.

I might end up developing a lot of other health complications too.

Dreams:

I really don’t have a dream for fitness. All my younger years – I had this vision for myself to be extremely fit & as a result, I drove myself over and over again.

Now w/o that vision in mind & my mind asks, “so what?” – I don’t really feel that need to be disciplined or consistent.

And this has to do with the vision.

If I revisit my dream & create a clear compelling vision for my health and how I need to be…

… and set some ground rules on how I’m not going to let work or other influences get in the way…

I can get back into the groove of health too.

And that’s what I’m going to work on.

I will update this blog post about my vision – in a bit – when I return.

This is how I am getting unstuck & creating the next level in my life. What about you?