There are not enough hours in a day. There are not enough minutes in an hour. There are not enough seconds in a minute. We are always struggling in whatever work we do and always complain that we are late on our work. There is not enough time, we miss the deadlines again. It would have been better if there are 25 hours in a day, 65 minutes in an hour and 70 seconds in a minute. Or is it?
One of the chief reason for this is that we do not manage our time properly. Things have gone so bad that now we are too scared to plan a day because we are pretty sure that we will again fail! In this article we will not discuss about time management or task management but one of the things which will surely help us in time management.
So what is it?
It is the habit to get up early. Who are you? Are you a morning bird or a night owl? Night Owl, most of us indeed are ! This tendency to go late to sleep and get up late in the morning eats up lot of our precious hours of the day. It will always be challenging to change the routine and start getting up early. You will try many times and again you will fail but effort should be made on a continuous basis. There are lot of people who have worked hard and in the end finally now they have developed a habit of getting up early. I will give you an action plan of 8 steps which has worked in my case and it will surely help you, too.
1) Go to bed early.
Going to bed early and getting up early are very interrelated. Unless you get up early and do all the work and become tired how can you go to bed early? So if you just tweak your schedule and try to go to bed early, a lot of things would start falling in place. But you cannot suddenly change your time of going to bed. You can set small milestones. If you go to bed at 11, try to reduce the time by 30 minutes and go to bed around 10:30 and after some time when you get used to 10.30 try to reduce to another 30 minutes.
2) Set a sleeping alarm.
Strange? We have heard about the morning alarm but what is a sleep alarm. If your plan is to go to bed at 10.30 set an alarm or some notification in a calendar before 1 hour or so which pops up before 1 or 2 hours and notifies you that you have only few minutes or hours left in which you have to complete your work and go to bed.
This reminder would make you mentally ready and also put pressure on you that now you need to complete your work and plan for sleep.
3) Complete all important tasks of the day so that you do not become stressed up in the night.
Make sure you plan your day in such a manner that there is not too much work left before you go to sleep. For that you need to do proper time management and make sure you complete priority works at right time in the day. There should not be any unpleasant surprise at the time of going to bed like, "I have forgotten to iron my clothes" or "I need to call my friends on mobile to remind them about this or that."
Again, if you start getting up early you will have an extra hour or so and if you use it properly most of your tasks will be completed on time.
4) Keep a list of pending tasks which you could not complete that day.
Always keep a list of tasks to be completed in a particular day and feel free to transfer the tasks which you could not complete to the next day. You need to differentiate your tasks and give them priority like HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW. Make sure you complete all your high priority tasks throughout the day. Currently I am using the app meistertask which is quite useful and has got good features. If you are not able to finish the tasks do not get tempted to complete them in the night compromising your sleep routine. Just park them and complete it in the next day.
5) Nicotine and Caffeine.
Avoid having Nicotine and Caffeine in the last three hours or so before your sleep. They are ideal demons to kill our hunger and prove obstructions to our sleep. These demons will turn to be friends if you have them after getting up from bed.
6) Keep an alarm spread within 10 minutes.
Set alarm at the time you want to get up and also 2 more alarms at regular intervals. If you need to get up at 5 am, keep 2-3 alarms at 5 then 5.10 and 5.20 so if you miss one, the second will wake you up. But the trouble with this method is that people become lazy and get mentally prepared that they can ignore the first alarm and will wake up in the second or third. So plan accordingly.
7) Get up immediately without thinking much.
If you get up early after hearing the alarm the biggest challenge is to get up. If you do not get up immediately you will be tempted to sleep for little longer. Then there is always a possibility that you will not be able to get up till 1 or 2 more hours making you feel guilty for chewing important hours in the day.
8) Do light exercise immediately after getting from bed.
Do light stretching exercise immediately after getting up from bed. This will help all the muscles and bones to get stretched and there will be proper blood circulation in your whole body.
9) Wash your face with cold water.
After waking up early and doing stretching exercise, wash your face with cold water. Do not just sprinkle little water but wash it thoroughly.
10) Take power naps.
If you get up early then there will be times in the day when you will get fatigued and would also like to go to bed maybe in the afternoon. But do not go to sleep during the day for 1-2 hours. If you do that you will not be able to sleep on time on that day. Take 1 or 2 power naps for 15-20 minutes during the whole day and if possible at fixed times in the day.
Tarun Nanwani lives in the city of Baroda, India. He has done his Masters' in Computer Engineering. He works as a
software engineer. He is passionate about reading books, listening to music, travelling, spending time with children. He enjoys doing meditation, yogasana and pranayama. He has also successfully completed two levels of Reiki.
He has created his blogging site, http://www.sweetnectar.in which has helped thousands of people in the world because of the inspirational and spiritual messages provided in it. The success of this blog motivated him to write a book and the purpose of it was to add some value to the life of people who are occupied by stress and depression. After doing analysis of the modern world and the challenges which people are facing these days, he became motivated to write the classical work, The Perfect Sadhu. The details about the book and the author can be found at the following link,