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How To Wake Up Early WITHOUT Being Tired
The Strategic EdgeTayla rose |
Quick Announcement: This Week's YouTube video will be all about discipline - perfect as we get further into the new year! If you want to be reminded when it comes out, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel here. Now, onto optimising your sleep! As always, the summary and action steps are at the end of the email (but I think this one's an interesting read and gives you a new level of insight if I do say so myself). Have you ever found yourself wondering why some people wake up at 5am full of energy, while others, despite having the same intentions, hit snooze repeatedly? I used to think it was all genetics. That the early risers were more genetically blessed than me. But, it turns out, the truth lies in 4 simple habits, backed by neuroscience and biology. As someone who used to wake up at 8am, and now wakes up at 5am, I can guarantee you, it's not about genetics or luck. Waking up with energy ultimately requires getting enough, high quality sleep every night. It's about being able to fall asleep when you want, instead of staring at the ceiling for hours. So today, I’ll walk you through the simple evidence-based REST rule for sleep that I use to consistently wake up at 5.30am, and leverage the early hours of my day for productivity. Our Internal Body ClockIf we want to talk about getting proper sleep, and waking up energised, we have to first understand our circadian rhythm. Our bodies are wired to follow a natural internal clock, which controls when we feel like sleeping, and when we feel awake and alert. How? Our circadian rhythm. When we fight against this rhythm:
When we are aligned with your circadian rhythm:
The 4 habits in the REST rule that we are about to explore are small yet powerful steps to align and optimise your circadian rhythm, simplifying the process of falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking up energised. There’s 4 parts to this rule - Relax, Energy, Sunlight and Timing. The REST RuleRELAXThis is all about creating a night routine that calms your nervous system, and gets you into a state of sleep. Your autonomic nervous system switches between two states: sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic state is our fight or flight mode. The nights that we are:
We are putting our nervous system into its sympathetic state, basically telling it to be alert, to be ready for a fight, not for sleep. The stimulation is the worst of these. Every time we watch Netflix, or enter into a social media vortex, our brains start running at a million miles an hours to comprehend and process every video we watch, or every scene change. It makes our minds run with thoughts and comparisons, it makes us anxious and overwhelmed, and make our overthinking worse. The issue isn’t just viewing the devices, it’s what we’re viewing on them. To fall asleep, and get good quality sleep, we have to be in the parasympathetic state - our rest and digest mode. Getting into this mode is really dependent on what you find gets you into a state of relaxation and calm. As someone with a lot going on, I struggle to switch off at night. I’ll be constantly thinking about the next video idea, the message I forgot to respond to or everything I’ve got lined up to do tomorrow. So two habits that have changed the game for me are brain dumping, and planning the next day an hour before bed. I’ve seen a lot of people recommending to do this straight before bed. But, doing it an hour before gives me time to really switch off and get into a parasympathetic state, knowing that everything is ready for tomorrow. Switching non-fiction to fiction reading before bed has also supported this massively. Non-fiction switches my brain on. It triggers thoughts, ideas and reflections. It makes me want to dive deeper into topics. This is great, but not right before I try to sleep. Reading fiction takes you into another world and allows you to focus on someone else’s problems and thoughts, instead of your own. It’s an ‘unproductive’ change that has made me 10x more productive by improving my sleep. Some other habits could be
Experiment, find the habits that support your sleep, and implement them into your night routine ENERGYOur next habit is energy. Caffeine. Coffee. Diet Coke. Energy Drinks. Don’t worry, I’m not about to tell you to cut them out. But here’s the most important thing you need to know when it comes to your sleep. We need to control our caffeine intake to allow our bodies to enter a state for sleep. Caffeine makes us energised by blocking our adenosine (sleepy hormone) receptors. Our adenosine levels build up during the day, until they reach their peak, triggering us to sleep, where they get cleared out overnight. When we have caffeine too early in the day, we don’t give our bodies enough time to clear out any remaining adenosine left from overnight (especially if we haven’t gotten enough sleep). This is what creates afternoon crashes - the caffeine wears off and the sleepy hormone hits us in full force. When we have caffeine too late in the day, we impact the build up of adenosine. There is less sleepy hormone to make us feel tired at night, so we struggle to get to sleep. So, controlling caffeine is the key to preventing crashes and allowing ourselves to sleep. The easiest way to do this is to work out your ‘caffeine window’ and limit your caffeine intake to this time. To do this
So, I wake up by 5.30am and I aim to sleep by 9.30pm most nights, which makes my caffeine zone 7.00am-11.30am. Why is this the case? Waiting 90 minutes after waking is typically enough time for your body to clear out any remaining adenosine. As for the cut off time… Caffeine typically has a half life of 5-6 hours, and a quarter life of 10-12 hours.
By cutting off caffeine 10 hours before sleep, you allow more time for your caffeine levels to reduce, and your adenosine to build up, limiting its impact on your sleep. "But Tayla, I drink caffeine at 4pm and I sleep fine - I fall asleep straight away and don’t wake up at all during the night." You may think you’re sleeping fine, but in reality, you are likely:
Consuming caffeine even as far our as 6 hours before bed, has been shown to reduce sleep by more than 1 hour. Add this up over days, and it’s no wonder why you feel so tired in the morning, despite seemingly getting ‘enough’ sleep. SUNLIGHTThis is about exposing yourself to as much sun as possible, especially in the mornings and evenings. The sun, as weird as it sounds, is your best friend for high quality sleep. Our circadian rhythm is primarily controlled by light. Morning sunlight shifts our circadian rhythm earlier by suppressing melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone, and signalling to our body that it’s time to wake up. It also triggers an entire cascade of hormone activity for the day. When we first awake in the morning, our cortisol levels, our stress hormone, starts to rise. Seeing sunlight further increases our cortisol, ultimately making sure that our biggest cortisol spike happens first thing in the day. Side note: As a type 1 diabetic, I can guarantee you, this is true. One effect of cortisol is increased blood sugar levels. As I track these levels, I can see:
Learning this was such an ‘aha’ moment for me! This cortisol spike is a good thing — it’s what makes you feel awake. We want to get a single, big spike in cortisol as early as possible in the day, to give it time to slowly drop throughout the day, and not keep us alert when we’re trying to sleep. So, why can’t we just turn on all the lights inside or look at our phones? The intensity from artificial light just isn’t enough. When you go outside and look at the sun, even if it’s cloudy, you’re getting 50-100x the amount of light you would be by:
Our eyes are much less sensitive to light in the morning, so we really do need this higher intensity light. My favourite thing is to pair this with a morning walk. Why? To get my body moving. When we walk or run, and see ourselves moving past objects in our environment, we reduce the amount of activity in our nervous system, and calm emotions like anxiety, fear and overthinking. This is why morning walks are one of my favourite times for silence and reflection first thing in the morning. I’ll even pair it with a meditation some days and do all three at once. Exercising also releases endorphins. These tell your brain that it’s time to be alert, making it one of the best ways to boost your focus, creativity, mood and energy not just in the moment but throughout the entire day. This is one of the most important habits you can do if you’re looking to improve both your sleep, and your energy in the morning. Now, morning sunlight has finally been receiving the hype it deserves on social media. But, there is something else the sun can do for us that is so incredible, but has been completely swept under the rug. We all know that staying off our screens is ideal, but what about those nights that you:
It turns out, there is one simple way to reduce the impact of night time artificial lights on your sleep - evening sunlight. When you watch the sunset, or look at the sun in the late afternoon or evening, you reduce the negative effects of artificial light that you see later that night. How? Well, I mentioned earlier that light suppressed melatonin, a hormone that helps us get to sleep. Well, getting natural light in the evening
So, our bodies will have more melatonin, and we will experience less melatonin suppression from artificial light, majorly reducing the overall impact on our sleep. But, if the sunrise, and artificial light wakes us up, why doesn’t the sunset keep us awake? Natural light later in the day emits different wavelengths of light to earlier in the day. This is why our ancestors took the sunset as a sign that night was coming, that it was time to prepare for sleep. In a world where it is so difficult to control screens and artificial lights, this can make the world of difference. TIMINGIt’s Friday. You’ve had a massive week. You haven’t slept for the 7+ hours you know you need. You’re feeling exhausted and are holding out for the weekend where you can finally catch up on the sleep debt that you’ve been building up over the week. It’s not just you. This is what I, along with 56% of people, spent years doing. But, if sleep is so important, is sleeping in on the weekends a bad habit, or is it actually good for you? Catching up on sleep has actually been shown to improve your
A systematic review (basically a study reviewing a bunch of other studies) suggested that “catching-up on weekday sleep debt on the weekend, appears to be better than not doing it”. In an ideal world, we would all get our 7-9 hours on all 7 days of the week. But let’s face it
The main issue comes when we do too much of this catch-up sleep. When we sleep in 2, 3, 4+ hours past our normal bedtimes, we mess up our body clocks.
Basically, everything that normally happens, shifts 2, 3 or 4+ hours later. By Sunday morning, you’ll be more energised and rested. But by Sunday night, you’ll take longer to get to sleep, already setting yourself up for your weekday sleep deprivation. And when Monday morning rolls around, you’ll be waking up at least an hour ahead of your body clock. So, I have done a bunch of research on what we can actually do to address this, because these two ideas kind of contradict each other. Here is what I do to get my ‘catch-up’ sleep, without destroying my circadian rhythm 1. Limit sleep ins to 1 hour During the week I wake up between 5 and 5.30am So on weekends I normally sleep in until 6 or 6.15am. This gives me a bit of extra sleep, without being too much that I shift my body clock. I’m also extra conscious to get sunlight first thing on these days, to really help keep my clock in check — I’ll often get sun before having my cold shower, instead of after 2. Instead of sleeping in, go to bed earlier If you can head to bed an hour earlier than usual, along with waking up an hour later than usual, there’s a bonus 2 hours right there. When you have a quiet weekend, this can be a really helpful tool. 3. Prioritise consistency Overall, consistency will always be your best friend when it comes to getting good sleep and waking up energised in the morning. Use the other habits we’ve gone through to prioritise getting good sleep during the week. And if it’s time that you’re lacking, use systems to transfer time from the weekends to weekdays
SummaryThere's a lot in this newsletter, and we're starting to get more science-y! Some of you will love this (I know I do), but I know some of you just want simplicity and the key tools. So here's a summary of the most important points: Circadian Rhythm Our circadian rhythm (or body clock) controls when we feel like sleeping, and when we feel awake and alert. To master our sleep, we need to regulate and support this rhythm. That's what the REST rule is about. R - Relax Create a night routine that calms your nervous system, and gets you into a state of sleep. This could include habits like:
E - Energy We need to control our caffeine intake to allow our bodies to enter a state for sleep.
S - Sunlight The sun is your best friend when it comes to sleep.
T - Timing Prioritise consistency with your sleep to keep your circadian rhythm regulated
Strategy SessionReady to put this into action? Here's your strategy session for this week: 1. Think about your current sleep habits as they are right now. Which of the four areas - relax, energy, sunlight, or timing - do you need to focus on the most right now? Pick one. 2. For your chosen focus, write down 2-3 habits or actions you can start doing today to improve your sleep? 3. For each habit, make a plan for how you will execute on it, and stay consistent. I would love to know what you think of this week's newsletter! Just click an option below to let me know your reaction - this will help me in creating the best future newsletters for you! Loved it 😍 / Blew my mind 🤯 See you next week! Tay Whenever you’re ready, there’s 3 ways I can help you:
Tayla Rose
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The Strategic Edge by Tayla Burrell
Helping you master AI & productivity for peak performance and better work-life balance. Join 2,600+ readers achieving rapid success in career and life.