How to Wake Up Early: 8 Steps Backed by Sleep Research

To wake up early, start with the night: go to bed earlier by the same amount you want to get up earlier, so you still sleep at least 7 hours. Then keep the same wake time every day, weekends included, get daylight soon after you get up and keep your phone out of the bedroom. Light and consistency move your body clock. A louder alarm doesn't.

Why waking up early feels so hard

Your body runs on an internal clock that decides when you feel sleepy and when you feel awake. If that clock is set to a late schedule, a 6 a.m. alarm lands in the middle of your biological night. That's why you can sleep through it, or wake up feeling like you haven't slept.

Light is the main thing that sets the clock. In one study, people spent a week camping with only natural light, no lamps or screens. Their internal night shifted to start around sunset and end just after sunrise, and the people with the latest clocks shifted the most (Wright et al., 2013). Modern life gives most of us too little daylight in the morning and too much artificial light at night, and both push the clock later.

So the goal is to move the clock. Forcing yourself out of bed at a time your body still treats as night rarely lasts.

How to wake up early: 8 steps

1. Pick a wake time and work back

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommend at least 7 hours of sleep a night for adults (Watson et al., 2015). Your bedtime follows from that.

"Asleep by" isn't the same as "in bed by". Turn the lights off a little earlier, since few people fall asleep the moment they lie down.

2. Move in steps or all at once, but move both times

You can shift gradually. For example, set the alarm 15 to 30 minutes earlier every few days and move your bedtime with it. Or you can jump: in a three-week trial, 22 night owls who usually slept from about 2:30 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. moved both bedtime and wake time 2 to 3 hours earlier. Their sleep shifted about two hours earlier with no loss of sleep, and they reported less stress and fewer depressive symptoms (Facer-Childs et al., 2019). It was a small study, but it shows the clock can move when light and routine move with it.

What doesn't work is moving only the alarm. You end up short on sleep, and the plan falls apart by Thursday.

3. Keep the same wake time every day

The AASM's first sleep habit is to get up at the same time every day, even on weekends or vacation (AASM). Sleeping in until 10 on Saturday pushes your clock later, and Monday's alarm feels like a small jet lag. If you need extra sleep, go to bed earlier on Friday instead of getting up later on Saturday.

4. Get daylight right after you wake up

Open the curtains, have breakfast by a window or, better, go outside for a few minutes. The night owls in the 2019 trial were told to get as much outdoor light as possible in the morning (Facer-Childs et al., 2019).

5. Dim the evening and put screens away

Limit bright light in the evening and turn off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bed (AASM). In a lab study, people who read on a light-emitting tablet before bed took longer to fall asleep, released less melatonin, had a later body clock and were less alert the next morning than when they read a printed book (Chang et al., 2015).

6. Keep your phone out of the bedroom

In a survey of 844 adults, six in ten took their phone to the bedroom. Using it at bedtime was linked to worse sleep, more fatigue and, among younger adults, later wake-up times (Exelmans and Van den Bulck, 2016). It's a survey, so it shows a link and not a cause, but the fix costs almost nothing: charge the phone in the kitchen and use a cheap alarm clock.

Put the alarm across the room. If you have to stand up to turn it off, you're already halfway out of bed, and you don't start the day scrolling.

Lock the late-night scroll

LockTy can lock the apps that keep you up after a set time and keep them locked until morning. Add a sleep goal read from Apple Health, or a few minutes outside, and the apps unlock once you've met it.

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7. Watch caffeine and keep regular meals

Avoid caffeine in the afternoon and evening (AASM). In the night-owl trial, participants also ate breakfast soon after waking, had lunch at the same time each day and avoided dinner after 7 p.m. (Facer-Childs et al., 2019). Regular meals give your day more fixed points besides the alarm.

8. Give the morning a job

Decide the night before what the first 30 minutes are for: a workout, reading, a walk, quiet work before everyone else is up. Getting up early "to be productive" is vague. Getting up to run before work is a plan. If the hour has no purpose, it tends to go to the phone.

If you can't fall asleep earlier

Lying in bed awake for an hour makes the bed a place for frustration. The AASM advice is to get up if you haven't fallen asleep after 20 minutes and do something quiet with little light, without screens (AASM). Go back when you feel sleepy. Keep the wake time fixed anyway, even after a short night.

How long it takes

The night owls in the 2019 trial moved about two hours in three weeks. A smaller shift may settle sooner, a bigger one may take longer. Expect the first days to feel harder while your clock is still on the old schedule. A fixed morning routine also takes time to feel automatic, and the habit formation calculator gives a rough idea of how long. If waking up early is one of your New Year's resolutions, January is a good time to start, as long as you track it every day.

When to talk to a doctor

If you sleep 7 hours or more and still wake up exhausted, snore loudly, or can't fall asleep at a normal time no matter what you change, talk to a doctor. Insomnia, sleep apnea and circadian rhythm disorders are treatable, and none of them is fixed by a better alarm.

For most people, though, an earlier bedtime, morning light and a phone that sleeps in another room do most of the work. If the phone is what keeps you up, start with how to stop phone addiction.