3 min read
“How To Wake Up Ready To Conquer The World”
Introduction
A majority of young folks will probably tell you that despite the amount of sleep they get, even if it’s decent or pretty high- they still wake up tired; no energy in the tank.
This is a problem. A big one.
Imagine that it’s a day that you’re trying to get a lot of work done and are trying to make the most of your day. Waking up tired is, possibly, one of the biggest limiting factors that’s preventing you from achieving sky-high levels of productivity.
That’s where the important question here lies. Are you willing to do anything about it? Will you watch as your body and mind refuse to replenish its energy, even if it spends 10 full hours “sleeping”? Or will you be willing to act upon it and fix whatever’s gone wrong to see if you can fix your broken sleep?
The choice is yours.
Why You’re So Tired
Before we go into detail as to how you can fix your sleep schedule and really uncover why your energy sucks early in the morning, we need to firstly understand what’s going on.
Before Jumping To Conclusions
Just because this happened once, or maybe two or three times, doesn’t mean that your body has given up on you and that your sleep is utterly garbage. We all have those days in which we wake up not feeling as energized as we should be, considering the loads of sleep that we got.
For example, if you went to sleep at a time that doesn’t follow your usual sleep schedule, you can expect to wake up tired. Another element could be your screen time. If you spend more time on a screen right before, you can find yourself having trouble falling asleep and waking up.
If these don’t apply to you and you’ve been consistent with the problem for several days straight, or maybe even weeks or months, then yeah, it’s time to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
Why You Wake Up So Tired
- Excess screen time before bed – This matters so heavily. According to various sources online, “Electronic screens, especially smartphones and computers, emit blue light. This kind of light can upset your body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep.” Mess around. Find out. Sure, after a while of doing it, your body may adapt to it, but really think to yourself for a moment: do you seriously think that it’s good for you anyways?
- Stress & Anxiety – Stress and anxiety can affect your body’s ability to fall or stay asleep, considering how occupied it keeps our brains. This is even more evident when it’s time to hop in bed, and try to rest; which gives us time to realize how active our brain really is. Just compare it to a productivity standpoint: if your mind is so preoccupied with a stress factor of some sort, and it affects your ability to think and process information on a major level, don’t you think that it could affect your sleep too? Be real with yourself. If your body is trying to go to sleep, but the mind is busy, you won’t fall asleep. Both your mind and body need to be in sync, both exhausted, both free of stress or anxiety, and ready to replenish its energy and get back at it the next day.
- Inconsistent Sleep Schedule – This is probably the most obvious one on this list. If you are used -and have trained your mind and body- to sleep at 10 PM every night, and you decide to keep it up extra early until 12 AM, don’t you think that you’ll endure some repercussion for your action?
- Non-Optimal Sleep Conditions – This happens every once in a while. Maybe there’s just too much noise. Maybe the room is just too cold, or too hot. Or maybe you just got done exercising or eating, and you realized right then and there: oh wait, I have to go to sleep…
- Note: For those who don’t get it, exercising will get the blood pumping in the body, which -don’t get me wrong- is great, but it’ll mess with your sleep entirely. On the other hand, eating will occupy the body’s focus on digesting the food rather than sleeping, so yeah, there goes your good nights rest.
- Diet – Stop consuming so much caffeine and high levels of sugar. Your body hates it, so you should too.
If None Of Those Worked
If none of those worked, you need to do one of two things:
- Assess how much time you’re really getting from sleep per night. What is your sleep efficiency? (this is covered below)
- See whether or not you might have a health condition of some sort. If your sleep really sucks so much, and you have no control over it, you might have no other option but to consult a healthcare professional.
“Sleepio Might Be Just What the Professor Ordered”
Prerequisites
The main no-brainer when it comes to figuring out why you aren’t waking up energized is to take a look at how much time you really are in bed for and how you’re treating your body.
Get poor sleep and treat your body terribly, waking up feeling awful is a given. It’s deserved. You earned it.
However, this doesn’t mean that it can’t be fixed. Before reading any of the tips below, I suggest reading this first. The truth is, if you want to feel nice and energized in the morning, you need to take a look at how much sleep you’re getting every night. Do you go to sleep late, and wake up early? How long are you in bed for? What is your sleep efficiency?
If you seriously expect to get good sleep while being in bed for 5 hours, then you might want to reconsider thinking that your poor sleeping isn’t causing this major problem of yours. Realistically, if you’re in bed for only 5 hours, you can probably expect between 3-4 hours of real sleep. Keep in mind that the BARE MINIMUM number of hours of sleep is approximately 6 hours. Go below that and you risk long-term effects, being sleep deprived, lower productivity, obesity, depression, and the list goes on.
Sleep Efficiency
Sleep efficiency is exactly what the name describes it as. It’s how efficient your sleep is. If you’re interested in calculating it, it’s the ratio between the time a person spends asleep, and the total time dedicated to sleep. A good sleep efficiency ranges from 85% and higher.
Chances are, you probably have no real way of calculating it (unless you went out of your way to set up all these timers and trackers and stuff, which isn’t really ideal). So, a better way to get an answer as to how high -or low- your sleep efficiency is, you need to consider the two following variables:
- How long does it take for you to fall asleep? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? 25 minutes? An hour?
- Do you wake up in the middle of the night, occasionally? Approximately how long are you awake for?
General estimates for these two variables work just fine. From there, subtract the amount of time you’re in bed for by the total time accumulated by the variables mentioned above. Be honest with yourself and don’t lie. It just makes it harder for you and more vulnerable to these things and more unwilling to change, which’ll hurt you long-term.
“Sleep Efficiency And Taping My Mouth Shut At Night”
How To Wake Up Feeling Energized
- Stop Hitting The Snooze Button. Turns out, if you are to hit snooze and sneak in an extra 20 minutes of sleep, your body will wake up feeling worse than it would have if it just woke up at the original time that you were supposed to get up at. This is because of a phenomenon known as ‘fragmented sleep’, which is when the body enters a state of rest, but wakes up in the middle of it, making you feel even worse than you would’ve if you just got up when the alarm first rang.
- Get Moving. As soon as you wake up, it’s time to start moving and getting things done. Stretch, brush your teeth, wash your face, take a shower, style your hair, care for your beard, or whatever you usually do in the morning. I tend to do this thing where I just spend a few minutes contemplating my entire life (yeah I know, it sounds strange) just so that I can drift my mind away from the actual thing to be done, getting up and completing my morning routine. It used to be worse, so it has gotten better in my situation. But, that doesn’t mean that I still don’t have some improvement left to do.
- Take a Shower/Wash Your Face. If you really want to wake up, you need to seriously consider these suggestions. It’ll get the body from that half-asleep, half-awake state where it just doesn’t know what to choose between.
- Choose a Sleep Schedule That Suits You. If you’re reading this, you probably know yourself well enough to know a time that’s suitable for you when it comes to going to sleep. The truth is, everyone is different. Just because someone can go to sleep at 9 PM and wake up at 5 AM feeling great doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to. If you find your body sleeping easier at 11 PM than 10 PM, then follow it. Your mind and body know what’s best for it, not you (in many cases). The Internet is filled with people trying to tell you what to do. Do what your body says is good for you, not what influencers online say is. It’ll change your life.
- Power Naps. These are absolute life savers when it comes to wanting to get high quantities of sleep, without sacrificing the times that you go to sleep and wake up at. 30 to 45 minute power naps are usually really high in terms of sleep efficiency (we’re talking almost 100%), so they’ll give you a high return for your input.
Conclusion
Oftentimes, the media, your family, your friends, and even you, don’t know what’s best for yourself. The body has its way of telling you, and letting you know that you aren’t doing something right. If it’s hungry, your stomach rumbles. If you’re tired, you start losing your ability to focus and pay attention and plummet in your levels of energy. The point is, you have to do what’s right for it, always, no matter what.
If you liked this post, and want to read more about good and healthy sleep, then you can click here to learn how to wake up early, with little to any struggle at all.
Thanks to the sources below for helping out with the information provided inside this post!
- https://www.betterup.com/blog/how-to-wake-yourself-up
- https://www.calm.com/blog/waking-up-tired#:~:text=Waking%20up%20tired%20can%20stem,certain%20diet%20and%20lifestyle%20choices.
- https://www.calm.com/blog/screen-time-before-bed#:~:text=Electronic%20screens%2C%20especially%20smartphones%20and,tougher%20to%20drift%20off%20afterward.
- https://sleep.me/post/how-to-feel-more-energized-in-the-morning
