I forced myself to be a morning person for 2 weeks, and here’s what happened.
It’s 5:45 in the morning and I fall out of my bed startled by the unfamiliar sound of my new alarm going off. Why did I ever decide to do this? I get up letting out the longest sigh of my short 18 years of life and make my way down the narrow hallway of my dorm to the bathroom to start my day.
After reaching my breaking point of never having any time in the morning to eat breakfast without having to scarf it down or lacking time to make sure I had everything I needed for the day, I decided to challenge myself to wake up every day at 5:45 am for 2 weeks straight. Here’s what I learned:
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Waking up at 5:45 am NEVER gets easier; yet, it’s very rewarding.
No matter how many times my friends told me that it would get easier to get up at the crack of dawn, it never did. Every day I would go to bed dreading the thought of my alarm in the morning and every day I would awake startled by the generic sound of a vintage alarm blasted through my iphone speakers. Taking the warm, fluffy blankets off and facing the cold, biting breeze in my dorm created a whole new meaning to the definition of the term “hell”. Around day 4 of foolishly trying to beat the sun at its own game, I noticed that after getting ready I felt accomplished, like I had already been productive for the day and the sun wasn’t even up and I still had time to sit and plan the rest of my day out.
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My productivity increased and my stress level decreased.
Starting from day one of my experiment I noticed I had so much extra time in the morning that I began to use those extra couple of hours to do homework, study, clean my room, maybe even watch an episode of 90210 before I even had to worry about catching my bus to get to class on time. Not only was I getting my work done early, I was able to spend my afternoons unwinding, curled up in a book or binge watching The Office without worrying about that test or essay that was due at the end of the week. If I did have any work to do after class I actually began to look forward to doing it because it was almost non existent. Having that occasional after school work became a change of pace throughout those two weeks which made my days less monotone. The biggest change I noted as my productivity increased is that by day 5 I was in such a better mood because I was living with relatively no stress, something I hadn’t felt in years.
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Morning silence is the best kind of silence
When living in a residence hall, silence is almost as much of a taboo as getting through an 8am without coffee. At 5:45 am the only people that will be up are those who have an early morning workout or those who are just barely making it back to the dorms after a night out, besides that, it’s basically dead silent. That peaceful hour or two of morning silence allowed me to start my day off in a calm and mindful way. Although I wasn’t meditating, my mind and body felt in balanced and remained like that throughout the rest of my day. The ability to have some time to myself with no interruptions became so important, especially with the non-stop, hectic college life that I’ve continued to schedule a time during my day to listen to silence. Ironic isn’t it.
Believe it or not, the little improvements I noticed throughout my little experiment were fantastic, but were they worth it? In the long run, unfortunately not. Being in college and trying to balance my school schedule, work, studying and having a social life made waking up early extremely difficult, especially when my body craved the sleep that I had been missing for so long. Being a morning person was definitely fun while it lasted, but I will forever love sleeping in and being the night owl that I am. Just in case you were wondering, no, I would not do it again, even if you paid me.