There are two types of people in the world: morning people and those who hate early starts. For a long time, I was firmly in the second group. My routine involved going to sleep around midnight, then grudgingly dragging myself out of bed at 7.30am after snoozing my alarm a dozen times. Then, an eye-opening conversation with my boss in the summer of 2017 set me on a path to becoming one of those smug people who wake up at 5am and can’t shut up about it.
While I was never late for work, my manager noted that I wasn’t particularly “present” for the first couple of hours each day. My colleagues burst into the office full of ideas and enthusiasm while I came into work chugging an energy drink with a miserable attitude. She told me my job wasn’t in jeopardy, but I needed to change my attitude to work. As we finished the meeting, she quipped, “You should try going to bed earlier!”
A recent survey suggests Britons may be choosing an earlier bedtime. The average Briton turns off electronic devices 20 minutes earlier than in 2020 and gets up 15 minutes earlier in the morning. According to Virgin Media O2, network traffic now drops off from 9.20pm and starts up again at 6.20am.
I was always a night owl who viewed early nights as a kind of punishment. As a kid, I would stay up late reading. As I got older, FOMO kept me awake. With the type of friends who often wanted to chat or meet up at odd hours, I was always looking at my phone, scared to miss out on anything.
My sleep schedule made me feel like an appliance operating in low battery mode; I only had enough energy to perform essential functions. Sleep deficiency is linked to many chronic health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, and depression. If I didn’t change my ways at 42, my poor sleep might risk my health as well as my job.
Tired of being exhausted, I asked friends who were “morning people” why they chose to wake up at the crack of dawn. One friend woke up at 5am every morning but had so much energy she didn’t need to drink coffee, an alien concept to a caffeine fiend like me. Another told me she had written a novel in six months using the “extra” hour between waking and starting her work day. I was intrigued.
The main piece of advice I got was to start slowly. If I suddenly changed my bedtime from midnight to 9pm, my body wouldn’t be ready for sleep. At first, I started going to bed 10 minutes earlier every night and stopped looking at my phone an hour before bed, picking up a book instead to help me wind down. The impact wasn’t immediate, but I noticed I had stopped snoozing my alarm after a few weeks. In fact, I was waking up before it went off.
Within a few months, I woke up an hour earlier but was energetic, not sluggish. I found that the quiet of the morning, with its soundtrack of birdsong instead of heavy traffic, helped spark my creativity, and I often found myself focusing on creative projects and hobbies before work. Instead of spending the first few hours of each day in a sleepy fog, my brain buzzed with ideas when I got to the office and I relied much more on daylight than caffeine to power me through the day.
Getting outside every morning became a non-negotiable for me. Even in the winter, I go out for a long walk when the sun rises to help set me up for the day. I notice a dip in my mood and sleep quality without that light exposure.
Rosey Davidson, Sleep Consultant and founder of Just Chill Baby Sleep, says early risers tend to align with natural daylight patterns, which are crucial in regulating our circadian rhythms. “When you wake up earlier and expose yourself to morning light, it helps increase cortisol levels, which promote alertness.
“Regular exposure to natural morning light also supports better sleep quality at night, essential for physical and mental health. Exposure to natural light early in the day can help our bodies know when to feel sleepy in the evenings.”
I didn’t intend to become a 5am riser, but I followed my body’s lead, and it naturally started to want to wind down at 8pm and wake up at 5. Yes, even at weekends. Instead of feeling angry that I’d been robbed of a lie-in, I use the weekend mornings to go on long beach walks and prepare home-cooked meals for the week rather than rely on convenience foods.
As Davidson says, sleeping in on weekends can disrupt this rhythm, leading to grogginess and difficulty falling asleep on Sunday nights. “You can end up in a sleep dept at the weekend and be working to sleep it off throughout the week, and then the cycle continues. By keeping wake-up and bedtime relatively stable, you support better sleep quality, energy levels, and mood throughout the week.”
According to Davidson, training yourself to become a morning person is possible, but instead of trying to fit into the “early bird” mould, finding a rhythm that works with your lifestyle and allows you to get enough restorative sleep is probably better. She says, “The idea is that you find the time where you can fall asleep within around 15 minutes of going to bed and that you wake up naturally feeling well rested. So, if you work backwards from when you ‘need’ to wake up in the morning, you can work out your ideal winddown for going to bed.”
Since I started going to bed earlier, there has been such a dramatic shift in my energy, productivity, and mood. I bounce out of bed, even on dark winter mornings, because I feel properly rested and refreshed. I feel much more content and present. Just don’t ask me to be present after 8pm!
Sometimes, when I “slip” and go to bed late, it takes me a few days to feel like myself again. I don’t drink; the closest thing I have to a hangover nowadays is the groggy feeling of waking up the morning after a late night.
Waking at 5am can be lonely. I live alone and don’t like to bombard my late-sleeping friends with messages before their first coffee. I get it; people who wake up happy and peppy can be annoying! One thing that helped was setting up an early bird WhatsApp group. In the mornings, we check in, remarking on the sunrise that others were missing out on or talking about the creative projects we are working on. We sometimes joke that we achieve more before 9am than some people manage in a day.
My social life looks different now that I wake up at 5am. If friends suggest a meal out, I am more likely to say yes to lunch than dinner. Thankfully, I now know enough early risers who favour a morning walk or a coffee rather than a night in the town.
Recently, when a friend showed me the ten alarms she needed to get out of bed in the morning, I realised that I hadn’t set an alarm in five years. I used to hate the evangelical smugness some early risers radiated, but now I understand how intoxicating it is to wake up early and feel ready to take on the world.
Liz Truss needs to take her own advice, and cease and desist