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What time do you wake up? How big of a difference is there between weekends and weekdays (and/or between WFH days and in-office days)? What rituals do you practice when you wake up — and what are your best tips to make waking up easier?
My Waking Up Tips
I have never been an easy person to wake up — and I honestly never thought there was anything remarkable about that. My husband and children have disabused me of this notion, though! My husband tends to get up immediately at first light — he is really not one to sleep in. On the flip side, on my ideal lazy morning I can wake up, then snooze off and on for another hour or two, then finally start reading.
(I still remember one memorable morning when I woke up in my son's bed when he was around 4, having comforted him after a nightmare or something in the middle of the night. He opened his eyes, looked around the room, said “Go, go, GOOOOOO!!!” and jumped out of bed. )
My wakeup time is definitely different — on weekdays, 6:30 a.m. is the absolute latest I can be asleep. Most weekends I wake around 7:30 if my kids let me sleep that long — this contrasts sharply with my pre-kid life when I would regularly sleep until 11:00 or later on weekends.
I have noticed that Mondays are getting much harder — I want to stay up later, and then the 6:30 wakeup and morning rush comes as a rude surprise. (And then, feeling underslept from the Sun.–Mon. night, the rest of the week feels like it's also a struggle.)
So for Mondays, I try to do everything to make them as easy as possible — laying out clothes, packing lunches, etc. I've only just started taking a melatonin on Sunday night, but I think that may be a keeper for me — going to bed at the correct time is such a gift to myself.
I keep reading that experts advise us not to reach for the phone first thing, but it's part of my alarm system. (Don't ask, I have multiple layers.) When my music starts playing, I click the Happy Light on — even if I've got the pillow over my head I try to enjoy the music for at least a few minutes. Is it the meditation or journaling the experts advise? Nope, but it'll do for now.
Readers, how about you — what are your best waking up tips? Do you wake up at different times on different days? What rituals do you practice first thing? Do you have any tips to make it easier?
Stock photo via Stencil.
Anon
Oof, following as I am also not a morning person and haven’t quite cracked the morning routine. I get up anywhere between 6-7:30am depending on my morning meetings. One good habit I was able to instill is charging my phone in another room, so that I don’t spend 30+ minutes scrolling on my phone first thing in the morning (which was my previous MO). Instead I use my Fitbit alarm to wake up. After waking up my routine is wildly inconsistent, however (and still includes more social media use than I would like).
Anonymous
The only trick that makes waking up easier for me is getting enough sleep. That only happens on weekends, since work stress keeps me up on weeknights.
Anon
I wake up between 8:30 and 9 most days. I WFH so I just roll out of bed and start work. I have a preschooler but my husband handles the morning routine, and my kid is a night owl too and rarely wakes much before 8.
Anon
This is our routine, too.
Anonymous
Does anyone have tips for sleep and wake up routines when you and your partner have wildly different sleep routines? Not interested in separate beds/rooms recommendations. I go to bed around 10 pm and wake up around 7 am; my husband comes to bed around 2 or 3 am and wakes up at 10 am. In a perfect world, I would want to use a sunrise alarm clock and a happy light, and have some music playing as I wake up, but that’s difficult with him still sleeping. And sometimes when he comes to bed, I wake up and can’t fall back asleep for an hour or two! Any advice?
Anon
Separate bedrooms. People make jokes about it but it’s essential for many couples including me and my husband.
Anonymous
As I mentioned in my post, not interested in separate bedrooms, both as a matter of space/finances and preference.
Anonymous
That’s really the only solution, though.
Anon
Sleep is a health issue. If your sleep is being interrupted, you’re seriously damaging your body and raising your risk of a whole bunch of health conditions from dementia to heart attacks to depression. To me, that trumps a preference for sharing the same bed.
anon4
White noise may help with the general puttering waking you at night. They also make sleep headphones – I’ve not purchased but thought about it at one point so I could listen to audio books, but I wonder if they would also support a music alarm that only you would hear? DH and I are on decently offset schedules – off by about 2 hours. I’m the night owl. In the morning I hear his alarm every day but I can easily go right back to sleep. If I tossed and turned every morning for the last two hours we’d have to find a new system, but this works OK for us. We did some trial and error which I think is key for figuring out each person’s thresholds and what they can reliably sleep through, eg I can play an audiobook in the bath without waking him but a book on louder volume in the shower doesn’t work.
Anonymous
Thank you! Sleep headphones and white noise definitely seem like things to try.
Trish
Maybe he could go to bed with an eye cover?
Anonymous
Thanks! Worth a shot if he’s up for it.
NaoNao
I use soft noise-cancelling headphones and an eye mask to help me block out noise and sound. They make special sleeping headphone and mask combinations that wrap around the head and specifically designed to sleep with.
I would say have *him* look into an eyemask, they make great very fitted ones with “cups” for the eyes that stay put!
Anonymous
my husband and I have different schedules. I figure if I’m disturbed when he comes to bed, its not unreasonable to somewhat disturb him when I get up. So I have music wake me, and I don’t worry about him being woken by 5 minutes of music. There are worse ways to have his sleep disrupted than listening to a few minutes of music before he drifts back to sleep for another couple of hours.
Anon
I WFH permanently now, and I get up at the glorious hour of 8:45 AM as long as I don’t have an earlier meeting. Life is good for this night owl.
Thankfully, my kids are grown now.