Become a Morning Person

am about mm hmm. Don't get him. And then from the time I get my son out of bed to the time I leave for work, everything kind of falls apart. I you go, that's bro all right, a morning shore and I have about twelve minutes to get ready if I want to leave them time trying to script once breakfast you extream light peez on while it thank you? All right? If I for real, everyone, I think I

can do a lot better. So in this episode, I'm going to try to completely rehabilitate my mornings with the help of some expert advice, some scientific research, and some gadgets. Welcome to Works for Me. M Hi, I am at a greenfield and I'm Francesca Leaping. Every week on Works for Me, we test out solutions to our productivity problems and find out what tips and tricks will work for you. This week, it's Francesca's turn to fix her life. Francesca, what problem are you trying to solve? For years? I

have wanted to totally fix my mornings. They're just kind of broken. I don't naturally get up super early, and I also just don't use my morning time well. I go from dragging my feet and wasting time to running around in a huge tree. By the time I leave the house, I'm usually flustered, running a few minutes late, and still a little groggy. I mean, that doesn't sound super and usual for a morning. No, it's probably not,

But that doesn't mean it's good. And if there's one thing I know, it's that mornings are the most important part of the day. You read about the fabulous mornings of powerful people constantly. All of the world's influencers get up super early and start maximizing their time right away.

The morning routines of Microsoft CEO Satia Adela, vog editor in chief and a win tour former PEPSI CEO Indrenus, and dozens of others start as early as four am and include everything from vigorous exercise to gratitude and meditation exercises to personal journaling. I really do have dozens of examples like this. Yeah, it's true. I come across articles

about this all the time. Everybody seems to want to know the secret to success, and they think the answer can be found in the early hours of the day. It's like mornings are meant to be optimized, and if you're not doing it, you're a lazy loser who will never amount to anything. These people definitely exist to make you and me feel terrible about Do you feel like

you're a morning person? I guess I would fall into the morning person category in the sense that I don't have trouble getting up early and I like the mornings, but I'm definitely not doing anything to get anything out of them. Like I have figured out the last possible minute I can wake up and get to work. I don't even need breakfast at home or have coffee. I

just get up as late as possible and leave for work. Well, it sounds like you haven't been indoctrinated by this like culture of mornings that I have, and I am a morning person. Maybe I should be taking advantage of that. Well, maybe morning people are just naturally more successful. I'm so successful. The important thing I wanted to change wasn't just getting up earlier. I wanted to have a good, effective, more ning.

I wanted to be like those morning people. Okay, so you want to get up earlier and do lots of productive stuff in the morning every day. So what's your plan of action? So I didn't just want to pick a morning person and imitate them. So I went looking for a morning wake up routine that was actually grounded in research, and I found this system. It's called rise Up. Rise Up is actually an acronym for six things that

you can do every morning. It's a series of steps that make you wake up quickly and stay awake and alert. It was developed by Alison Harvey, a Berkeley professor of psychology who runs a sleep and mood research lab. I'm going to describe the acronym, which is kind of a weird one. The R stands for refrain from snoozing. The I stands for increased initial activity for the first hour. The S stands for shower or babe, which I think is pretty standard. The E stands for expose yourself to

sunlight even looking at a window is fine. The you stands for upbeat music, and then there's P which stands for phone a friend. I think the idea is that talking to somebody helps trigger your brains, energy, chemicals or something. So I decided to try this for six weeks. This is a lot of steps to do for somebody who self proclaimed doesn't like doing things in the morning. Also, increase in ishal activity. What does that mean exercise? I think like just be active first thing in the morning.

Like I said, this acronyms is not a good acronymis none of the letters. You really have to force them into making them mean what they're supposed to be. It sounds like a robot like increase initial activity. Yes, yeah, it's a lot, but this is what science says you have to do. So how will you know that you've succeeded in fixing your mornings after doing this experiment? This morning makeover will be a success if I can get through all of the rise up steps every day for

a week. By the way, the developers of this system are actually careful to say you don't have to do every step every day and you can adjust it as necessary. But I wanted to get the absolute most out of my morning. So I committed to doing every single step. Okay, rise up. As I said, is six steps that you're supposed to do every morning. I'll describe how I did on each step in order. Step one refrain from snoozing.

This step sounds easy, it's basically just getting out of bed, but I found myself failing at it all the time. Let me tell you. You can know in your head that pressing snooze is just not a great plan, that it reinforces a sense of failure first thing in the morning, and that sleeping in eight minute increments is not actually RESTful. You can know that in your rational brain. But my rational brain is nowhere to be found. It's as I am, it's only lizard brain saying sleep more. I thought about

people who have conquered that lizard brain. People who have to get up crazy early for work, like morning newscasters. Not only do they have to be at work early, they have to be able to sound bright and awake like this, good morning. I'm Noel King. If you've ever done CPR training, you know that that's Noel King, host of NPRS Morning Edition, and her morning is insane. She gets up at one thirty a m. And she has to be on the air as early as four thirty am.

I spoke with her a few months ago after she got up her shift. I asked her about that feeling when you get up, that going back to sleep just for a few minutes would be the sweetest thing. Ever. Noel explained how she convinces herself to get out of bed. I will say that in the morning, I am a little mean to myself. I acknowledge that I feel like I don't want to do something, and then I hear a different voice, which sounds an awful lot like my

mom's sometimes saying, but you don't have any options. There's how you feel, which is your problem, and then there's the day that you have to get done and and if you don't do it, you make that everybody else's problem. So you have to really, truly, I know this sounds insane, but you have to condition yourself to divorce what you're feeling, which maybe like crap, from what has to get done, and you have to tell yourself you don't have a choice. You can't stay in bed. It's funny to imagine her

having this internal monologue with herself every morning. I know. I mean she said she's naturally a morning person, but I mean, no amount of being a morning person is going to make you want to wake up at one thirty, which is just such a crazy time. And so I thought she was like the perfect person to ask, Okay, how do you grapple with that actual feeling? Because I don't want to hear about how successful people like spring

out of bed and start exercising. Like, I get it, you're great, But if you don't naturally want to do that, how do you fight those urges that are really strong? Yeah? I think I relate to this a little. You know, and your alarm goes off on the morning, you do have to there's something inside of you. Do you do it? Do you press snews? Are you a snoozer? I'm not a sneezer. So you just say, Becca, it's time to get started. I've calibrated, and I just know how bad

that feels. It's just well, it feels bad, but first it feels good. It's like a drug. I knew I needed to get serious about kicking what I have come to realize as a snooze addiction. So I doubled down on the R part of rise up. I started using a special wake up light that mimics a natural sunrise. The one I have is made by Phillips. It retails for about a hundred dollars and it slowly brightens your

room so you just glide out of sleep. And I downloaded a free sleep cycle app which is supposed to detect when your sleep cycle is at its lightest and that's when it's easiest for someone to wake up. And how did that all go? Well? After a little trial and error and a lot of practice, I did manage to get better at waking up without snoozing. The sleep cycle app never correctly guessed when I was lightly sleeping,

so I just deleted it from my phone. In fact, I got rid of my phone alarm altogether and just started using the wake up light as my only alarm. It comes with a little gentle bird song. I also put the wake up light way on the far side of the room so that it was harder to go back to sleep after I turned it off, and I just tried to remember Noel King's wise words. You don't

have any options. There's how you feel, which is your problem, and then there's the day that you have to get done, and if you don't do it, you make that everybody else's problems. I just sort of trained myself to wake up like a robot and dive right into my yoga routine. More about that yoga routine after this break. Yeah, okay, so we're on step two now exercise. Well not technically. It's the eye and rise up, which stands for increased

initial activity. I interpreted this as fifteen minutes of vigorous yoga right after getting out of bed. So on day one, after making it out of bed, I did my level best to follow along with the yoga video I found on YouTube. Hold your plank, breathe and then going side to side, did you want hit at a time to the most working away signing intense. I don't have to physically touch the brown come close to using the strengthen, but it's a hard, very hard coming down to low plank.

Thank you guys so much. I'll see you against soon. Bye. All right, all right, that was the increase initial activity step, and I will say it moments turning. Got like fifteen minute yoga session. I felt wide awake most of it. I felt like a zombie, but definitely definitely something about getting the blood pumping, but I guess you can lose

it pretty quickly. You don't sound away at all. And also that woman's soothing voice would really trigger me out, especially because she was doing stuff that was so hard. She was like this beautiful woman on a beach in Costa Rica Mure. Yeah, I mean, I think that was something I learned right away. You can feel really awake and then go back to feeling really tired and dragging, like it is in a state you maintain all morning.

But despite how I sound when I'm struggling through those fifteen minutes, I ended up really getting into the morning yoga. After a week or two, I extended my fifteen minutes to thirty five and then forty five minutes, and I even found a way to create my own little personal yoga studio. I started sneaking out of my apartment every morning at around six am, climbing up five flights of stairs in my pajamas and doing yoga on my roof deck.

I'm really impressed that you did forty five minutes of exercise. Sounds like you're like really getting a lot out of it. Yeah, fifteen minutes felt kind of like a trick. Like just a way to get through this step. But forty five minutes feels legit. That feels like a real amount of exercise. That's almost a class you pay for. Yeah, but if I was nailing the refrain from snooze and exercise steps, I was not doing as well with all of the others. Next up on the list is s for shower or bathe. Okay,

I guess I was nailing that too. I did shower every day. I don't think most people need to be advised that this wakes you up. But if you're not normally a morning shower, I recommended, Oh, it's the key to awakeness in the morning. I don't know how other people do it. A lot of people have cracked that, I feel like, But anyway, great life hack. Good for me. I showered every day. But the next step the E in rise up. He does not stand for exercise. It

stands for expose yourself to sunlight. Sunlight is scientifically shown to boost your mood. So I get the rationale. But I spent time trying to really do this right, like standing on the little terrorists of my apartment while I ate my breakfast, and it always felt like busy work. I couldn't feel myself waking up while I did it, and just took time. And then there's you for upbeat music. I couldn't even decide what counted as upbeat music. That

doesn't really sound that complicated. But so, yeah, what was your struggle? Well, my first thought when I think of upbeat music isties were them and blues. That's sort of my go to good mood genre. I played songs like this Solomon Burke's Cry to Me in the beginning when Your Baby. But as I started listening closely, I realized it's all sort of mid tempo, not necessarily fast music, so I switched it out for stuff that's more high tempo and contemporary. This is the Semi Circle song by

the Goat. But then I thought, maybe upbeat actually means happy, Like even that super high energy stuff had sort of a melancholy vibe. Anyway, I finally realized I was doing this wrong. The answer to what upbeat music is is obvious. Alex, Alex Dumb, It's Alex, That's I like it by Cardi B Cardi B right Like, That's the answer to everything. That was definitely the most energetic I would say of

that theory. I also think that you could probably play all of them and it would be okay as long as you Philip Well, I think that was the thing. It was like for me, I listened to music that suits my mood, and it's hard for me to get into music if it's not where I'm at already in

my head. So it was just like, I mean, I know people pick like playlists for their running in the gym and stuff, but I just wasn't finding like I was getting hung up obviously on the definition of the beat music, but I just wasn't like it wasn't translating into my brain as like now it's time to wake up and be awake. I was just sort of like I kind of would rather be listening to the news right now. Oh interesting, But I like the Cardi B But I don't think you could listen to that every day.

Well that's it. It's like every day, are you gonna want to listen to up beat music? And that was my challenge. So yeah, that was one step I was having a weird amount of trouble with. And the final step, p for a phone A friend was another major hurdle. Finding somebody to call every morning. Was tough. I even called you, remember how are you? How are you? I'm right awake in the background. Yeah, he wants the he wants me to sing. Yeah, yeah, yoh was rising up.

What how is it? It's good. It's like a lot of steps, but it's not helpful to you because it's not helpful to me. Yeah, it's not supposed to be helpful to you. Do you remember that phone call? I do. I was tired, I was before my alarm off. You sounded like most people say that when I called them in the morning. Nobody wants to get a phone call

at seven am, but you sound super awake. Yeah. By that time, I definitely was like raring to go, And I just always found myself at the end of the morning like like, oh god, I gotta do the phone call step and then scram link to think of somebody or calling you or calling our producer, tofer like calling my mom, who granted is the only person who is actually happy to hear from me at seven am. I have no idea who I would call it seven am. Yeah, I think that step. I mean, that was just like

a huge logistical challenge. So even measuring how how well it works to wake me up like it was too hard. Yeah, who calls people anymore? My biggest problem with this whole routine was time. Even though I was getting up a lot earlier than I had before, doing all of these things was taking so long that I still ended up feeling rushed. I mean, this thing has six steps. I still needed to fit in the boring life stuff that

just has to get done in the morning. I'm getting ready now, putting my make a bun, combing my hair, and I haven't officially done exposing myself to sunlight. He's feeling a little more urgent about my normal morning routine than I am. About to rise up steps. I just can see how quickly this falls apart when you don't have, like I don't know, six hours in the morning to do whatever you want. These steps were supposed to set me up to become the ultimate morning person, but I

still didn't feel that way. Were they the wrong steps? I asked an expert, So the tasks that are best to do in the mornings are the ones that would be difficult to do in the rest of the day. Laura Vanderkam is an expert on time management, and she's researched the best way to spend your morning using real data. For one of her studies, she asked successful people to keep time diaries, and she found that a lot of high achievers did things like exercise, meditation, and creative writing

in the wee hours. I asked her why I didn't feel more efficient or productive or less frazzled after making all this effort. Was I doing too much? Not enough? It's really more about saying, well, what would help me start my day on a positive note um? And is there something I would really like to be doing in my life that I am not fitting into the rest of my schedule. So you know, no, you don't have to wake up at four am and run a half marathon, meditate for an hour, you know, cook a breakfast that

features kale and Keene Watt like. You don't have to do that sort of thing, as long as it is something that creates a creates positive momentum for your day and makes you feel like you have accomplished something before you go into that hamster whale of everything else you have to do. Talking to Laura made me finally realize it's not about doing the right things for someone else, and it's not even about doing a set number of things.

It's an enough to find one thing that you aren't likely to do during the rest of your day that makes you feel good. For me, it happened to be exercise. Doing it on the roof that actually felt like me time. I just finished during a half hour of yoga, so I'm up here with the planes flying overhead, and it was awesome. I don't know, just doing yoga and being able to look up at the sky and watch the sky change. It's a really beautiful day. I'm totally alone

up here on the roof deck. I'm sure my baby is crying downstairs in our apartment, but it's not my problem right now. I could happily spend another half hour just sitting up here looking at the sky. I really feel like I genuinely am taking time for myself. It really felt like self care. Not to sound new age and goofy about it, but it just helped me understand what's great about mornings. You really do have the morning

all to yourself. Like if you get up early enough, you can walk through your apartment building in pajamas, you can be on your roof doing downward dog and not worry about anyone else seeing you. I didn't need to meditate or write the Great American novel or recite affirmations. And I also didn't need to necessarily stare at sunlight or listen to a particular kind of upbeat music. I had found my thing, or at least one thing, exercise, so I just kind of let the other steps go.

So you don't youth news again, No snooze I've stuck to, or resisting snooze or refraining from snoozing. I h I have found that that's like super useful in kind of setting the tone for the rest of the morning. It's like the first thing that you do in the day. So when you fail at it, it's kind of hard to feel successful at anything you do after. Do you feel good about your mornings now that you do all? I the acrony, I just right. I don't rise up? Um,

yeah I do. I think I needed to get over my obsession with this idea that you need to pack your mornings with all of this good stuff. Um. I think I was doing some stuff wrong that didn't make me feel good. And for me, the best part is not necessarily feeling rushed and also just realizing that you know as a mother of a child, Like, there is actually time in the day that I kind of unlocked

and I didn't really realize was there. And I'm using it for something that I haven't been making time for regularly, which is exercise. M H. I got chills when you sat unlocked. Happy for you. But your goal was to have one week where you did the steps every day. Did you achieve your goal? Becca, I did not, sad face. There was always at least one step that I didn't execute perfectly, or I just skipped altogether. It was usually

phone a friend. I got so frustrated with this step that I expanded the definition of phone to include any form of communication. So sending someone an email counted if you go by that definition. Maybe I did succeed. That does not count. That's not no talking involved. Maybe talking to another human I would count. I felt so bad always about missing it that I started lying to myself to make myself think I was doing it all, but

I really I couldn't. And I also didn't transform my whole life through positive mornings, like I haven't seen a big leap in my productivity. Nobody has given me a big raise or promotion since I started doing this experiment, but I did seem to find time in the morning that's only for me, which felt like a magic trick. And after exercising even a little in the morning, I feel like I've notched a win early and that definitely has a knock on impact on the rest of my day.

I've been keeping up with it most days. I wake up at five forty five now, don't press news, and I do yoga for thirty five to forty five minutes before the little one wakes up. That is incredibly impressive. Thank you. I don't do that well. Maybe if you'd had to put yourself through a rigorous training program just to stop pressing snooze, you'd be aiming for a little more. Okay, so technically you didn't succeed, but your morning sounds a

lot more productive and efficient than they did before. So after your struggle, what do you think about this whole cult of mornings? Yeah, I still feel inadequate compared to the four am rising CEOs, and I don't think I buy though anymore, that there's such a thing as a perfect morning. But I do understand now that getting motivated and active early really does trigger something good and I

think that's why so many successful people use their mornings. Well, would you say that there are things that everyone can do to improve their morning, or is the lesson that it's really up to you to improve your mornings. I do think that there are some universal things about this. The snooze button really is the enemy of a good morning. But if you have a snooze habit, you can conquer it.

It just might take some hardcore conditioning. And also, you can't have a good morning without first having a good night. I heard that from Noel King and from Laura Vanderkamp, and it's totally true. I go to bed at around nine thirty every night, and if I didn't, my mornings would be miserable, no matter how much discipline I have. So you've become one of the morning people that we love to hate. You're someone who can now go on TV and write about seller about your perfect morning, and

you can do it in the morning. I really have achieved it. All Next week on works for me, Pecca is going to get focused and basically sitting there staring at the page and not concentrating thinking about other things. I'm gonna call this fail. Thank you for listening to another episode of Works for Me. If you like the show, please head on over into Apple Podcasts or wherever you

listen to podcasts to rate, review and subscribe. And you can also find all of our shows and are very cool illustrations on bloomberg dot com slash Works for Me. Most importantly, tell your friends to listen. Are there any problems in your work life that you're dying to fix? We would love to hear about them. Call us and leave us a voicemail at two one to six one seven Zoe and we might use it on the air, or you can tweet at us I'm at Francesco today

and I'm at our Greenfield. The show was hosted and recorded by Me Francese Belivie and Me Back to Greenfield. The show was produced by Tobrah Forhez Jordan's Spear did the illustrations on our show page and franchise Kalivie is Bloomberg's had a podcast. See you next week.