Just For Today Challenge, Day 3: Wake Up Earlier

Welcome to Day 3 of the Just For Today Challenge – 31 Days To A Better You. By now you have your list of 101 Things To Do Before You Die and you’ve also written down all of the important dates for 2010.

Today’s Challenge is super-easy and can be completed in less than a minute’s time.

Just For Today, set your alarm clock so that you wake up a 1/2 hour earlier than your normal time. Set the clock and forget about it for the rest of the day.

If you normally wake up at 7:00 am, set your clock for 6:30 am. If you get up at 8:00 am (lucky you!), then set your alarm for 7:30 am. If you normally get up at 5:00 am, well I’m not that much of a task master so you can set your alarm for 4:55 am while the rest of us set ours for 1/2 hour earlier than our normal waking time.

Just so you know you’re not alone in this, I’m going to do this Challenge, too. I used to get up at 7:30 am to be at work for 8:30 am, but I’ve been progressively getting up earlier and earlier in the last couple of weeks so that now my alarm goes off at 6:30 am. Just For Today, I’m setting my alarm clock to go off at 6:00 am.

Why wake up 1/2 earlier than normal? After all, you deserve your sleep and the bed is so warm and cozy. Believe me, I know. But Just For Today, wake up a 1/2 early and see the difference that that extra time makes in your day. Notice if you are more productive during the day because waking up earlier enabled you to plan for your day, or allowed you to actually eat a healthy breakfast, or you were able to enjoy your coffee and complete your morning routine unrushed. Maybe you got to work on time (for the first time) and you enjoyed that feeling.

You can add and extra 3.5 more hours into your week just by waking up a little bit earlier than normal.

What can you do with this extra time? How about exercising in the morning? Or meditating? You can start writing that novel you always wanted to write. You can even go back to your list of 101 Things To Do Before You Die and figure out how you would accomplish what’s on that list. You can start a home-based business during this extra 1/2 hour. Or you can write down your to-do list for the day and really focus on what you want to accomplish. If you really wanted to, you can even spend some extra quality time with your children before heading off to work

An extra 1/2 hour per day may not seem like a lot, but it adds up over the long-term (182.5 extra hours in a year). Just imagine what you could accomplish with that extra time!

Of course, you are free to wake up earlier than a 1/2 hour. You can do what I’m doing and progressively work to waking up and having an extra 2-3 hours each morning.

Waking up tomorrow a 1/2 hour earlier will be enough to complete Day 3 of the Challenge, but if you are really interested in becoming an early riser, read How To Become An Early Riser Part 1 and Part 2. Or you can just leave your alarm clock as it is and don’t change it back

Don’t forget to let me know how it goes by by leaving a comment about your experience of waking up earlier. Tomorrow I’ll have another Challenge for you to complete. This one might be a little more challenging.

For a list of all of the Challenges, see the Just For Today Challenge page.

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Tagged as: Just For Today, Productivity, Waking earlier