How to stop hitting snooze and wake up early by making one small change

I can now officially call myself a morning person! I made one small change to my environment in order for me to stop hitting snooze and start waking up early and it has had the biggest flow-on effect that has ultimately changed the way I live. Who knew that such a small change to your environment could make one of the most difficult habits to form, automatic.

I moved my phone charger to the power plug at the end of my bed.

Sounds simple doesn't it, and I'm sure you've heard of this before. But have you tried it? Because I did, and not only do I get up early every day, this change has so many added bonuses that I wasn't expecting:

1. Less screen time at night
2. More time for reading and journaling
3. New consistent bedtime
4. I now have a nighttime routine
5. I now have a morning routine

I am currently studying and working part-time which means there are f0ur days a week when I don't have to get up at any specific time. What started to happen, as does for a lot of people on their weekends, is my alarm would be set for later than normal and I would hit snooze over 10 times and delay the start of my day. This was especially the case for me because my to-do list at the time was one task:

Thesis

Now if you have read any of my other posts or know anything about how to be productive and get motivated, having one giant project as a single to-do on a list is the opposite way to get things done...

Because of this, I found myself delaying the start of my day until as late as 10:00 am some mornings. What was crazy at the time, was that I believed I had no time to do anything other than my thesis. I put off seeing my family and friends, I stopped exercising, I didn't do any of my hobbies or work on my side projects. All I thought I had time for was my thesis. If I wasn't working on my thesis consciously, I felt guilty. So procrastination on social media and YouTube were 'okay' because this was 'out of my control'.

Needless to say, this three-month period in my life was one of the worst. I wasn't looking after myself mentally or physically. As I neared the end of the trimester, I realised that I wasn't even getting up until 10:00 am most mornings anyway. Then I would slowly have breakfast and make my way to the computer to actually start working on my thesis by around 11:00 am.

The first step toward change

With this in mind, my partner and I decided to go on a walk one morning down at our local beach. We woke up at 8:00 am, drove 10 mins down the road to the beach, went for a decent walk along the sand, came home, had breakfast and it wasn't even 9:45 am!

This was revolutionary and I realised how many mornings I had wasted by believing all I could do in a day was my thesis and nothing else. So, after the trimester ended I vowed to start getting up earlier and to utilise my mornings on my days off. You can imagine what started to happen. Willpower during the day is one thing. Willpower in the morning when the bed is so cozy and the outside world is so freezing... is another.

During the uni break I hosted a Half-Year Reset workshop, and waking up early was one of the habits I reflected on. I decided that the main reason I wasn't getting out of bed was that it was so cold (!) and the five steps to my closet to get warm clothes was five too many. I had the idea to check and see whether our heater could be set on a timer to start in the mornings. Low and behold, it could do just that! I was so excited that I immediately sent a message to everyone from the workshop to tell them about my ground-breaking revelation.

Trial and Error

But as my previous post Life is Trial and Error will highlight, it's not always that easy. What ended up happening is that the heating would turn on automatically in the morning. but by the time I was wanting to get up, I was so warm that I was even sleepier! The heat was way too much as my side of the bed was positioned directly under the heating vent.

So my first attempt at making this change failed. But the important thing was that I wasn't going to give up just because the first thing I tried wasn't the solution!

The Solution

Two weeks later I was talking with one of my friends and she mentioned that an environmental change that she was going to make was to keep her phone on her dresser so she would get up early in the mornings to go to the gym. It didn't take much convincing for me to give this a go. I had heard of this hack so many times in the past but I had never actually tried it myself. I hadn't had a strong enough reason why I wanted to form this habit, in order for me to try it out. So that night I made the change.

I moved my charger to the power plug at the end of my bed.

I set my alarm to go off at 7:15 am because I had decided that I wanted around 8 hours of sleep and I would be aiming to go to hopefully be asleep before 11:00 pm.

The next morning I woke up to the alarm and jumped out of bed to go and turn it off, not wanting to disturb my partner. That was the key. I really hate when alarms go for longer than 2 seconds, and at the same time, I also don't want to wake someone else up who isn't choosing that as their wake-up time.

It's still working!

I have kept my phone plugged in on the other side of the room for almost a month now and it has made all the difference! I know because there have been multiple days throughout this month where the alarm has started to go off and I have forgotten that it's on the other side of the room and I know that I wouldn't have got up with pure willpower if the snooze button had been sitting within arms reach.

This has been one of the easiest changes I have ever made and has not failed me once. Even on days when I'm not feeling the best, I can go and open up all the blinds and sit out on the couch to journal, meditate or watch YouTube. As long as I keep my sleep and wake times consistent, I am happy.

Added bonuses

There have been three added bonuses since making this change that I hadn't even thought of that make this change even more rewarding!

1. Less screen time at night

Due to the fact that my phone charger is now out of reach, I have to plug my phone in before I jump into bed. This means that from when I decide to go to bed (around 9:30 - 10:30 pm) this is dedicated no-screen time.

2. More time for reading and journaling

Now that I have dedicated no-screen time, I no longer spend hours going down a YouTube rabbit hole or editing my to-do list 100 times before bed. Instead, with only my journal and books on my bedside table, I have so much more time to journal and read more books. These are two habits that I've been meaning to cultivate, so the fact that they are collateral from this other change I have made is amazing!

3. New consistent bedtime

Due to the fact that I am now forced to wake up at the time my alarm is set in the morning (7:15 am), this made the concept of a nighttime routine more of a necessity than it had been in the past. Previously it didn't really matter what time I went to bed because I could just hit the snooze button a billion times and continue dreaming until I had more sleep. This was no longer an option. So I now go to bed at the same time each night to get around 8 hours of sleep. This is the same for both workdays and days off!

4. I now have a nighttime routine

Due to the fact that my phone is like another organ and I struggle to live without it, putting my phone on the other side of the room is actually more of a struggle than I thought it was going to be. It means that I have now introduced a notebook on my bedside table where I can jot down any thoughts that came to mind and I can enter them into Notion the next day.

5. I now have a morning routine

Now that I started to get up at 7:15 am, which is more than an hour before I start work, I have more time in my day. But I didn't want to use up this time by scrolling on Instagram or watching YouTube, because these are autopilot actions I have been working on reducing in my life. So instead, a morning routine has formed in which I get up and turn my alarm off, change into my warm comfy clothes, brush my teeth and head out to the living room. I usually open up all the blinds to let the morning sun inside and sit down on the couch. I go into the headspace app and do the wake-up exercise and the first meditation for the day. I then answer my journal prompts and either go for a walk by myself or with my partner. This new routine means that I start every day with intention and regardless of what happens, I know that I did something for myself each morning.