Do you need your beauty sleep?

How to become an early riser

Participant: Steve Pavlina

Hypothesis: That becoming an early riser is just a matter of will power and clever tricks

Summary: Steve is a master of the weird-ass yet mysteriously practical experiment. In this series of posts (1, 2 and 3), he documents the way he turned himself from a night-owl to a morning person. In short, his strategy is this:

1. rehearse setting your alarm, lying down and getting up the second it goes off
2. use self-talk to tell yourself there is no arguing with the alarm clock
3. go to bed whenever you are tired
4. get up at the same time every day, including weekends

And simple as it sounds, it really works. I gave this a 30-day-trial myself, and it cured me entirely of my need (or even desire) to sleep to midday. Whether getting up that early is something you want to do to yourself—well that's a different question.