Motivation to wake up early

A few days back, when I had shared my time budgeting post on Instagram, someone had DMed me asking if I could share some tips to wake up early.

From my experience, the only tip that will help you to wake up early is to have the right motivation. I wake up by 6-6:15AM on a daily basis even during the present lockdown situation when there is no hurry to pack lunch boxes or get my daughter D ready for school. 

There are multiple reasons that motivate me to wake up early:

1. I'm a slow starter. I need some time to awaken my senses. I'm not the person who can just wake up and start checking off the items from my to-do list. I need 10-15 minutes to sip my morning chai in peace.
2. I don't like to talk for atleast an hour in the morning. It might seem weird but this is how I am 🙂 I need that quiet time to just be myself. On days when I wake up late or when D wakes up along with me, I find it incredibly challenging to answer her questions. I get irritated at times when I have to talk but I don't want to.
3. I get atleast a couple of hours of quiet time for myself in the mornings. Before the lockdown, I used to get more quiet time (4-5 hours) at home when K is in office and D is in school. I miss those quiet afternoons, when suddenly I get a random dose of inspiration to do some deep work, write an article, cook a new recipe, read a few pages or just lie down on the couch and relax after lunch. Such quiet afternoons are not possible these days. Without these quiet times, the days feel so rushed and the channels to express myself feel unattended.
4. Another option to get this quiet time is to grab a couple of hours in the night after D goes to sleep. But this would end up disturbing my sleep cycle. I want to align as much as possible to the circadian rhythm.
5. What I have also noticed is that if I miss my morning time for Yoga practice, I'm not allocating any time during the rest of the day. A simple 30-min Yoga practice makes a load of difference to how my day progresses.

Motivation comes through observation of our own self - What we want, how we want to start our day, our priorities, our reactions when those priorities are not met and how we express ourselves as an individual (apart from the varied roles we perform throughout the day).

Tips like "keep an alarm 15 minutes before your usual time", "don't snooze", "keep your alarm at a distance where you have to walk and switch it off" are tactical. Until and unless there is enough motivation to wake up early, these tips wouldn't really work. Speaking from a personal experience 🙂