I Tried the 5am Wake Up Challenge for 30 Days
Between work, volunteering, blogging, working out, cleaning the
house, making food, hanging out with family and friends, and
dare I say relaxing/sleeping, I constantly feel like there simply
are not enough hours in the day. So when I saw multiple people
on TikTok posting videos about waking up at 5am I decided to
give it a try as well. I mean a lot of successful people claim that
waking up early has been extremely beneficial to them so I thought
maybe if I did it too I would become the next Bill Gates (or if nothing
else at least a better functioning and more organized adult lol).
Read about my experience below!
.
.
THE WHY
.
I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a morning person anymore.
When I was younger I had absolutely zero problems waking
up early, but now every day seems to be a struggle whether I am
waking up at 5am or 8am. The sad part is that I don’t even
stay up that late. I’m usually already in bed by 10pm because I am
definitely NOT a night owl. My bed is just too dang comfy I guess!
Lol At least I don’t wake up all cranky so I guess
for anyone that happens to be around me in the morning that
is a nice blessing. Lol However, I still knew this challenge
was going to be a real struggle.
.
So why do it if I knew I was going to hate every minute
of it? Well….here are my reasons:
.
-I like to challenge myself.
.
-Waking up at 5am would give me time to workout before work, almost
ensuring I get a workout done EVERY DAY.
.
-It would allow me to have more free time in the evenings.
.
-I could work on the blog before work and make my
posts early in the hopes of greater viewership.
.
-Gives me more time to wake up and prepare myself for the day.
.
All pretty good reasons if you ask me. Lol
.
PREPARATION
.
Before I started the challenge I created a list of goals I wanted
to accomplish each morning before it was time to
start getting ready for work at around 6:30am.
.
.
It certainly wasn’t a huge list, but if I could get all that done I knew
I would start my day off feeling uber productive and maybe even
feel less stressed and have some free time later in the day.
.
I also made a new nightly list of things to do to try and make waking
up at 5am easier and just overall make my life seem
like it is more put together. Lol
.
.
I will admit that there were many nights I definitely did not get
everything done, but at least I had some type of a guide. (After I finished
this 5am challenge I decided to still keep this to-do list for my
evenings and now I have really found a good system that allows me
to actually get it all done almost every single night! Wooo!)
.
ACCOUNTABILITY
.
I knew that if I was going to be successful in this challenge I
needed to find a way to hold myself accountable so in order to
do that I filmed different parts of my morning and made my own
5am wake up challenge TikTok videos. Definitely won’t be winning
any cinematic awards, but they did help me continue with the
challenge and also served as video journals of my experience.
.
.
I also did try to keep track of my mornings, however I fell behind after about nine days. *face palm* lol
.
MY TIPS FOR WAKING UP EARLY
.
Have a plan or something scheduled for the next
morning to give you a reason to get up.
-If there was a day where I didn’t have something scheduled that
I wanted to accomplish I just wanted to drift right back asleep and
usually spent the majority of my free time laying in bed on TikTok.
.
Set more than one alarm.
-When you are just getting into the routine of waking up earlier it
is pretty easy to sleep through that first alarm. I had one alarm set
for 4:45am and then another one set at 5:00am and finally one
set at 5:15am. 98% of the time my phone told me I missed my
4:45am alarm so it’s a good thing I had multiple ones set.
.
Don’t hit the snooze.
-This is probably the hardest thing. However, once you hit the
snooze it is so much easier to fall back asleep and when you
do it will then make waking up so much harder than it
would have been if you just got up right away.
.
Place your phone out of arm’s reach.
-Plug in your phone across
the room and make yourself have to get out of bed and
walk over to it to turn off the alarm.
.
FINAL THOUGHTS
.
What I Enjoyed:
- Having more time in the mornings to get things done
.
- Waking up early made me feel more productive and therefore
more ready to tackle the rest of my day.
.
- It made going to bed even easier than before as my body
was naturally tired at around 9 or 10pm.
.
What I Didn’t Enjoy:
- Waking up before the sun.
Sure it was nice to get to watch the sunrise, but waking up while
it was still dark outside really made it difficult for
me to want to get out of my bed.
.
- It was ALWAYS hard to wake up.
One thing I noticed throughout this entire challenge
was that it never once was easy to wake up at 5am.
.
Soooo will I be continuing to wake up at 5am? HECK. NO. Lol Sure it
was an interesting experience, but I just felt waaay too tired
and run down throughout this challenge and there wasn't a big enough
increase in productivity to make that worth it for me. Now, with all that being said, if
there is a day where I know I will have a full evening there is a
better chance I will take the opportunity to wake up early to at least
work out, but otherwise I think I am sticking to my
normal wake up time of about 6am.
.
.
What time do you wake up in the morning? Are you a morning
person or a night owl? Will you be trying this challenge?
Let me know in the comments!
.
.
.