I’m a lark, but I just can’t get up; how can I decrease my sluggishness?

January 16, 2019 4:07 AM

I know I’m a lark – my physically and creatively most productive hours are 8am to noon-ish – but I still struggle with the whole ‘getting up’ bit of the day.

My OH leaps out of bed the moment the alarm goes, and is a functional adult within 20 minutes; I’d like to be more like them, but I always feel subjectively tired upon waking, can lie about in bed for hours snoozing, and take a good hour to reach full functioning in the morning (earlier I am clumsy, forgetful, generally woozy and slow). I have good sleep hygiene (no screens, no late caffeine etc) and there is apparently nothing wrong with my sleeping habits or patterns – I fall asleep easily, rarely wake in the night, and if I do wake I get back to sleep rapidly. I usually sleep for a fixed period of time and have a good and fairly regular routine. But even when I wake naturally I am sluggish. Coffee, cold showers, waking to gradual light & so on have done nothing.

Is this just one of those things, or is there anything I can try to get myself going a bit quicker in the morning?

posted by AFII to Health & Fitness (26 answers total)

Let's get the obvious things out of the way first. Here's mine:
Are you sure you're getting enough hours of sleep? As in, the number of hours that you personally need?
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:40 AM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I am an obnoxious (cheerful and productive) morning person on days that I wake up extra early. I need a bit of "processing" time- if you live with me, you'd say that I am not a morning person, but if you don't witness that first bleargh...

Also my early wake up days are also when I exercise- endorphins help.

In short, to be sparky at 8am, get up earlier than that.
posted by freethefeet at 4:46 AM on January 16, 2019 [5 favorites]

Best answer: I'm a morning person but still find getting up hard. Setting firm deadlines for leaving the house helps me not snooze too long, then exercise (the more the better) gets me proper awake and pumped for the day.
posted by JonB at 4:49 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

I love mornings and here are my suggestions:

Use a sleep calculator to make sure you're waking up at a good point in your sleep cycle. Sometimes a half hour on either side of the "sweet spot" can make the difference between "super groggy slug" and "bright and chipper"

Drink some ice water as soon as you can when you wake up. Don't bother with tepid dust-settled bedside water: get yourself up and get yourself some ice.

Might be an easy one, but I put my alarm on the other side of my house so I have to physically walk over to turn it off.

Shower at night before bed. The shower lulls me back into sleepiness rather than wakes me up. So I do my showering and hair stuff at night, and only wash my face in the morning. A cool compress on your face under the eyes can also give yourself a gentle wake-up.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 5:26 AM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

I can get out of bed when my alarm goes off, and be ready to leave the house within 25 minutes. That's mainly because my morning routine is very, very routine and can just do it on autopilot fairly smoothly. I can only get out of bed when my alarm goes off with some motivation - on normal days I would like to be in the office for 8.30 but 9 is fine and I hit snooze until the point at which I'd be in at 9. If I absolutely must be somewhere for 7am, then I will get out of bed when my alarm goes off. I just can't manufacture the urgency, it has to be real to me.

I 'solve' this by mostly setting a gentle waking up alarm for about half an hour before I need to get up on days when there's no genuine emergency. Effectively this treats me to a lie-in and relaxed wake up. On top of that, although I don't set an alarm, I get our of bed at about the same time on weekends as weekdays.

My partner, on the other hand, really likes to have 2 hours processing time before leaving the house or whatever. He can get ready in an hour, and I think I've seen him go from bed to the door in 40 minutes but the hour is not good for him, and the 40 minutes is for real emergencies. He just solves this by getting up 2 hours before he needs to leave the house. Or 1 hour if it's ungodly early.

We kind of make this kind of thing work for us by accepting our limitations and working with them.
posted by plonkee at 5:34 AM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

This has a lot to do with daylight for me. I'm definitely a morning person and getting up at 5:30 in June/July to go for a run is no problem, but in December/January it's much harder. Lately I've been experimenting with a wifi light bulb on a sunrise alarm that starts turning on 15-30 mins before I want to get up.
posted by miratime at 5:44 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

there is apparently nothing wrong with my sleeping habits or patterns – I fall asleep easily, rarely wake in the night, and if I do wake I get back to sleep rapidly.

Does your OH ever tell you that you've been snoring?

If so, get a proper sleep study done. Sleep apnea can happen whether you're aware of it or not, and if it's happening to you it's pretty much guaranteed to leave you groggy on waking.
posted by flabdablet at 5:48 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Just to forestall any similar queries: yes, I am definitely getting enough sleep for me. As I said in the post, I sleep for a pretty regular time period (I know I'm getting sick or am stressed when this alters) and have good sleep quality according to various assessments. I nearly always go to bed early enough that I do not need an alarm because my natural waking time is appropriate for getting to work. I don't snore, I'm not restless, and so on. This is definitely not me being objectively tired.
I've also tried early exercise but it's horrible (see also: clumsy, slow), and makes me feel fatigued rather than energised (vs. doing it 3 hours after I wake up, when I'm great at it and feel, if not energised, at least OK).
posted by AFII at 5:49 AM on January 16, 2019

Best answer: Are you motivated to get up? Like, specifically motivated? Or just a vague "I'd like to get going sooner" kind of motivation? Because what gets me up are these specific things: If I don't walk my dog before 5:30, there's too much traffic and he becomes unpleasant to walk, and if I don't get done walking him by 6:00 then I won't get to work by 7:30 and will have to park in the far lot and can't leave by 4:30 and won't be able to run errands to places that close at 5:00.

Also I will say that that 5 am walk does a really good job of waking me up once I get out there. But I would NEVER do it if it weren't for needing to get the poop out of my dog before work.
posted by HotToddy at 6:16 AM on January 16, 2019 [7 favorites]

Giving up coffee entirely helped me a lot with morning grogginess. (I've added back in green tea and, on really sleepy days, decaf coffee.) I know that everyone's response to caffeine is idiosyncratic, but it may be worth experimenting with.
posted by lazuli at 6:41 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Honestly, I just wake an hour early and build in the brain ramp up time. (Also cats are good at making sure you don't stay in bed.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 6:42 AM on January 16, 2019 [5 favorites]

The longer you lay about in bed, the harder it will be to get up. This is totally me. Also, when you get older, you will have to get up to pee. So you have that to look forward to.
posted by crw at 6:57 AM on January 16, 2019 [3 favorites]

How's your Vitamin D intake? I thought mine was OK, until it wasn't. A supplement made the difference between foggy-groggy fatigue and "Oh hello world, I'm awake!"
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 7:00 AM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

I used to struggle with this, and for me it turned out to be a pretty significant vitamin deficiency. In my case it was a whole suite of B vitamins, but it might be worth investigating whether you’re getting everything you need. It’s possible to be consuming enough vitamins but not processing them properly, so it might be worth getting your levels checked if nothing else seems to be making a difference.
posted by suri at 7:32 AM on January 16, 2019

Why do you think you're a lark? I've become one. I used to be whatever you are--whether that's a lark on methaqualone or just, like, an owl. Now I'm a lark, and the difference is radical and stark. I feel fantastic in the morning and am essentially deceased after the sun goes down. Maybe if you slept until nine your physically and intellectually creative time would be 10:00 to 2:00?
posted by Don Pepino at 7:54 AM on January 16, 2019

I am a lark confirmed by sleep study. Like miratime, sunlight wakes me up. If I have a dark room I’ll sleep until I’m no longer tired (generally in the early afternoon). If the sunlight is visible, then I get up far more easily at a reasonable hour. So far I’ve just kept the curtains open when I go to bed and that is enough. I haven’t looked into supplemental light.
posted by Monday at 8:18 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

1) Open curtains right away or ask my boyfriend to when he wakes up (he gets up earlier than me)
2) SAD lamp if the sun isn’t up early enough
3) Get up earlier than necessary for sure
posted by stoneandstar at 8:52 AM on January 16, 2019

Playing music, talk radio, or TV morning shows in the morning also hugely helps me wake up- I need to hear words in order to kick my brain into wake mode.

You mention cold showers- I find cold showers absolutely miserable. Hot showers wake me up about the same amount and suck much less, so you may be able to decrease your suffering there?

And yes to the classic advice of opening curtains to get daylight into your eyes. If it's dark out, at least stare into a (preferably incandescent) light source for a while, til your pupils constrict.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 9:13 AM on January 16, 2019

Is your bedroom warm enough in the morning? Several years ago, I used to berate myself for being a lazy person who hated getting out of bed -- until I realized that my bedroom was drafty and we never ran the heat overnight. I bought a small thermometer and confirmed that my bedroom was often just 60 degrees F in the morning and once it was as low as 55 -- no wonder I didn't want to get out from under my coverlet! I find it much easier to get up when my room is in the 62-65 degree range.
posted by clair-de-lune at 10:00 AM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yes, warm in the morning works. And if you can make it uncomfortably hot in the morning, that's even better. Back in my owl days I used to program heat or AC to blaze up the bedroom in the mornings and freeze the whole house at night to force me to go to bed in search of warmth. Now that I conk out and wake up at ridiculously early hours naturally, it's just freezing all the time. Evidently larks run hot.
posted by Don Pepino at 10:15 AM on January 16, 2019

Draw your feet up behind your buttocks. Do 100 pelvic rocks with kegel, and ehale hard on the exertion. This is less than one minute, the breath of fire aspect of this will awaken you fully. The added oxygen to your morning makes it great, your buttocks barely leave the surface of the bed. The motions and breath are fast. This is not a difficult exercise but easy to do before getting up. You will be wide awake.
posted by Oyéah at 10:41 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

It may seem counterintuitive but meditating in the morning really helps me. It definitely takes practice and you will probably fall back asleep sometimes, especially in the begininning. But it’s a good transition for me. When I’m too tired to get up and exercise at 6am I can usually drag myself out of bed to sit on the floor with my eyes closed for 10 mins. And when I’m done I rarely want to go back to bed. I’m relaxed but more awake. You can try some free apps for 3 minutes to get started and see how you like it, plus it has a bunch of other benefits.
posted by sillysally at 10:41 AM on January 16, 2019

Turn the volume way up and put the alarm in the bathroom. The alarm needs to be loud enough to be unpleasant. If you get up to hit the snooze, you're already out of bed and in the bathroom, and afterward you might as well go outside with some coffee that was automatically brewed.
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 10:44 AM on January 16, 2019

Seconding lazuli, I was exactly like you before I had to cut waaaay back on caffeine. If you drink caffeine as soon as you wake up, your body stops producing the hormones that would naturally wake you up at that time. Now that I've cut my caffeine addiction I can wake up at 3am and be fully functional in 10 minutes. Cut back on caffeine and start drinking it at 10am and 2pm - the times of day when you naturally feel a slump. The good news is that if you break your caffeine addiction and then switch to tea, you'll start feeling awake in the morning and feel just as energized after a cup of tea as you used to feel after drinking coffee.
posted by Penguin48 at 10:50 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I second the posters who say to get up earlier and build in some ramping-to-full-consciousness time. I LOVE my mornings - I do my NYT crossword puzzle with my favorite cup of tea, snuggled under a comfy blanket on the couch - and it makes such a difference to my day. I also make sure to open the curtains to let the sunlight in. The gradual transition to light makes a world of difference. Much better than flooding yourself with lamplight, which in my experience only made me groggier. I get up at least an hour earlier than I need to, for exactly this reason.
posted by widdershins at 11:11 AM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Hydrate. More.
posted by kate4914 at 2:00 PM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]