5 Non-Helpful Tips for Aspiring Morning People

Dear Morning People,

Your tips suck!

For quite a while now I've been trying to be better about getting waking up early in the morning. I have a variety of reasons and motivations. I often end up running late because I oversleep. I'd like to have time in the morning to exercise and/or work on chores and activities around the house. By the time I get home after battling the traffic it's usually between 6:30 and 7, leaving me roughly 3 hours until my target bedtime. By the time I exercise, make, eat and clean up dinner, pack my lunch for the next day and give some sort of cursory effort to bringing order to the chaos of my home not only is it almost bedtime, but I'm whipped into a frantic frenzy. And that doesn't even factor in evening social activities.

I've done a lot of looking around for ideas, and frankly the so-called "tips" range from patronizing to stating the intended outcome/objective as a method to achieve itself. Here's what I mean.

5 Non-Helpful Tips for Aspiring Morning People

1. Get enough sleep. In my best-case scenario I'm tucking in around 9:30 (10 on most nights). That is a consistent 8 hours before my alarm goes off at 6 a.m. Should I really set my bedtime for 8 p.m.? Should I change straight into my pajamas from my work clothes? 
2. Skip the snooze button. If I actually jumped right out of bed when my alarm went off I could comfortably complete my morning routine with some fudge time for life fulfillment. But as soon as I hear sound from my alarm clock or phone my hand instinctively snaps out for a temporary reprieve. I know this is bad and a key cause of my problems, but telling me to stop doing something is not the same as telling me how to stop. I'll get up, walk across the room, hit snooze and climb right back into bed. That's a me problem, I understand, but nowhere in any tips I've seen about skipping snooze is there any information or advice about how to stop. It's kind of like telling someone with depression, "have you tried being happier?"
3. Exercise/be active as soon as you wake up: Again, that is the goal. But HOW DO I DO THIS? The entire reason I am trying to wake up at 5 a.m. and stop pressing the snooze button is precisely because I want to be active in the morning! What is the bridge between my eyes opening and being up, dressed and running around the neighborhood? Do I need an alarm that sets my bed on fire? 
4. Have a reward or special reason to wake up: In addition to setting goals to run and be active in the morning I've tried tempting myself with things like "if you are up and ready by ____ time you can stop for coffee on the way in." I've also started watching my favorite tv shows only on-demand. This means if I get up early the day after they air I can watch them in the morning. None of this seems to be effective. Maybe the biggest reward to my mind (and body) is sleep itself and my subconscious is unwilling to trade it for anything else. 
5. Eat/Drink effectively: Don't even get me started on this. I cut off my caffeine consumption by 3 p.m. For about six months I've been taking melatonin every night and for the last two I've been adding a cup of chamomile tea (yes, TEA! UGH!) 45 minutes to an hour before bed. According to my Fitbit I typically fall asleep in less than 15 minutes, and generally stay blissfully unconscious throughout the night. Yet morning is still zonk city. 

If you're hoping to Google your way to carpe-ing your diem forget about it. It's nothing but a bunch of morning people giving you reasons why you should want to wake up earlier and telling you things you already know. Maybe these bright rays of sunshine could use some tips just for them.

Three Tips for Morning People Writing Better 'Becoming a Morning Person' Tips.

1. Don't tell us what getting more sleep and waking up earlier is (going to bed earlier, getting X hours of sleep, getting out of bed right when the alarm goes off) tell us HOW TO DO THIS!
2. Stop mistaking descriptions of behavior (go for a run in the morning) with advice or tactics on how to develop said behavior. 
3. Tell us how to wake up our minds. Most "tips" revolve around making conscious decisions the moment you wake up. That requires consciousness. 

Solving Problems vs. Making a Difference

I recently had the chance to interview the physician of the year at our hospital. His interview came after talking to several colleagues and team members. Their comments featured consistent praise of his expertise, work ethic and leadership. They said things to the effect of "I don't know when he sleeps. He does all his work at a high level and still finds time to personally connect with everyone else and help them with what they need."

Talk about an inspirational leader. When we had the award recipient in the interview chair it seemed only natural to delve into this legendary drive and work ethic. After getting through the bulk of my interview questions I finally felt like it was appropriate to ask a self-indulgent question.

"How do manage to do everything you do?"

The answer started out in the gracious and magnanimous way you would expect from a high achiever. There was reference to family inspiration and a genetic disposition to working hard. He also acknowledged that his work/life balance might not match the average worker's ideal. But it was a little comment at the end that stuck with me.

"I think early in my career I focused a lot on trying to heal people, turn sickness to heath, and was frustrated. Now I focus more on creating positive interactions and view those experiences as successes."

As someone nearly void of any ability to heal a patient my overactive mind raced to understand what I had just heard. Hours later the best analogy I've been able to come with is the idea that this physician has stopped measuring success and fulfillment by problems solved and now focuses on positive experiences and interactions. 

Talk about terms I can relate to! It seems like everything about my job is problem solving. People come to me because they need to make groups of people do something they won't do unless I tell them. In this business these are called "calls to action," and they're generally presented to me with very specific (and often time or budget intensive) delivery tactics. As a creative, this is agony. On my worst attitude days it reduces me to a functionary. I try to give people exactly what they want as quickly as possible so they'll leave me alone and I can go back to my personal priorities and passions for our organization. The problem with this strategy is there's a line around the block of other people with other problems that can only be solved with my excruciatingly specific actions.

Another way of comparing the difference is task vs. purpose. Tasks are the actual things you do and functions you perform. Purpose is the big picture goal, philosophy or experience you advocate for.

In my own work I've recently started to shift the needle this direction. I've started to push back more, to ask questions to better understand how requested tasks relate to big picture strategies. I recently went to work on my email inbox and responded to over 50 long unread messages (I mark messages as unread if I haven't followed up on them yet). In many cases my responses were more about what I couldn't do with relation to specific tasks. It was a lightbulb moment for me when I realized that a timely "no" is more valuable than a delayed "no" or no response at all. No is not a failure. It's an opportunity to try something different.

But there's still one part I don't understand. The problems don't just go away. Is being liked more important than being good? Is making people feel good more important than giving them what they want or need? Does making people happy magically make all their problems go away?

Maybe it's like the world-renowned tagline from the cinematic epic Bad Golf Made Easier. "I don't play golf to feel bad. I feel bad golf, but I feel good." The difference is, the PGA doesn't hand out checks based on who had the most fun each week, and the most manic worker will still get a pink slip if they don't perform.

So where does the balance come? Task and purpose don't (and shouldn't) be mutually exclusive. But how do positive interactions correlate to the bottom line?

Sometimes a lack of wisdom is frustrating. It feels like I'm just supposed to happily fail or flounder long enough and that will somehow transform into success eventually.