October 22, 2016
Tips for Waking Up Far, Far Too Early
I’ve always been a stay-up-late kind of guy. Part of it is I don’t need a ton of sleep; 3 AM, 4 AM, I’d still be on the computer, then get four or five hours of sleep and be totally fine at work the next day. Now, I’ve always wanted to get more bass guitar practice in, but I always ran into a problem: in the evening, my brain wants to unwind from the day, not dedicate its depleted energy reserves to the kind of focus and perseverance it takes to do things like work on technique or learn a new piece of music. If I picked up my bass after work once a week, it was a lot. As of recent, I tried squeezing in some practice before work in the morning, which is great. My brain’s refreshed and I get to start the day doing one of the things I love most. Needless to say though, squeezing in 15 or 30 minutes of practice every so often isn’t going to make anyone the next Rocco Prestia, and after having a mind-blowing time at Catskill Chill music festival a few weeks ago I’ve been extremely motivated. I wanted to put hours a day towards playing, but I still had the evening motivation problems… which brings me to this past week.
I wound up going to sleep around 10 PM on Sunday and I can’t really sleep for longer than seven hours a clip, so I was awake before 5 AM. When I do wind up waking up early, I love it; morning twilight is so cool and there’s just this vibe of like the calm before the storm. I live in Jersey City, so I biked down to the waterfront and started getting some work done as the sun rose over New York City. It was glorious.
6:50 AM. sunrise is just 20 minutes away.
That night I said to myself, what I really want to do is get bass practice in in the morning, so screw it, I’m going to bed at 10 again and setting my alarm for 4:30 AM. I got three hours of extremely productive practice in and got to work on a bunch of stuff I’ve had on the back burner. I was hooked, it was exactly what I needed. So, every other day this week except one (on which I got home at 8:30 AM, but that’s another story), I’ve been up by 5:00 AM and got my three hours of practice.
If you have something you want to work on or if you just want to get a head start on your day, I highly recommend giving this a shot. I’ve heard a lot of people say they love getting started before everyone else because no one is around to bother them and they wind up being far more productive. I picked up a few tricks so far, so here’s what I’ve learned.
1. Do the menial BS the night before
No one wants to wake up and immediately have to do something they hate. You want to be setup so that when you wake up, you want to get up and start having fun accomplishing your goals. One example: my music stuff is in the same room as our three cats’ litter boxes, so before I go to bed I scoop the smelly crap out so I’m not smelling cat feces in the morning.
2. Have caffeine on your night stand
Dragging myself out of bed still exhausted is one of my least favorite things in the world, so I’ve been doing this for years. I’ll set my alarm for a half hour or so before I actually want to get up, and when it goes off down a coffee or Five Hour Energy Shot or something (honestly these days, don’t tell my mom but I usually just have caffeine and vitamin B12 pills and a big glass of water; more on the water in a bit). I’ll hit snooze, which I set for 10 or 15 minutes, and by about a half hour and a couple snoozes later I’m good to go.
3. Go to bed early
Obvious enough, but as a normally-stay-up-late guy myself, I want to give you some more motivation. By the end of the day, your brain’s tired, your body’s tired, and you’re not going to be as motivated or effective as you will be in the morning. Remind yourself of this before you start a new task or TV show or whatever, and just go to bed instead. The sense of accomplishment you’ll feel from your super-productive morning is far more rewarding. Can’t get to sleep? I find that reading a book can really help. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also stayed up all night reading really interesting books, but in this case I think it’s giving my already-tired brain enough of a workout to push it over the edge. I’ll read until the first time I drop the book or my phone, and by then I can usually go right to sleep (pro tip: don’t hold your phone over your face while reading in bed).
4. When you get up, avoid blue light and brightness.
You might be surprised by how much of an effect lighting has on humans. We evolved with the sun regulating our lives, and there’s been lots of interesting and surprising research on just how much this means. For example, seeking and avoiding light at the right times prior to a long flight can alter the body’s circadian rhythm and help with jet lag. I first heard about the specific idea of avoiding blue light at night from the program f.lux for Mac. The idea is that when the sun rises and sets it has to shine through more atmosphere which blocks more blue light, which of course is why the sun or moon on the horizon has an orange glow, so your body associates blue light with daytime. According to the research page on f.lux’s website:
“In 2012, the American Medical Association's Council on Science and Public Health made this recommendation: ‘Recognizes that exposure to excessive light at night, including extended use of various electronic media, can disrupt sleep or exacerbate sleep disorders, especially in children and adolescents. This effect can be minimized by using dim red lighting in the nighttime bedroom environment.’”
As someone who’s normally in front of a computer until late into the night, I found that I immediately loved f.lux’s orange-hued effect on my screen. I don’t have any sleep problems so I can’t speak to that, but it just feels better. I even got a program for my Android phone called Twilight that does the same kind of thing, which I have set to a redder hue for reading in bed.
I like to start my early morning by candlelight. It gives the atmosphere a kind of hallowed and timeless feeling, evoking images of a monk studying some ancient tome in a medieval monastery, which is appropriate: this is my time to do what I love, and my time is sacred. (DAYTIME IS THEIR TIME! THEIR TIME! THIS EARLY, IS OUR TIME! …) I’ll start off with practice that doesn’t require a lot of light, like finger exercises, and then as it gets lighter out move on to stuff that requires reading from a book and increase the lighting so I’m not straining my eyes. I got a warm-colored music stand light, too. I also avoid playing slap or anything louder until after 7:00 or so - remember to be considerate to those who are still sleeping at what to them is some ungodly hour!
5:48 AM. You can see f.lux at work on my computer.
5. Drink plenty of water when you wake up and throughout the wee morning hours.
Drinking a bunch of water first thing in the morning has several benefits, and will actually give you more energy. More accurately, being dehydrated will sap your energy, and while you were sleeping you weren’t taking in any water. Your body needs water for energy production, and just about everything else, so rehydrating first thing will allow your body to work its best. Caffeine will also dehydrate you further, so if you take me up on the caffeine when your alarm goes off idea definitely make sure you’re drinking plenty of water (this is another thing I like about caffeine pills, you can kill two birds with one stone).
So ya wanna dump out yo' trick bag…
Thanks to getting up at a time closer to when I used to go to sleep than when I’ve ever gotten up regularly, in the past four days I’ve gotten in nine hours of music practice. Not only can I feel the difference in my playing already, but I got a proper practice space set up, I’ve started learning a song I always wanted to play ( What is Hip, if you didn’t guess), made progress on a book on walking bass lines that I haven’t touched in like a year, started to really get to know the drum machine that I bought a few years ago, resumed working on the book on bass grooves that was why I got the drum machine, and went from being able to play a couple disjointed pieces of this sixteenth note slap groove to having the whole line down and getting it up to speed with a metronome. Most importantly, I demonstrated to myself that I can actually become a far better bass player while working a full-time job and doing all the other things I like to do. Somehow, I know there’s much more to this trip.