7 reasons why waking up early is good for you

Waking up early can allow you to meet your fitness goals, eat breakfast before starting your day, get to work early, or simply allow you to be the boss of your time—rather than the other way round. Here’s why waking up early can do wonders for you.

1. Enjoy peace and quiet

Wake up early in the morning to find hours of peace and quiet carved out just for you. Before members of your family wake, before you start receiving work emails or phone calls, before you launch yourself into your day—enjoy at least an hour to do anything that you want to do or do nothing at all.

May be you needed time to start working on ideas for a second career that you have been putting off for long. Or you want to just sit and journal your thoughts uninterrupted—first thing in the morning. Or may be you just want to step outdoors and take a quiet walk in the park. Here’s your chance.

A paper published in the journal Emotion shows that young adults and older people who were early to wake had a more positive disposition toward life. Even though the effects of waking early on older people were better, young and old, both showed improvement.

2. De-clutter your brain

Morning can be that time of the day when you de-clutter your brain and meditate. Neuroscientist Sara Lazar has studied how meditation can change the human brain and help people lead happier lives, fight stress and depression, and eat and sleep better.

In one study, Lazar found that the prefrontal cortex of the brain that grows smaller in size as people age starts changing with meditation. The gray matter in 50-year-old men and women who meditated regularly was found to be the same as that found in 25-year-olds. And even though meditation might seem like a lonely activity, it was also found to make people feel more compassionate, connected, and less isolated.

3. Hit the gym or do yoga

The best time of the day to target your fitness goals is in the wee hours of the day. Exercising early in the day will help you kick start your metabolism. Since the human body continues to burn calories for hours after exercise, the results of a good burnout will spill into the rest of your day. People who exercise in the morning have fewer scheduling conflicts and are more likely to keep up their fitness regime, compared to people who try to exercise later in the day.

Doing yoga is another way to start your day healthy. There are various formats of yoga that you can choose from. If you want to burn a sweat, Ashtenga yoga or power yoga might be a great option for you. It involves quick movements of the body from one rigorous pose to another. If you want to hold your body in challenging yoga postures in a room with temperature is as high as 90 degrees Fahrenheit, Bikram yoga might be your thing. If you enjoy the benefits of breathing exercises on the mind and the body, try Vinyasa yoga. And if holding poses for long intervals of time is what captures your imagination, go for Iyengar yoga.

4. Organize your day better 

If you wake up early in the morning, you are more likely to have more headspace to think about what you want to accomplish during the day and organize your tasks into achievable targets. A haphazard way to start your day is to have no plan whatsoever and just try and reach the minimum threshold of what might be expected of you.

According to studies conducted by Christoph Randler, a Harvard biologist in 2008, individuals who were early to rise from bed were seen to be more proactive in making changes in their life, identifying clear-cut directions to pursue, and following up their plans with concrete action.

5. Get to work before most people do

If you are early to rise, you are more likely to get ready and head to work before rush hour. This might allow you to be more calm and stress-free when you start your day at work. If you start your day early, you are also more likely to wrap up your day as soon it’s officially time to head home, and so you’ll have more quality time to spend with your family.

Getting to work early can allow you to find at least one quiet hour before the office starts filling up with people and chaos. If you reached work early, you can easily get a head start by finishing off what is most important in your work calendar before most of your colleagues get their first cup of coffee. If you are a team leader or own the business, getting to work early can help set an example for others to follow. If not—it still tells people that you have a great work ethic.

6. Sleep deeper and better

Rising early from bed is not possible if you don’t sleep early enough. And if you sleep early enough, your body will get into a healthy sleep and wake cycle that is in sync with the environment. So you’ll wake when the sun rises and sleep when it sets—a circadian rhythm determined by biology for human beings.

Soon enough you will be able to get up in the morning without relying on an alarm clock. Realistically you only need eight hours of sleep to recharge. Waking early also means you will have more time to make yourself healthy breakfast before heading out. This means you won’t overeat cause your body is starving by the time it’s 1pm. It also means you won’t get a headache, will be able to focus better at work, and your body’s metabolism will do wonders if it’s getting healthy calories every couple of hours.

7. Be a go-getter in life

A study conducted by Texas University in 2008 on college students showed that individuals who woke up early in the morning got better grades than night owls. Another study conducted by Harvard biologist Christoph Randler on sleeping habits showed that “morning people” are better able to predict problems they might encounter, and put their mind to overcome these obstacles more efficiently, compared to people who wake up late.

Logically speaking, if you wake up early, you will be more in control of your day than the other way round. If you get a head start on your day, long before people leave their pillows, you will finish off the work you have to do ahead of time. At the end of the day, you will always have more free time to sit and watch a film you really want to, spend time with a loved one, indulge in a fun hobby, or simply do nothing at all.

Not being able to do things cause you always face scarcity of time can be a frustrating way to lead your life. Reversing that can help you come one step closer to happiness.