How to wake up early

Waking up early takes five steps, in this order.

Pick your wake-up time, and count back to a bedtime.

Sleep doctors say to leave at least seven hours for sleep. If you want to get up at 6:30 AM and you need eight hours of sleep, the lights go out at 10:30 PM.

Move both times 15 minutes earlier.

Set tomorrow’s alarm 15 minutes earlier than today’s, and turn the lights out 15 minutes earlier tonight, so you still get your sleep. If you are not sleepy yet, wait until you are.

Keep moving until you get there.

Move both times again the next day. If that feels too fast, stay two or three days on each step.

Get into daylight soon after you get up.

Go outside, or sit by a bright window. Sleep doctors say that bright morning light helps set your body clock, which is what makes you sleepy at night.

Keep the same alarm on weekends.

A US health agency says to keep weekend times within about an hour of weekday times.

Dan is a made-up example. He wakes up at 8:00 AM and wants to wake up at 6:30 AM. That is 1h 30m earlier, or 6 steps of 15 minutes. He needs eight hours of sleep.

You become more of a morning person by moving your sleep earlier and keeping the same times every day for a few weeks.

Part of it is in your genes.

In a study of a very large group of people, those with the most gene differences linked to getting up early slept only about 25 minutes earlier than those with the fewest (Jones and colleagues, 2019). So the differences they found move sleep by less than half an hour.

Late sleepers moved their sleep about two hours earlier in three weeks.

In one small study, young adults who slept very late followed a few rules for three weeks. The rules were: get up and go to bed two to three hours earlier than usual, get outdoor light in the morning, keep the same times on days off, and have no caffeine after 3:00 PM.

Before the study they woke up at 10:31 AM on average. After three weeks it was 8:36 AM (Facer-Childs and colleagues, 2019). They slept about as long as before, and they felt less sleepy at 8:00 AM.

They made the change all at once. The steps on this page go more slowly. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a group of sleep doctors, gives the same advice before the clocks go forward in spring: move your bedtime 15 or 20 minutes earlier each night.

You go to bed earlier by getting up earlier too. If you only move your bedtime, you may just lie awake: in the hours before your usual bedtime, there is a stretch when the body does not fall asleep easily (Shekleton and colleagues, 2013).

Keep screens out of the last hour.

In one study, people took longer to fall asleep on evenings when they read from a lit screen than on evenings when they read a printed book (Chang and colleagues, 2015).

Have your last coffee early.

Caffeine can keep working for up to 8 hours, says the NHLBI, a US health agency. A coffee at 4:00 PM can still be keeping you awake at midnight.

If you are not sleepy, do not lie there.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says not to go to bed until you feel sleepy. If you are still awake after 20 minutes, get up and do something quiet in low light, with no screen.

The page on a night routine has steps for the last hour before bed. If your sleep is off by many hours, or you work shifts, read how to fix your sleep schedule.

The CDC, another US health agency, says to talk to a doctor if you often have trouble sleeping. The NHLBI says the same if you snore loudly and feel sleepy through the day. This page reports what studies found. It is not medical advice.

Each finding above links to its source. We read every one for this page, the full text or its summary.

1. American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Sleep Education (read October 13, 2026). Healthy Sleep Habits.
2. American Academy of Sleep Medicine (read October 13, 2026). American Academy of Sleep Medicine provides expert advice to prevent negative effects of change to Daylight Saving Time.
3. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (read October 1, 2026). Healthy Sleep Habits.
4. Jones, S. E., Lane, J. M., Wood, A. R., van Hees, V. T., Tyrrell, J., Beaumont, R. N. and others (2019). Genome-wide association analyses of chronotype in 697,828 individuals provides insights into circadian rhythms. Nature Communications, 10, 343.
5. Facer-Childs, E. R., Middleton, B., Skene, D. J. and Bagshaw, A. P. (2019). Resetting the late timing of ‘night owls’ has a positive impact on mental health and performance. Sleep Medicine, 60, 236 to 247.
6. Chang, A.-M., Aeschbach, D., Duffy, J. F. and Czeisler, C. A. (2015). Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(4), 1232 to 1237.
7. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (read October 1, 2026). About Sleep.
8. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (read October 1, 2026). Sleep Apnea: Symptoms.
9. Shekleton, J. A., Rajaratnam, S. M. W., Gooley, J. J., Van Reen, E., Czeisler, C. A. and Lockley, S. W. (2013). Improved neurobehavioral performance during the wake maintenance zone. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 9(4), 353 to 362.