January 18, 2019 • 29 mins
Francesca tries to fix the most important part of the day: Her mornings. To get more out of the precious hours before work, she tests out a scientifically proven method called R.I.S.E.U.P. But, will her rigorous new morning routine be the key to a better day?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, seven four. Now we really need to get up
(00:05):
with pressed news twists. But I have a doctor's equipment,
so I gotta go. Oh, press news one more time.
I'm Francesco Levi, and until pretty recently, a typical morning
for me might go like this, press news for a while.
(00:28):
Wait for my toddler son Roman to wake up. Oh
that's him calling me. I'm Gondrining getting up and I
am about mm hmm. Don't get him. And then from
(00:50):
the time I get my son out of bed to
the time I leave for work, everything kind of falls apart.
I you go, that's bro all right, a morning shore
and I have about twelve minutes to get ready if
(01:14):
I want to leave them time trying to script once
breakfast you extream light peez on while it thank you?
All right? If I for real, everyone, I think I
(01:42):
can do a lot better. So in this episode, I'm
going to try to completely rehabilitate my mornings with the
help of some expert advice, some scientific research, and some gadgets.
Welcome to Works for Me. M Hi, I am at
(02:17):
a greenfield and I'm Francesca Leaping. Every week on Works
for Me, we test out solutions to our productivity problems
and find out what tips and tricks will work for you.
This week, it's Francesca's turn to fix her life. Francesca,
what problem are you trying to solve? For years? I
have wanted to totally fix my mornings. They're just kind
(02:39):
of broken. I don't naturally get up super early, and
I also just don't use my morning time well. I
go from dragging my feet and wasting time to running
around in a huge tree. By the time I leave
the house, I'm usually flustered, running a few minutes late,
and still a little groggy. I mean, that doesn't sound
super and usual for a morning. No, it's probably not,
(03:02):
But that doesn't mean it's good. And if there's one
thing I know, it's that mornings are the most important
part of the day. You read about the fabulous mornings
of powerful people constantly. All of the world's influencers get
up super early and start maximizing their time right away.
The morning routines of Microsoft CEO Satia Adela, vog editor
(03:24):
in chief and a win tour former PEPSI CEO Indrenus,
and dozens of others start as early as four am
and include everything from vigorous exercise to gratitude and meditation
exercises to personal journaling. I really do have dozens of
examples like this. Yeah, it's true. I come across articles
about this all the time. Everybody seems to want to
(03:47):
know the secret to success, and they think the answer
can be found in the early hours of the day.
It's like mornings are meant to be optimized, and if
you're not doing it, you're a lazy loser who will
never amount to anything. These people definitely exist to make
you and me feel terrible about Do you feel like
you're a morning person? I guess I would fall into
(04:08):
the morning person category in the sense that I don't
have trouble getting up early and I like the mornings,
but I'm definitely not doing anything to get anything out
of them. Like I have figured out the last possible
minute I can wake up and get to work. I
don't even need breakfast at home or have coffee. I
just get up as late as possible and leave for work. Well,
(04:30):
it sounds like you haven't been indoctrinated by this like
culture of mornings that I have, and I am a
morning person. Maybe I should be taking advantage of that. Well,
maybe morning people are just naturally more successful. I'm so successful.
(04:54):
The important thing I wanted to change wasn't just getting
up earlier. I wanted to have a good, effective, more ning.
I wanted to be like those morning people. Okay, so
you want to get up earlier and do lots of
productive stuff in the morning every day. So what's your
plan of action? So I didn't just want to pick
a morning person and imitate them. So I went looking
(05:14):
for a morning wake up routine that was actually grounded
in research, and I found this system. It's called rise Up.
Rise Up is actually an acronym for six things that
you can do every morning. It's a series of steps
that make you wake up quickly and stay awake and alert.
It was developed by Alison Harvey, a Berkeley professor of
psychology who runs a sleep and mood research lab. I'm
(05:37):
going to describe the acronym, which is kind of a
weird one. The R stands for refrain from snoozing. The
I stands for increased initial activity for the first hour.
The S stands for shower or babe, which I think
is pretty standard. The E stands for expose yourself to
sunlight even looking at a window is fine. The you
(05:58):
stands for upbeat music, and then there's P which stands
for phone a friend. I think the idea is that
talking to somebody helps trigger your brains, energy, chemicals or something.
So I decided to try this for six weeks. This
is a lot of steps to do for somebody who
self proclaimed doesn't like doing things in the morning. Also,
(06:21):
increase in ishal activity. What does that mean exercise? I
think like just be active first thing in the morning.
Like I said, this acronyms is not a good acronymis
none of the letters. You really have to force them
into making them mean what they're supposed to be. It
sounds like a robot like increase initial activity. Yes, yeah,
it's a lot, but this is what science says you
(06:44):
have to do. So how will you know that you've
succeeded in fixing your mornings after doing this experiment? This
morning makeover will be a success if I can get
through all of the rise up steps every day for
a week. By the way, the developers of this system
are actually careful to say you don't have to do
every step every day and you can adjust it as necessary.
(07:06):
But I wanted to get the absolute most out of
my morning. So I committed to doing every single step. Okay,
rise up. As I said, is six steps that you're
supposed to do every morning. I'll describe how I did
(07:29):
on each step in order. Step one refrain from snoozing.
This step sounds easy, it's basically just getting out of bed,
but I found myself failing at it all the time.
Let me tell you. You can know in your head
that pressing snooze is just not a great plan, that
it reinforces a sense of failure first thing in the morning,
(07:50):
and that sleeping in eight minute increments is not actually RESTful.
You can know that in your rational brain. But my
rational brain is nowhere to be found. It's as I am,
it's only lizard brain saying sleep more. I thought about
people who have conquered that lizard brain. People who have
to get up crazy early for work, like morning newscasters.
(08:12):
Not only do they have to be at work early,
they have to be able to sound bright and awake
like this, good morning. I'm Noel King. If you've ever
done CPR training, you know that that's Noel King, host
of NPRS Morning Edition, and her morning is insane. She
gets up at one thirty a m. And she has
(08:32):
to be on the air as early as four thirty am.
I spoke with her a few months ago after she
got up her shift. I asked her about that feeling
when you get up, that going back to sleep just
for a few minutes would be the sweetest thing. Ever.
Noel explained how she convinces herself to get out of bed.
I will say that in the morning, I am a
little mean to myself. I acknowledge that I feel like
(08:54):
I don't want to do something, and then I hear
a different voice, which sounds an awful lot like my
mom's sometimes saying, but you don't have any options. There's
how you feel, which is your problem, and then there's
the day that you have to get done and and
if you don't do it, you make that everybody else's problem.
So you have to really, truly, I know this sounds insane,
(09:15):
but you have to condition yourself to divorce what you're feeling,
which maybe like crap, from what has to get done,
and you have to tell yourself you don't have a choice.
You can't stay in bed. It's funny to imagine her
having this internal monologue with herself every morning. I know.
I mean she said she's naturally a morning person, but
I mean, no amount of being a morning person is
going to make you want to wake up at one thirty,
(09:37):
which is just such a crazy time. And so I
thought she was like the perfect person to ask, Okay,
how do you grapple with that actual feeling? Because I
don't want to hear about how successful people like spring
out of bed and start exercising. Like, I get it,
you're great, But if you don't naturally want to do that,
how do you fight those urges that are really strong? Yeah?
I think I relate to this a little. You know,
(09:58):
and your alarm goes off on the morning, you do
have to there's something inside of you. Do you do it?
Do you press snews? Are you a snoozer? I'm not
a sneezer. So you just say, Becca, it's time to
get started. I've calibrated, and I just know how bad
that feels. It's just well, it feels bad, but first
it feels good. It's like a drug. I knew I
(10:24):
needed to get serious about kicking what I have come
to realize as a snooze addiction. So I doubled down
on the R part of rise up. I started using
a special wake up light that mimics a natural sunrise.
The one I have is made by Phillips. It retails
for about a hundred dollars and it slowly brightens your
room so you just glide out of sleep. And I
(10:45):
downloaded a free sleep cycle app which is supposed to
detect when your sleep cycle is at its lightest and
that's when it's easiest for someone to wake up. And
how did that all go? Well? After a little trial
and error and a lot of practice, I did manage
to get better at waking up without snoozing. The sleep
cycle app never correctly guessed when I was lightly sleeping,
(11:07):
so I just deleted it from my phone. In fact,
I got rid of my phone alarm altogether and just
started using the wake up light as my only alarm.
It comes with a little gentle bird song. I also
put the wake up light way on the far side
of the room so that it was harder to go
back to sleep after I turned it off, and I
just tried to remember Noel King's wise words. You don't
(11:31):
have any options. There's how you feel, which is your problem,
and then there's the day that you have to get done,
and if you don't do it, you make that everybody
else's problems. I just sort of trained myself to wake
up like a robot and dive right into my yoga routine.
More about that yoga routine after this break. Yeah, okay,
(12:04):
so we're on step two now exercise. Well not technically.
It's the eye and rise up, which stands for increased
initial activity. I interpreted this as fifteen minutes of vigorous
yoga right after getting out of bed. So on day one,
after making it out of bed, I did my level
best to follow along with the yoga video I found
on YouTube. Hold your plank, breathe and then going side
(12:30):
to side, did you want hit at a time to
the most working away signing intense. I don't have to
physically touch the brown come close to using the strengthen,
but it's a hard, very hard coming down to low plank.
Thank you guys so much. I'll see you against soon. Bye.
All right, all right, that was the increase initial activity step,
(12:55):
and I will say it moments turning. Got like fifteen
minute yoga session. I felt wide awake most of it.
I felt like a zombie, but definitely definitely something about
getting the blood pumping, but I guess you can lose
it pretty quickly. You don't sound away at all. And
(13:21):
also that woman's soothing voice would really trigger me out,
especially because she was doing stuff that was so hard.
She was like this beautiful woman on a beach in
Costa Rica Mure. Yeah, I mean, I think that was
something I learned right away. You can feel really awake
and then go back to feeling really tired and dragging,
(13:42):
like it is in a state you maintain all morning.
But despite how I sound when I'm struggling through those
fifteen minutes, I ended up really getting into the morning yoga.
After a week or two, I extended my fifteen minutes
to thirty five and then forty five minutes, and I
even found a way to create my own little personal
yoga studio. I started sneaking out of my apartment every
(14:04):
morning at around six am, climbing up five flights of
stairs in my pajamas and doing yoga on my roof deck.
I'm really impressed that you did forty five minutes of exercise.
Sounds like you're like really getting a lot out of it. Yeah,
fifteen minutes felt kind of like a trick. Like just
a way to get through this step. But forty five
minutes feels legit. That feels like a real amount of exercise.
(14:25):
That's almost a class you pay for. Yeah, but if
I was nailing the refrain from snooze and exercise steps,
I was not doing as well with all of the others.
Next up on the list is s for shower or bathe. Okay,
(14:45):
I guess I was nailing that too. I did shower
every day. I don't think most people need to be
advised that this wakes you up. But if you're not
normally a morning shower, I recommended, Oh, it's the key
to awakeness in the morning. I don't know how other
people do it. A lot of people have cracked that,
I feel like, But anyway, great life hack. Good for me.
I showered every day. But the next step the E
(15:10):
in rise up. He does not stand for exercise. It
stands for expose yourself to sunlight. Sunlight is scientifically shown
to boost your mood. So I get the rationale. But
I spent time trying to really do this right, like
standing on the little terrorists of my apartment while I
ate my breakfast, and it always felt like busy work.
I couldn't feel myself waking up while I did it,
(15:31):
and just took time. And then there's you for upbeat music.
I couldn't even decide what counted as upbeat music. That
doesn't really sound that complicated. But so, yeah, what was
your struggle? Well, my first thought when I think of
upbeat music isties were them and blues. That's sort of
my go to good mood genre. I played songs like
this Solomon Burke's Cry to Me in the beginning when
(15:57):
Your Baby. But as I started listening closely, I realized
it's all sort of mid tempo, not necessarily fast music,
so I switched it out for stuff that's more high
tempo and contemporary. This is the Semi Circle song by
the Goat. But then I thought, maybe upbeat actually means happy,
(16:24):
Like even that super high energy stuff had sort of
a melancholy vibe. Anyway, I finally realized I was doing
this wrong. The answer to what upbeat music is is obvious. Alex,
Alex Dumb, It's Alex, That's I like it by Cardi
(16:46):
B Cardi B right Like, That's the answer to everything.
That was definitely the most energetic I would say of
that theory. I also think that you could probably play
all of them and it would be okay as long
as you Philip Well, I think that was the thing.
It was like for me, I listened to music that
suits my mood, and it's hard for me to get
into music if it's not where I'm at already in
(17:09):
my head. So it was just like, I mean, I
know people pick like playlists for their running in the
gym and stuff, but I just wasn't finding like I
was getting hung up obviously on the definition of the
beat music, but I just wasn't like it wasn't translating
into my brain as like now it's time to wake
up and be awake. I was just sort of like
I kind of would rather be listening to the news
(17:30):
right now. Oh interesting, But I like the Cardi B
But I don't think you could listen to that every day.
Well that's it. It's like every day, are you gonna
want to listen to up beat music? And that was
my challenge. So yeah, that was one step I was
having a weird amount of trouble with. And the final step,
p for a phone A friend was another major hurdle.
(17:51):
Finding somebody to call every morning. Was tough. I even
called you, remember how are you? How are you? I'm
right awake in the background. Yeah, he wants the he
wants me to sing. Yeah, yeah, yoh was rising up.
(18:19):
What how is it? It's good. It's like a lot
of steps, but it's not helpful to you because it's
not helpful to me. Yeah, it's not supposed to be
helpful to you. Do you remember that phone call? I do.
I was tired, I was before my alarm off. You
(18:42):
sounded like most people say that when I called them
in the morning. Nobody wants to get a phone call
at seven am, but you sound super awake. Yeah. By
that time, I definitely was like raring to go, And
I just always found myself at the end of the
morning like like, oh god, I gotta do the phone
call step and then scram link to think of somebody
or calling you or calling our producer, tofer like calling
(19:04):
my mom, who granted is the only person who is
actually happy to hear from me at seven am. I
have no idea who I would call it seven am. Yeah,
I think that step. I mean, that was just like
a huge logistical challenge. So even measuring how how well
it works to wake me up like it was too hard. Yeah,
who calls people anymore? My biggest problem with this whole
(19:33):
routine was time. Even though I was getting up a
lot earlier than I had before, doing all of these
things was taking so long that I still ended up
feeling rushed. I mean, this thing has six steps. I
still needed to fit in the boring life stuff that
just has to get done in the morning. I'm getting
ready now, putting my make a bun, combing my hair,
(19:59):
and I haven't officially done exposing myself to sunlight. He's
feeling a little more urgent about my normal morning routine
than I am. About to rise up steps. I just
can see how quickly this falls apart when you don't have,
(20:21):
like I don't know, six hours in the morning to
do whatever you want. These steps were supposed to set
me up to become the ultimate morning person, but I
still didn't feel that way. Were they the wrong steps?
I asked an expert, So the tasks that are best
to do in the mornings are the ones that would
(20:42):
be difficult to do in the rest of the day.
Laura Vanderkam is an expert on time management, and she's
researched the best way to spend your morning using real data.
For one of her studies, she asked successful people to
keep time diaries, and she found that a lot of
high achievers did things like exercise, meditation, and creative writing
in the wee hours. I asked her why I didn't
(21:04):
feel more efficient or productive or less frazzled after making
all this effort. Was I doing too much? Not enough?
It's really more about saying, well, what would help me
start my day on a positive note um? And is
there something I would really like to be doing in
my life that I am not fitting into the rest
of my schedule. So you know, no, you don't have
(21:26):
to wake up at four am and run a half marathon,
meditate for an hour, you know, cook a breakfast that
features kale and Keene Watt like. You don't have to
do that sort of thing, as long as it is
something that creates a creates positive momentum for your day
and makes you feel like you have accomplished something before
you go into that hamster whale of everything else you
(21:48):
have to do. Talking to Laura made me finally realize
it's not about doing the right things for someone else,
and it's not even about doing a set number of things.
It's an enough to find one thing that you aren't
likely to do during the rest of your day that
makes you feel good. For me, it happened to be exercise.
(22:09):
Doing it on the roof that actually felt like me time.
I just finished during a half hour of yoga, so
I'm up here with the planes flying overhead, and it
was awesome. I don't know, just doing yoga and being
able to look up at the sky and watch the
sky change. It's a really beautiful day. I'm totally alone
(22:32):
up here on the roof deck. I'm sure my baby
is crying downstairs in our apartment, but it's not my
problem right now. I could happily spend another half hour
just sitting up here looking at the sky. I really
feel like I genuinely am taking time for myself. It
(22:54):
really felt like self care. Not to sound new age
and goofy about it, but it just helped me understand
what's great about mornings. You really do have the morning
all to yourself. Like if you get up early enough,
you can walk through your apartment building in pajamas, you
can be on your roof doing downward dog and not
worry about anyone else seeing you. I didn't need to
(23:15):
meditate or write the Great American novel or recite affirmations.
And I also didn't need to necessarily stare at sunlight
or listen to a particular kind of upbeat music. I
had found my thing, or at least one thing, exercise,
so I just kind of let the other steps go.
So you don't youth news again, No snooze I've stuck to,
(23:37):
or resisting snooze or refraining from snoozing. I h I
have found that that's like super useful in kind of
setting the tone for the rest of the morning. It's
like the first thing that you do in the day.
So when you fail at it, it's kind of hard
to feel successful at anything you do after. Do you
feel good about your mornings now that you do all?
(24:00):
I the acrony, I just right. I don't rise up? Um,
yeah I do. I think I needed to get over
my obsession with this idea that you need to pack
your mornings with all of this good stuff. Um. I
think I was doing some stuff wrong that didn't make
me feel good. And for me, the best part is
(24:20):
not necessarily feeling rushed and also just realizing that you
know as a mother of a child, Like, there is
actually time in the day that I kind of unlocked
and I didn't really realize was there. And I'm using
it for something that I haven't been making time for regularly,
which is exercise. M H. I got chills when you
(24:41):
sat unlocked. Happy for you. But your goal was to
have one week where you did the steps every day.
Did you achieve your goal? Becca, I did not, sad face.
(25:07):
There was always at least one step that I didn't
execute perfectly, or I just skipped altogether. It was usually
phone a friend. I got so frustrated with this step
that I expanded the definition of phone to include any
form of communication. So sending someone an email counted if
you go by that definition. Maybe I did succeed. That
does not count. That's not no talking involved. Maybe talking
(25:31):
to another human I would count. I felt so bad
always about missing it that I started lying to myself
to make myself think I was doing it all, but
I really I couldn't. And I also didn't transform my
whole life through positive mornings, like I haven't seen a
big leap in my productivity. Nobody has given me a
big raise or promotion since I started doing this experiment,
(25:52):
but I did seem to find time in the morning
that's only for me, which felt like a magic trick.
And after exercising even a little in the morning, I
feel like I've notched a win early and that definitely
has a knock on impact on the rest of my day.
I've been keeping up with it most days. I wake
up at five forty five now, don't press news, and
(26:15):
I do yoga for thirty five to forty five minutes
before the little one wakes up. That is incredibly impressive.
Thank you. I don't do that well. Maybe if you'd
had to put yourself through a rigorous training program just
to stop pressing snooze, you'd be aiming for a little more. Okay,
so technically you didn't succeed, but your morning sounds a
lot more productive and efficient than they did before. So
(26:37):
after your struggle, what do you think about this whole
cult of mornings? Yeah, I still feel inadequate compared to
the four am rising CEOs, and I don't think I
buy though anymore, that there's such a thing as a
perfect morning. But I do understand now that getting motivated
and active early really does trigger something good and I
(26:59):
think that's why so many successful people use their mornings. Well,
would you say that there are things that everyone can
do to improve their morning, or is the lesson that
it's really up to you to improve your mornings. I
do think that there are some universal things about this.
The snooze button really is the enemy of a good morning.
But if you have a snooze habit, you can conquer it.
(27:21):
It just might take some hardcore conditioning. And also, you
can't have a good morning without first having a good night.
I heard that from Noel King and from Laura Vanderkamp,
and it's totally true. I go to bed at around
nine thirty every night, and if I didn't, my mornings
would be miserable, no matter how much discipline I have.
So you've become one of the morning people that we
(27:44):
love to hate. You're someone who can now go on
TV and write about seller about your perfect morning, and
you can do it in the morning. I really have
achieved it. All Next week on works for me, Pecca
(28:08):
is going to get focused and basically sitting there staring
at the page and not concentrating thinking about other things.
I'm gonna call this fail. Thank you for listening to
another episode of Works for Me. If you like the show,
please head on over into Apple Podcasts or wherever you
listen to podcasts to rate, review and subscribe. And you
(28:31):
can also find all of our shows and are very
cool illustrations on bloomberg dot com slash Works for Me.
Most importantly, tell your friends to listen. Are there any
problems in your work life that you're dying to fix?
We would love to hear about them. Call us and
leave us a voicemail at two one to six one
(28:51):
seven Zoe and we might use it on the air,
or you can tweet at us I'm at Francesco today
and I'm at our Greenfield. The show was hosted and
recorded by Me Francese Belivie and Me Back to Greenfield.
The show was produced by Tobrah Forhez Jordan's Spear did
the illustrations on our show page and franchise Kalivie is
(29:13):
Bloomberg's had a podcast. See you next week.
Okay, seven four. Now we really need to get up
(00:05):
with pressed news twists. But I have a doctor's equipment,
so I gotta go. Oh, press news one more time.
I'm Francesco Levi, and until pretty recently, a typical morning
for me might go like this, press news for a while.
(00:28):
Wait for my toddler son Roman to wake up. Oh
that's him calling me. I'm Gondrining getting up and I
am about mm hmm. Don't get him. And then from
(00:50):
the time I get my son out of bed to
the time I leave for work, everything kind of falls apart.
I you go, that's bro all right, a morning shore
and I have about twelve minutes to get ready if
(01:14):
I want to leave them time trying to script once
breakfast you extream light peez on while it thank you?
All right? If I for real, everyone, I think I
(01:42):
can do a lot better. So in this episode, I'm
going to try to completely rehabilitate my mornings with the
help of some expert advice, some scientific research, and some gadgets.
Welcome to Works for Me. M Hi, I am at
(02:17):
a greenfield and I'm Francesca Leaping. Every week on Works
for Me, we test out solutions to our productivity problems
and find out what tips and tricks will work for you.
This week, it's Francesca's turn to fix her life. Francesca,
what problem are you trying to solve? For years? I
have wanted to totally fix my mornings. They're just kind
(02:39):
of broken. I don't naturally get up super early, and
I also just don't use my morning time well. I
go from dragging my feet and wasting time to running
around in a huge tree. By the time I leave
the house, I'm usually flustered, running a few minutes late,
and still a little groggy. I mean, that doesn't sound
super and usual for a morning. No, it's probably not,
(03:02):
But that doesn't mean it's good. And if there's one
thing I know, it's that mornings are the most important
part of the day. You read about the fabulous mornings
of powerful people constantly. All of the world's influencers get
up super early and start maximizing their time right away.
The morning routines of Microsoft CEO Satia Adela, vog editor
(03:24):
in chief and a win tour former PEPSI CEO Indrenus,
and dozens of others start as early as four am
and include everything from vigorous exercise to gratitude and meditation
exercises to personal journaling. I really do have dozens of
examples like this. Yeah, it's true. I come across articles
about this all the time. Everybody seems to want to
(03:47):
know the secret to success, and they think the answer
can be found in the early hours of the day.
It's like mornings are meant to be optimized, and if
you're not doing it, you're a lazy loser who will
never amount to anything. These people definitely exist to make
you and me feel terrible about Do you feel like
you're a morning person? I guess I would fall into
(04:08):
the morning person category in the sense that I don't
have trouble getting up early and I like the mornings,
but I'm definitely not doing anything to get anything out
of them. Like I have figured out the last possible
minute I can wake up and get to work. I
don't even need breakfast at home or have coffee. I
just get up as late as possible and leave for work. Well,
(04:30):
it sounds like you haven't been indoctrinated by this like
culture of mornings that I have, and I am a
morning person. Maybe I should be taking advantage of that. Well,
maybe morning people are just naturally more successful. I'm so successful.
(04:54):
The important thing I wanted to change wasn't just getting
up earlier. I wanted to have a good, effective, more ning.
I wanted to be like those morning people. Okay, so
you want to get up earlier and do lots of
productive stuff in the morning every day. So what's your
plan of action? So I didn't just want to pick
a morning person and imitate them. So I went looking
(05:14):
for a morning wake up routine that was actually grounded
in research, and I found this system. It's called rise Up.
Rise Up is actually an acronym for six things that
you can do every morning. It's a series of steps
that make you wake up quickly and stay awake and alert.
It was developed by Alison Harvey, a Berkeley professor of
psychology who runs a sleep and mood research lab. I'm
(05:37):
going to describe the acronym, which is kind of a
weird one. The R stands for refrain from snoozing. The
I stands for increased initial activity for the first hour.
The S stands for shower or babe, which I think
is pretty standard. The E stands for expose yourself to
sunlight even looking at a window is fine. The you
(05:58):
stands for upbeat music, and then there's P which stands
for phone a friend. I think the idea is that
talking to somebody helps trigger your brains, energy, chemicals or something.
So I decided to try this for six weeks. This
is a lot of steps to do for somebody who
self proclaimed doesn't like doing things in the morning. Also,
(06:21):
increase in ishal activity. What does that mean exercise? I
think like just be active first thing in the morning.
Like I said, this acronyms is not a good acronymis
none of the letters. You really have to force them
into making them mean what they're supposed to be. It
sounds like a robot like increase initial activity. Yes, yeah,
it's a lot, but this is what science says you
(06:44):
have to do. So how will you know that you've
succeeded in fixing your mornings after doing this experiment? This
morning makeover will be a success if I can get
through all of the rise up steps every day for
a week. By the way, the developers of this system
are actually careful to say you don't have to do
every step every day and you can adjust it as necessary.
(07:06):
But I wanted to get the absolute most out of
my morning. So I committed to doing every single step. Okay,
rise up. As I said, is six steps that you're
supposed to do every morning. I'll describe how I did
(07:29):
on each step in order. Step one refrain from snoozing.
This step sounds easy, it's basically just getting out of bed,
but I found myself failing at it all the time.
Let me tell you. You can know in your head
that pressing snooze is just not a great plan, that
it reinforces a sense of failure first thing in the morning,
(07:50):
and that sleeping in eight minute increments is not actually RESTful.
You can know that in your rational brain. But my
rational brain is nowhere to be found. It's as I am,
it's only lizard brain saying sleep more. I thought about
people who have conquered that lizard brain. People who have
to get up crazy early for work, like morning newscasters.
(08:12):
Not only do they have to be at work early,
they have to be able to sound bright and awake
like this, good morning. I'm Noel King. If you've ever
done CPR training, you know that that's Noel King, host
of NPRS Morning Edition, and her morning is insane. She
gets up at one thirty a m. And she has
(08:32):
to be on the air as early as four thirty am.
I spoke with her a few months ago after she
got up her shift. I asked her about that feeling
when you get up, that going back to sleep just
for a few minutes would be the sweetest thing. Ever.
Noel explained how she convinces herself to get out of bed.
I will say that in the morning, I am a
little mean to myself. I acknowledge that I feel like
(08:54):
I don't want to do something, and then I hear
a different voice, which sounds an awful lot like my
mom's sometimes saying, but you don't have any options. There's
how you feel, which is your problem, and then there's
the day that you have to get done and and
if you don't do it, you make that everybody else's problem.
So you have to really, truly, I know this sounds insane,
(09:15):
but you have to condition yourself to divorce what you're feeling,
which maybe like crap, from what has to get done,
and you have to tell yourself you don't have a choice.
You can't stay in bed. It's funny to imagine her
having this internal monologue with herself every morning. I know.
I mean she said she's naturally a morning person, but
I mean, no amount of being a morning person is
going to make you want to wake up at one thirty,
(09:37):
which is just such a crazy time. And so I
thought she was like the perfect person to ask, Okay,
how do you grapple with that actual feeling? Because I
don't want to hear about how successful people like spring
out of bed and start exercising. Like, I get it,
you're great, But if you don't naturally want to do that,
how do you fight those urges that are really strong? Yeah?
I think I relate to this a little. You know,
(09:58):
and your alarm goes off on the morning, you do
have to there's something inside of you. Do you do it?
Do you press snews? Are you a snoozer? I'm not
a sneezer. So you just say, Becca, it's time to
get started. I've calibrated, and I just know how bad
that feels. It's just well, it feels bad, but first
it feels good. It's like a drug. I knew I
(10:24):
needed to get serious about kicking what I have come
to realize as a snooze addiction. So I doubled down
on the R part of rise up. I started using
a special wake up light that mimics a natural sunrise.
The one I have is made by Phillips. It retails
for about a hundred dollars and it slowly brightens your
room so you just glide out of sleep. And I
(10:45):
downloaded a free sleep cycle app which is supposed to
detect when your sleep cycle is at its lightest and
that's when it's easiest for someone to wake up. And
how did that all go? Well? After a little trial
and error and a lot of practice, I did manage
to get better at waking up without snoozing. The sleep
cycle app never correctly guessed when I was lightly sleeping,
(11:07):
so I just deleted it from my phone. In fact,
I got rid of my phone alarm altogether and just
started using the wake up light as my only alarm.
It comes with a little gentle bird song. I also
put the wake up light way on the far side
of the room so that it was harder to go
back to sleep after I turned it off, and I
just tried to remember Noel King's wise words. You don't
(11:31):
have any options. There's how you feel, which is your problem,
and then there's the day that you have to get done,
and if you don't do it, you make that everybody
else's problems. I just sort of trained myself to wake
up like a robot and dive right into my yoga routine.
More about that yoga routine after this break. Yeah, okay,
(12:04):
so we're on step two now exercise. Well not technically.
It's the eye and rise up, which stands for increased
initial activity. I interpreted this as fifteen minutes of vigorous
yoga right after getting out of bed. So on day one,
after making it out of bed, I did my level
best to follow along with the yoga video I found
on YouTube. Hold your plank, breathe and then going side
(12:30):
to side, did you want hit at a time to
the most working away signing intense. I don't have to
physically touch the brown come close to using the strengthen,
but it's a hard, very hard coming down to low plank.
Thank you guys so much. I'll see you against soon. Bye.
All right, all right, that was the increase initial activity step,
(12:55):
and I will say it moments turning. Got like fifteen
minute yoga session. I felt wide awake most of it.
I felt like a zombie, but definitely definitely something about
getting the blood pumping, but I guess you can lose
it pretty quickly. You don't sound away at all. And
(13:21):
also that woman's soothing voice would really trigger me out,
especially because she was doing stuff that was so hard.
She was like this beautiful woman on a beach in
Costa Rica Mure. Yeah, I mean, I think that was
something I learned right away. You can feel really awake
and then go back to feeling really tired and dragging,
(13:42):
like it is in a state you maintain all morning.
But despite how I sound when I'm struggling through those
fifteen minutes, I ended up really getting into the morning yoga.
After a week or two, I extended my fifteen minutes
to thirty five and then forty five minutes, and I
even found a way to create my own little personal
yoga studio. I started sneaking out of my apartment every
(14:04):
morning at around six am, climbing up five flights of
stairs in my pajamas and doing yoga on my roof deck.
I'm really impressed that you did forty five minutes of exercise.
Sounds like you're like really getting a lot out of it. Yeah,
fifteen minutes felt kind of like a trick. Like just
a way to get through this step. But forty five
minutes feels legit. That feels like a real amount of exercise.
(14:25):
That's almost a class you pay for. Yeah, but if
I was nailing the refrain from snooze and exercise steps,
I was not doing as well with all of the others.
Next up on the list is s for shower or bathe. Okay,
(14:45):
I guess I was nailing that too. I did shower
every day. I don't think most people need to be
advised that this wakes you up. But if you're not
normally a morning shower, I recommended, Oh, it's the key
to awakeness in the morning. I don't know how other
people do it. A lot of people have cracked that,
I feel like, But anyway, great life hack. Good for me.
I showered every day. But the next step the E
(15:10):
in rise up. He does not stand for exercise. It
stands for expose yourself to sunlight. Sunlight is scientifically shown
to boost your mood. So I get the rationale. But
I spent time trying to really do this right, like
standing on the little terrorists of my apartment while I
ate my breakfast, and it always felt like busy work.
I couldn't feel myself waking up while I did it,
(15:31):
and just took time. And then there's you for upbeat music.
I couldn't even decide what counted as upbeat music. That
doesn't really sound that complicated. But so, yeah, what was
your struggle? Well, my first thought when I think of
upbeat music isties were them and blues. That's sort of
my go to good mood genre. I played songs like
this Solomon Burke's Cry to Me in the beginning when
(15:57):
Your Baby. But as I started listening closely, I realized
it's all sort of mid tempo, not necessarily fast music,
so I switched it out for stuff that's more high
tempo and contemporary. This is the Semi Circle song by
the Goat. But then I thought, maybe upbeat actually means happy,
(16:24):
Like even that super high energy stuff had sort of
a melancholy vibe. Anyway, I finally realized I was doing
this wrong. The answer to what upbeat music is is obvious. Alex,
Alex Dumb, It's Alex, That's I like it by Cardi
(16:46):
B Cardi B right Like, That's the answer to everything.
That was definitely the most energetic I would say of
that theory. I also think that you could probably play
all of them and it would be okay as long
as you Philip Well, I think that was the thing.
It was like for me, I listened to music that
suits my mood, and it's hard for me to get
into music if it's not where I'm at already in
(17:09):
my head. So it was just like, I mean, I
know people pick like playlists for their running in the
gym and stuff, but I just wasn't finding like I
was getting hung up obviously on the definition of the
beat music, but I just wasn't like it wasn't translating
into my brain as like now it's time to wake
up and be awake. I was just sort of like
I kind of would rather be listening to the news
(17:30):
right now. Oh interesting, But I like the Cardi B
But I don't think you could listen to that every day.
Well that's it. It's like every day, are you gonna
want to listen to up beat music? And that was
my challenge. So yeah, that was one step I was
having a weird amount of trouble with. And the final step,
p for a phone A friend was another major hurdle.
(17:51):
Finding somebody to call every morning. Was tough. I even
called you, remember how are you? How are you? I'm
right awake in the background. Yeah, he wants the he
wants me to sing. Yeah, yeah, yoh was rising up.
(18:19):
What how is it? It's good. It's like a lot
of steps, but it's not helpful to you because it's
not helpful to me. Yeah, it's not supposed to be
helpful to you. Do you remember that phone call? I do.
I was tired, I was before my alarm off. You
(18:42):
sounded like most people say that when I called them
in the morning. Nobody wants to get a phone call
at seven am, but you sound super awake. Yeah. By
that time, I definitely was like raring to go, And
I just always found myself at the end of the
morning like like, oh god, I gotta do the phone
call step and then scram link to think of somebody
or calling you or calling our producer, tofer like calling
(19:04):
my mom, who granted is the only person who is
actually happy to hear from me at seven am. I
have no idea who I would call it seven am. Yeah,
I think that step. I mean, that was just like
a huge logistical challenge. So even measuring how how well
it works to wake me up like it was too hard. Yeah,
who calls people anymore? My biggest problem with this whole
(19:33):
routine was time. Even though I was getting up a
lot earlier than I had before, doing all of these
things was taking so long that I still ended up
feeling rushed. I mean, this thing has six steps. I
still needed to fit in the boring life stuff that
just has to get done in the morning. I'm getting
ready now, putting my make a bun, combing my hair,
(19:59):
and I haven't officially done exposing myself to sunlight. He's
feeling a little more urgent about my normal morning routine
than I am. About to rise up steps. I just
can see how quickly this falls apart when you don't have,
(20:21):
like I don't know, six hours in the morning to
do whatever you want. These steps were supposed to set
me up to become the ultimate morning person, but I
still didn't feel that way. Were they the wrong steps?
I asked an expert, So the tasks that are best
to do in the mornings are the ones that would
(20:42):
be difficult to do in the rest of the day.
Laura Vanderkam is an expert on time management, and she's
researched the best way to spend your morning using real data.
For one of her studies, she asked successful people to
keep time diaries, and she found that a lot of
high achievers did things like exercise, meditation, and creative writing
in the wee hours. I asked her why I didn't
(21:04):
feel more efficient or productive or less frazzled after making
all this effort. Was I doing too much? Not enough?
It's really more about saying, well, what would help me
start my day on a positive note um? And is
there something I would really like to be doing in
my life that I am not fitting into the rest
of my schedule. So you know, no, you don't have
(21:26):
to wake up at four am and run a half marathon,
meditate for an hour, you know, cook a breakfast that
features kale and Keene Watt like. You don't have to
do that sort of thing, as long as it is
something that creates a creates positive momentum for your day
and makes you feel like you have accomplished something before
you go into that hamster whale of everything else you
(21:48):
have to do. Talking to Laura made me finally realize
it's not about doing the right things for someone else,
and it's not even about doing a set number of things.
It's an enough to find one thing that you aren't
likely to do during the rest of your day that
makes you feel good. For me, it happened to be exercise.
(22:09):
Doing it on the roof that actually felt like me time.
I just finished during a half hour of yoga, so
I'm up here with the planes flying overhead, and it
was awesome. I don't know, just doing yoga and being
able to look up at the sky and watch the
sky change. It's a really beautiful day. I'm totally alone
(22:32):
up here on the roof deck. I'm sure my baby
is crying downstairs in our apartment, but it's not my
problem right now. I could happily spend another half hour
just sitting up here looking at the sky. I really
feel like I genuinely am taking time for myself. It
(22:54):
really felt like self care. Not to sound new age
and goofy about it, but it just helped me understand
what's great about mornings. You really do have the morning
all to yourself. Like if you get up early enough,
you can walk through your apartment building in pajamas, you
can be on your roof doing downward dog and not
worry about anyone else seeing you. I didn't need to
(23:15):
meditate or write the Great American novel or recite affirmations.
And I also didn't need to necessarily stare at sunlight
or listen to a particular kind of upbeat music. I
had found my thing, or at least one thing, exercise,
so I just kind of let the other steps go.
So you don't youth news again, No snooze I've stuck to,
(23:37):
or resisting snooze or refraining from snoozing. I h I
have found that that's like super useful in kind of
setting the tone for the rest of the morning. It's
like the first thing that you do in the day.
So when you fail at it, it's kind of hard
to feel successful at anything you do after. Do you
feel good about your mornings now that you do all?
(24:00):
I the acrony, I just right. I don't rise up? Um,
yeah I do. I think I needed to get over
my obsession with this idea that you need to pack
your mornings with all of this good stuff. Um. I
think I was doing some stuff wrong that didn't make
me feel good. And for me, the best part is
(24:20):
not necessarily feeling rushed and also just realizing that you
know as a mother of a child, Like, there is
actually time in the day that I kind of unlocked
and I didn't really realize was there. And I'm using
it for something that I haven't been making time for regularly,
which is exercise. M H. I got chills when you
(24:41):
sat unlocked. Happy for you. But your goal was to
have one week where you did the steps every day.
Did you achieve your goal? Becca, I did not, sad face.
(25:07):
There was always at least one step that I didn't
execute perfectly, or I just skipped altogether. It was usually
phone a friend. I got so frustrated with this step
that I expanded the definition of phone to include any
form of communication. So sending someone an email counted if
you go by that definition. Maybe I did succeed. That
does not count. That's not no talking involved. Maybe talking
(25:31):
to another human I would count. I felt so bad
always about missing it that I started lying to myself
to make myself think I was doing it all, but
I really I couldn't. And I also didn't transform my
whole life through positive mornings, like I haven't seen a
big leap in my productivity. Nobody has given me a
big raise or promotion since I started doing this experiment,
(25:52):
but I did seem to find time in the morning
that's only for me, which felt like a magic trick.
And after exercising even a little in the morning, I
feel like I've notched a win early and that definitely
has a knock on impact on the rest of my day.
I've been keeping up with it most days. I wake
up at five forty five now, don't press news, and
(26:15):
I do yoga for thirty five to forty five minutes
before the little one wakes up. That is incredibly impressive.
Thank you. I don't do that well. Maybe if you'd
had to put yourself through a rigorous training program just
to stop pressing snooze, you'd be aiming for a little more. Okay,
so technically you didn't succeed, but your morning sounds a
lot more productive and efficient than they did before. So
(26:37):
after your struggle, what do you think about this whole
cult of mornings? Yeah, I still feel inadequate compared to
the four am rising CEOs, and I don't think I
buy though anymore, that there's such a thing as a
perfect morning. But I do understand now that getting motivated
and active early really does trigger something good and I
(26:59):
think that's why so many successful people use their mornings. Well,
would you say that there are things that everyone can
do to improve their morning, or is the lesson that
it's really up to you to improve your mornings. I
do think that there are some universal things about this.
The snooze button really is the enemy of a good morning.
But if you have a snooze habit, you can conquer it.
(27:21):
It just might take some hardcore conditioning. And also, you
can't have a good morning without first having a good night.
I heard that from Noel King and from Laura Vanderkamp,
and it's totally true. I go to bed at around
nine thirty every night, and if I didn't, my mornings
would be miserable, no matter how much discipline I have.
So you've become one of the morning people that we
(27:44):
love to hate. You're someone who can now go on
TV and write about seller about your perfect morning, and
you can do it in the morning. I really have
achieved it. All Next week on works for me, Pecca
(28:08):
is going to get focused and basically sitting there staring
at the page and not concentrating thinking about other things.
I'm gonna call this fail. Thank you for listening to
another episode of Works for Me. If you like the show,
please head on over into Apple Podcasts or wherever you
listen to podcasts to rate, review and subscribe. And you
(28:31):
can also find all of our shows and are very
cool illustrations on bloomberg dot com slash Works for Me.
Most importantly, tell your friends to listen. Are there any
problems in your work life that you're dying to fix?
We would love to hear about them. Call us and
leave us a voicemail at two one to six one
(28:51):
seven Zoe and we might use it on the air,
or you can tweet at us I'm at Francesco today
and I'm at our Greenfield. The show was hosted and
recorded by Me Francese Belivie and Me Back to Greenfield.
The show was produced by Tobrah Forhez Jordan's Spear did
the illustrations on our show page and franchise Kalivie is
(29:13):
Bloomberg's had a podcast. See you next week.
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