How to Fake ‘Morning Person’
As a very small child, I would rouse myself out of bed on Saturday mornings at 7am to watch Pee Wee’s Playhouse. (I barely spoke English at the time but had a fully developed sense of camp.) When the show was over, I went back to bed for another hour.
This is all to say that I am not a morning person. I have never been, and I never will be.
Unfortunately, the working world runs on a morning person’s schedule. A vampire’s life is incompatible with society, which sucks.
But I have one small survival method:
CREATE A GET-OUT-OF-BED STRATEGY.
Trust me, it deserves the all-caps.
What does this strategy entail? I suppose that depends on you. For me, it means getting the coffee maker programmed before bed so that there’s a fresh pot waiting for me when I heave myself off of the mattress at single-digit-a.m. (The programmable coffee machine is a non-negotiable.)
It also means thinking ahead to my day and my week, and figuring out what needs to get done in the first four hours post-waking. Crucially, this figuring-out happens the night before. Often, I’ll write myself a note.
Much as our culture valorizes the first-light risers, there’s no shame in being a night owl. Not everyone is designed to start yawning uncontrollably at 8pm. It all comes down to a little bit of planning. Oh yes, and caffeine.
