Use The "Benjamin Franklin Technique" To Easily Start Waking Up Earlier - #TinyHabitFriday

so one of the habits I've had the hardest time cultivating is the habit of getting up earlier I've really wanted to in other words one of my core goals for this year is to meditate 45 minutes every single day and to do it in the morning because I realized just if I do it later in the day it's just not going to happen but the problem was that I haven't consistently been waking up early enough to actually make that a reality so in today's tiny habit Friday video I'm going to show you how to cultivate The Habit how to actually anchor in the daily habit of waking up earlier whether that's 5 minutes or whether that's 2 hours or 3 hours whatever it is you're going [Music] for hey what's up it is Alex hin here over at Moder health.com so I consistently would have the same thing happen every time I tried to wake up in the morning I would set my alarm back right and I would still go to bed at the exact same time so the next day I would be super tired I would drink a bunch of coffee and then I would go to bed late again because either it's from the coffee or because I just was not used to going to bed really early so I would still go to bed at midnight try to get up at 6:00 I would be exhausted the next day and then I just would not have enough willpower to actually still wake up at 6:00 the next day it would last like not even a week I could do it so I really struggled to actually get up every day earlier to actually anchor it in as a habit so we've talked a lot about how to actually anchor in habits in these tiny habit Friday videos we've talked about how to get yourself to drink more water how to get yourself to meditate how to trick yourself into exercising all this cool stuff but this one was particularly tricky for me and here's how we're going to link them all together so I usually talk about two things I talk about either linking activities together or about setting up triggers to set up the Habit so the trigger of the Habit in this particular exercise I realized that the big barrier to me getting up early was not the morning but the night before so here's what I did the first step here is I actually used an app and that actually set a trigger for what time to go to bed so this app is called strides and you can check it out here so I would set these reminders and the reminder was actually what time to begin my wind down so in particular for me this was 10 p.m. because I knew if I was working on my computer past then I would not sleep you know at the time I wanted and it also was the trigger for my next trigger so I've talked a lot about the Benjamin Franklin nightly review the review where you reflect nightly like Ben Franklin used to do about the virtu so temperance patience uh sincerity all this kind of stuff but what I do is I actually quickly review my day I do like a virtue type review a personal development review like Ben Franklin said but I also review my goals for the next day my activities my schedule for the next day and I set the Habit tracking app to remind me at 10 p.m. that's the first trigger to go on to activity number one which is the Ben Franklin review after I do the Ben Franklin review that triggers my next one which is just reading a book and winding down so are you following me here so far the most important thing is you have to set it up the night before and you need to set up a trigger the night before so for me the trigger was this strides app and the trigger set up a nightly wind down ritual that began with the habit of reflection so I reflected on the day and that led me into a quick review of Tomorrow a one minute review and then that led me into reading a book so now what would happen is every night at 10: p.m. the little reminder goes off it says wind down review put all my stuff away in the next 5 or 10 minutes then I go over I do the Ben Franklin review I've got a a little booklet there I go through check mark make notes whatever and then that triggered I linked that Ben Franklin review to reading a book so I linked the reading and the writing together into my decompression ritual so here's your habit cycle your tiny habit for today if you have a hard time wak up earlier in the day like I have historically for years use this three-part ritual okay you're going to use this app or even just a cell phone reminder and all you're going to do is you're going to set yourself at least an hour before the time you want to go to bed that's the first trigger okay The Habit The Habit trigger right here the strides app whatever you want to use that's just one of my personal favorites because it looks great on the phone from there that triggers the review okay I want you to do a one minute nightly review not only is this going to make your life a lot better you're going to be a lot healthier because you're going to reflect on what worked what didn't and what has to change tomorrow okay habit app nightly review and then you're going to link it to reading a book or anything that's not on a screen writing journaling thinking if you want to but for me reading a book is something I like it's something that slows down my heart rate it's something that makes me a bit more sleepy after 20 or 30 minutes So eventually this three-part habit cycle of the trigger which is the app and then the first habit which is actually doing the review and then the second part which is the reading so the habit the writing the reading and that sufficiently got me off my computer for about a solid hour enough where I could set myself a solid hour to wind down to relax to get off the computer and then I was naturally falling asleep much earlier and then from there each day I would just bump that back by 1 minute so the review the reminder on my phone would be 10:00 one night and then 9:59 the next night and then 958 957 956 and then naturally over time I consistently became a much more early riser still not at that 5: a.m. routine I'll be working on it I'll keep you posted when I get there maybe I'll write my next book on that I don't know in any case try that use the that three-part habit cycle and then just clock it back by 1 minute per day so I hope that helps try it out let me know how it works for you if you're on YouTube go on over to modernhealthmonk tocom I've got a real food habits weight loss guide for you there it is literally the five daily habits you need to cultivate to look and feel amazing I mean and it's free just just go get it click subscribe the cool little monk dude over here you get the next video when it's out and I want to hear from you below like what have you tried to do to get up earlier that just hasn't worked tell me below so try that out try that three-part technique let me know how it works for you and I'll see you next time