I began making the change in January and was fully morning-person by mid-February. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, and would highly, highly recommend it.

The key for me was having both a reason to wake up, and a reason to go to sleep. To have a shot of waking up on time in the morning, you unsurprisingly need to go to sleep about 8 hours before you want to wake up. Part of the kick for me was the realization that the later it gets, the more likely I am to do mindless things I don't actually want to do (e.g. Facebook). So, I thought, why not sleep instead?

If you're productive that late, maybe there's no need to change. But I will say I used to be productive that late (read: every college problem set was completed between midnight and 6am), and I still think becoming a morning person was a great decision. More than morning productivity, I just feel better in general.

To actually wake up on the other end, I find I need a particular reason, i.e. something that I'm going to do the moment I wake up. For me, that's running to the gym. I'm sure the fact that it's exercise has some extra effect, but I really think it's mostly just the fact that every morning, by rote, I roll out of bed, put on running clothes, and walk out the door. No thinking involved. I suspect it would work about as well to roll out of bed, put on clothes, and fry an egg.

To address particulars of other comments: I'm 25, I don't have a physically intensive job, I often (usually) eat as late as 7 or 8pm, I never drink caffeine after 4pm (I've found that makes it harder to fall asleep). I go to bed at 9:30pm and wake up ~5:45am.

Have you ever spent a full day in the outdoors? The moment you lay your stuff for sleep before sunset you’re out like a baby till sunrise. That’s because you’ve been walking and being active all day. There’s also less distractions.

Having said that, I do believe that if you were to wake up at 6 am, go to the gym and work daily, you would be ready to sleep like a baby at 9-10 pm.

Most of the time when I become a night owl it is because I’ve been physically lazy and eating like Fat Bastard. I’ll just sit by my computer till 3-4 am wasting away. Change the activity level and eating habits and you’re back to a normal routine.

Yes, I have. In a desire to change some bad habits, I stopped using alarms to wake up, and I configured my router to stop providing me Internet access from 11pm every day. I also put a sign on my bedroom door, saying "this is a phone-free zone". The sunshine wakes me up. I kept this up at least for a couple of years. I genuinely feel like a morning person now, instead of a night owl that I used to be.

I have multiple times. I came to believe that night owls and morning people both want to achieve the same thing; a few hours of uninterrupted work. I had success with both. The difference is that morning routines take more discipline, while being a night owl just takes a bit of willpower and stimulants. Ultimately I found that I preferred being up early and watching the natural world waking up, beating everyone else to the start of the day, and feeling ready to sleep at a reasonable hour. Learning how to go to sleep was the hardest part and probably varies a lot per person. For me the trick was getting in bed and reading with bedtime tea for a while before I wanted to sleep.

P.S watching the sunrise is a secret reward morning people get, and it’s beautiful.

I think my first question would be "why do you want to switch to being a morning person?" I suspect there is a deeper underlying objective, and becoming a morning person may or may not be the best path to success.

That said, I made the switch from night owl to morning person. Like many lifestyle changes, I think the biggest part is establishing the habit, after which it becomes your standard existence. Create a regular pattern.

Take a moment to understand what behaviors keep you up at night and change the time you engage in those habits. I used to drink coffee even in the evenings, now I don't have caffeine after noon. Eliminating screens, both because of the engagement and the light, can help. I haven't used it, but many people I know swear by melatonin for correcting sleep schedules when traveling, and it may help you through an adjustment period.

Regular exercise, in addition to being a generally good thing for you, can also help ensure your body wants rest at the end of the day. There were some great tips in the replies, camping / backpacking does tend to force the issue of being a morning person. I also don't use an alarm clock for a few reasons, but I think alarm clocks enable staying-up too late... you're less inclined to worry about when you get to sleep if you know something will wake you up.

Finally, I sometimes have a problem getting to sleep when too many thoughts are racing through my head. I find listening to podcasts is a huge help, but it has to be a topic that is interesting enough for me to ignore everything I was thinking, but not so interesting that I am engaged enough to stay awake.

I have, and I also have done a lot of shift work too and easily switched regimes many times.

The trick is very simple - if you want to wake up and have breakfast in 6 am, your last meal must be 14 hours before that - which is 4 pm on the previous date. No snacks, no dinner not anything like this. You will be hungry but you will find yourself falling asleep at about 10 pm. If you don't stay in front of a screen you can go to sleep easily. You will then wake up at 6 am - fresh, but hungry. Its important to have a quick breakfast or you will fall asleep again. Try to keep this eating/sleeping schedule, you can relax it a bit (i.e. have dinner at 6) after the first week.

People are of course different, so while 14 hours work for me, some people do it with 12 or 16 hours, but the idea is the same.

This tip/lifehack also works for jetlag: https://hbr.org/2009/05/a-fast-solution-to-jet-lag

Changing it requires discipline. Someone else pointed out being active but that requires discipline too.

You also have to be honest with yourself because discipline requires it. A lot of people make excuses for themselves. They measure their productivity and cite the news blurbs about sleep studies that confirm their bias. They tell themselves and others they can’t. But the reality is that if you’re not sedentary and actually go to sleep with lights and devices off instead of procrastinating you will adjust.

You also have to actually want it enough to deal with annoyance or discomfort. If you convince yourself that you’ll fail you will lay there in the dark for hours until you give in and pull out your phone or laptop. Without motivation you’ll read this and think “I’ve tried all of this, I need some trick or way to solve this that doesn’t require hard work.”

Yes, I was forced to in my late 30s, and seems like it's just natural now in my late 40s.

Looking back, it would've been easier if I cut way back on the caffeine, stopped work way earlier (rather than working at 8pm), and just worked on converting slowly by slowly changing my habits. Alcohol also impacts my sleep. I also found my eating and exercise both had huge impacts on my sleep. All these things should've been obvious, but I only noticed after they had to change for other reasons.

I took a job in my mid 30s that required me to get up around 6am. It took my 2 years to adjust, it was brutal. Then I had kids, this ruined sleep for nearly a decade. Then, just as they started sleeping in, I wake up with the sun, no matter what. Luckily I seem to need less sleep now.

Have a child, you'll change.

While I have not, I have made an interesting realization. I used to like being a night person and hate being a morning person. My like of being a night person comes from rare nights where I feel alive working on projects and it's amazing, but rare. However, I've realized my hate of being a morning person is incorrect. It all stems from a single thing - the alarm. When I wake up from an alarm, I feel a bit blah all day. I feel way better in the weekends when I sleep in.

So my advice would be not to try to make the transition by setting your alarm super early, because then you'll feel miserable and give up. Instead, focus on going to bed as early as possible. Leave the computer at a certain point (or at least use Flux), and pick up a book and read or something else relaxing.

If you can't avoid using an alarm, you could also try changing it. One thing that's helped me in general is a light alarm - 30 minutes before the alarm, it gradually starts turning a light on. Sometimes I wake up naturally to turn it off, and I feel better than waking to a blaring noise. The light alarm also doesn't use a standard alarm noise, it uses a noise like a flock of birds to wake me up. Another thing I've tried that's helped is a CD alarm, so that the blaring noise you wake up to is at least a pleasant song of your choice instead of annoying beeping.

Some of the advice amounts to "just do it" or "insert inconvenient forcing function" like spending a week backpacking, which would be difficult if your sleep schedule is affecting your energy and mood.

I've tried forcing myself, but it tends to be fragile. Go to sleep late just 1 night, have trouble forcing yourself to sleep the next day, sleep schedule gets worse again, get frustrated, give up.

What I've been having success with is a full spectrum LED light, which I use for an hour in the morning, and a blue light filtering goggles, which I wear from sunset. I can literally feel the goggles working as my eyes grow heavier a few hours from sunset, resulting in my falling asleep around 11-12 and waking up around 6-7.

Admittedly I've only done this for the past 3 weeks after reading about the full spectrum LED light from https://blog.samaltman.com/productivity. But it doesn't get easier than turn on light, put on goggles.

Question: Are you still young?

Up until my mid 30's I was a night owl. Over the last few years that's started to transition to more morning hours.

In college, I went to bed around 2-3:30am every weeknight because that's what the people around me were doing. Also, I was regularly staying out at least that late on weekends.

In the last few years, I've been forced to get to work by 9:45am due to team standups. Also, my girlfriend-at-the-time was waking up around 6:30-7am to exercise almost every weekday. And I don't really go out partying at night anymore so waking up at 7:30am and not feeling miserable is doable.

Keeping the consistent weekend schedule is the key. I've been pretty driven to continue my CS education and self-teaching and so having more time in the day to continue that goal motivates me to get up early.

When doing my PhD I used to work from ~13:00 to 5:00 de next day (the rest was sleep). I now wake up at 6:45 after 8h or so of sleep.

The surprising thing is that I cannot tell you how this affected me because it did not. I did the switch a few times easily. Now that I think of it, I have never been bothered by time zones either (I used to constantly travel worldwide east and west bound for a few years).

I never had problems to sleep (neither in time nor quality)

This maybe means that some people are not impacted to much by dlrrp cycles and that just giving a try to something else may be a great experience (I loved my owl cycle, though I had obviously zero social interactions at that time)

I found some helpful information in here that may apply:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180424-what-i-learnt-by-li...

Also, I second “hiking the AT”. You don’t even need to hike the AT, just find a 5 day/night backpacking trip. It’s like a reboot for your circadian rhythms. A slightly costlier reset is to fly east 6 or 7 time zones and spend a week there! But no matter what, after you do a reset, you need a good plan for holding on to your new schedule. That’s where the morning daylight comes in...

I used to drink a cup of coffee at 7PM every day and regularly stay up until 2AM - 4AM. Now, my partner is a huge night owl and I work regular daytime hours, so the morning is the time I enjoy to myself. I also drink significantly less caffeine (2 cups of black tea max vs 6+ cups of coffee). I feel less crazy in general these days and like the time I have to myself in the mornings. I still don't like having to be someplace really early and usually get to work around 9:30AM. Even if I wake up early I usually do a little house work and take my time getting ready.

Every time I come home from Europe. I'm joking, but I'm not joking too. I live in New York City. Last year I got into a long stretch where I would fall asleep at 4 AM and wake up at noon. Then I spent a week at the Web Summit:

http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/some-photos-from-the-...

When I came home, it seemed normal to wake up at 5 AM. And I stuck with that pattern for several months, before I started to shift to a later schedule again.

I used to stay up as long as I can. I appreciate darkness and quiet, and this was naturally when I could get that. Nowadays though I sleep at around 10am, and I wake up at 06am. It’s almost as quiet, and almost as dark and I get to read, and shower and maybe have breakfast before rest of the family is awake at around 07:30. This turned out to work better for me all things considered. I am also 42 now so this may be in part because I am not that young anymore and the shifted priorities, habits, and needs are better served by this new schedule.

( I never drink coffee )

Many times. First, you need to force yourself to get out of bed at your target time. Do this for a couple days, have some coffee, find a routine. Eventually your body will adjust the its internal clock to make you feel tired earlier. It is also important, I have found, to ensure that you get dressed and groomed and ready soon after waking in the morning (even if you're not planning to leave the house) as this helps promote productivity. For some people this is easier than others, but it is certainly possible for all. Baby steps, my friend.

For me, it seems to be largely a matter of environment.

In my current environment, I find more peace and quiet and escape from worry in the evening/night.

Also, I currently have some health issues that often mitigate somewhat -- slowly -- through the day. (My current environment seems to exacerbate them.)

Countering this is a tiredness that hits with sunset.

When I'm somewhere else -- and also with other activities at hand -- being a morning person is not a problem.

So, my suggestion: Don't just look at yourself and/or your psychology. Evaluate what other factors may be influencing this.

I made this switch, although it ocurred slowly through the last 20 years.

My nickname is Sleepy (the brazilian version Soneca") due to sleeping almost every class at highschool, which was from 7h30am to 12h30.

Later I would work much beetter later in the afternoon and sleep until after noon on weekends.

Then I noticed after my 30s that I was becoming a morning person.

Today I wake up with the sunlight (something unimagible for my younger self). And I am very productive in the mornings, working on my own project from 6am to 8am everyday before going to my day job

I just switched to being a morning person for the past few weeks. It was driven largely by a temporary shift in my work schedule and I'm pretty certain I will revert back to crashing at 4am eventually. Not because the morning schedule negatively impacts the quality or quantity of my sleep or anything, but because when I don't have a bunch of morning meetings, my sleep/wake cycles naturally start drifting 30 minutes to an hour forward each day until it settles on sleeping from 4am to noon.

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I was in the same situation as you for the majority of life. After removing all caffeine consumption in January, I consistently sleep from 10PM-6AM without the use of an alarm. No other significant changes were made to my daily habits (same exercise / nutritional regiment as always).

The quality of my sleep has improved greatly and I actually feel rested / awake in the morning. 8AM-12PM is now my most productive time and I am still in disbelief that I have switched over.

I tried to change into a morning person several times and failed each time. Eventually, I gave up. A few months ago I moved out of the city into a small village surrounded by lake and woods. Without even knowing, let alone trying or even wanting, I turned into a morning person. I tend to wake up a few minutes before 6am every morning. No alarm needed. Awake and clear in a minute. Must be the countrylife or what.

Control your light exposure. Open the blinds during the day, invite in the daylight or get outside as soon as the sun is up. At night, ruthlessly purge lights inside your house. Shut off devices, tape over blinky lights. Cut way back on your screen time after the sun has gone down. (screen time during the day is kosher) Use only dim "mood" lighting around the house at night, except maybe if you're reading or cooking.

The rest will basically take care of itself.

I have been on a low carb / ketosis diet for a while and I find that this gives me better control of when I go to sleep and when I wake up. Might be worth a shot.

Go camping for a week. I'm not talking about taking a fifth wheel into some RV park, rather I'm talking about real camping in a tent.

Camping has a few things going for it. First, if you do it right, you won't use your devices much. Second, you might be surprised how quickly your body will adapt to defining your days by natural light. Third, I can't think of anything more relaxing than sitting around a campfire at night.

Yes, I used to also work optimally during the night. Then I started to actively go to the Gym at 7AM, this took about 6 months to fully get used to, but now I go to bed around 10/11PM and feel much more active during the day. Even in the weekends.

Depending where you are located, I can recommend some weed oil to kind of force yourself to sleep, take it one hour before you want to sleep and you will have a hard time staying awake.

Absolutely, I used to stay up until 4 or 5 AM all the time. I did have the advantage of never being a late sleeper. If I fell asleep around 4, I would be up no later than 9 on average.

The way to transition is to pick time for bed, and for waking up. It will probably suck at first. You'll have a hard time falling asleep and/or a hard time waking up. If you wake up consistently at the same time your body will adjust.

Yes, but it's a result of age and having kids. After a few years, my routine is now in sync with my kids where I go to bed early and get up early.

I made the change by forcing myself to wake up and go to the gym every weekday at 8 am, and then drink/eat a breakfast afterward. My entire body shifted after a month to the point where I easily went to bed at midnight, and woke up just before my alarm in the morning. I had a good amount of energy during the work day and generally just felt good

I have not. I've been working for 20 years and I still need the weekends to catch up on sleep. I'll try to get to bed on time (10p) but sometimes (at least once a week) I just can't sleep, or dread work, or whatever. I'll be tired all day, then when it comes time to go to sleep again, I'll be wide awake.

Yes. A light alarm is what let me do it, in particular the twighlight simulation, which allowed me to fall asleep consistently:

https://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3531_60/wake-up-light

It also dramatically improved my depression.

Yes.

In college, I worked a third shift job, from 8pm to 430am one or two times a week. Staying up late was pretty much the way I did stuff.

Immediately after college, I started a job as a baker; work began at 7am Tuesday through Friday, and 4am on Saturday. I quit baking after two years, but I still wake up around 6am every day, even with no alarm set.

I do it from time time. it does not take much effort. I think it's the question of self-discipline

Yes, all it took me was intense 4 days ski trip where everyone gets up at 6AM and rides until 4PM, wasn't easy but I was surprised I was staying on this schedule effortlessly after coming home for a week or so (I had to switch back due to the work schedule).

Just slowly go to bed earlier every day. Set your alarm for your go-to-bed time. Read a book if you can't sleep, but not on a bright-screened device.

I used to be such a nighthawk that I'd be waking up daily at 7 pm. Getting old naturally fixes that too.

Yep. Got a dog. That furry little bastard is an unrelenting alarm clock.

I used to think I am biologically wired to be a nightowl but i am a morning person now.

I got a cat that wakes me up every morning at 6:30 am. I used to hate it but now i don't mind it :D.

You didn’t mention if you’re getting regular exercise so I’d start there. If it’s because you can’t stop thinking I find writing a diary entry in your journal helps.

Yes, I had a kid.

Having kids makes this a necessity. You get used to it based on repetition.

i can use any sleep schedule it all depends on when you need to do things. it's mostly habit and can be hard to change because you need to either stay up or sleep but can be done incrementally.

I have. Kind of. My solution might not work for you, or it might be unacceptable for other reasons.

I've always been a night owl, and by always I mean that I remember anecdotes about getting up in the middle of the night of a Saturday to read or to do something, going back to when I was like 8 years old. Like you, I've realized that my mind just works better at night (but my mood is better during the day. YMMV).

When I was studying my first degree, and during my first job after that, I had a horrible sleep schedule. More like I didn't have a real sleep schedule. I would sleep an indefinite amount of time, between 4 and 7 hours, and then have a mini-crash each weekend, sleeping until 1 or 2 pm. During my first (part-time, mornings) job, for a few months I slept twice from 4 to 8: once at 4-8 am, then again at 4-8 pm. It was way worse than it sounds.

About 6 years ago I decided that I had to take care of my sleep, and I devised my life hack: I would sleep just after work, instead of just before work. I've been successfully doing this since then. So, the guidelines are:

1) go to sleep as soon as possible. This means going to sleep at an apparently insane time. Lately I'm going to the bed at about 6 pm.

2) sleep as much as you want without looking at any clock. Sometimes I get up at 1am, sometimes I get up at 3:30. Get up only when you are confident that you don't need more sleep. Don't worry, you will still have a few hours with three juicy bonuses to mental activity (completely rested + night time + silence). If you're anything like me, your productivity be tremendous.

3) Most chores can be done during this night time. Most notably, it's a great time to cook; just be careful about noise (avoid blenders, and if you're cleaning, avoid the vacuum cleaner). Other chores, like buying groceries or anything noisy, will have to wait until the weekend.

4) For obvious reasons, social life will also have to wait until weekends. You might not get a lot, with this schedule; I've never had much and I'm accustomed to that, so this is not a problem for me. But this is probably the greatest deal breaker for most people.

5) Follow the same sleep schedule every day, including Saturdays and Sundays. This is very important, and it requires discipline.

6) Ideally you should also have a job with sane hours (and finishing at the same time every day), which again is not available to everyone. Plan your meals accordingly. I have two meals a day, one just before work and another one, lighter, just after work and before going to bed. You might have a different plan, like eating once when you get up and then have lunch halfway during your work.

The key is: regardless of whether you are a lark or an owl, go to the bed at the same time every day, try to sleep 8 hours, and try to make them continuous. There is this myth about people having a noncontinuous schedule during the middle ages. I'm a little sceptical; but above that, I've realized that, for me, the only thing that really works is a continuous sleep.

Other tips:

1) Avoid caffeine. If you follow this schedule, getting up and needing coffee immediately will be a thing of the past. In fact, if you are still tired after 8 hours, you can just sleep 1 or 2 more, since work is still a few hours away. I've found that an excess of sugar also works against this schedule, but again, YMMV.

2) No alarm clocks either. You will wake up naturally when you are fully rested. Also, turn off your phone just as you arrive home.

3) Melatonin is your friend. You might notice that some days your body is not ready to sleep. If this happens to you, start taking melatonin about 1h before going to bed.

4) As much as I dislike it, exercise helps a lot. Something as simple as walking around your house with the blinds closed might be good enough; the ideal condition would be to do something during the day that tires you a little, like an 1h walk or a short visit to the gym.

The biggest problem is setting up the schedule. In order to do this, go to bed two or three hours later each day, until you are going to sleep at the desired time. I usually reserve the latest 4 or 5 days of each vacation period to do this, but of course this might not work if you don't have many days off during the year. I live in Europe, so I can afford three 10-15 periods during the year (mind your bank holidays and weekends and plan accordingly, of course).

I always say that the cons of this schedule are obvious, but the pros, while not obvious, are also there and they are great. No alarm clock; sleep as much as you want every day; the best hours of the day are for myself and not for the job (but you will still be very productive at work since you will be well rested); and I get easy access to some underrated pleasures like going to the beach just before dawn.

Listen to whb07. Through hike something like the Appalachian Trail. ;-)

get a child / become a mother / father ... see you life turn around in 9 months.

I have switched my hours around multiple times. Through high school, I was, of necessity, a morning person. In college, I became a night owl, often seeing the sunrise after all-nighters. A few years of working, I was a morning person again, getting up at 4am to go swimming before work. In grad school, particularly in the crunch to finish my dissertation, I was typically working from 11pm to 8am, and sleeping during the day. I'm old now, and can't seem to get away from waking up at 6am, and there I'm stuck. But when I was young, flipping around hours was not a big deal. From my current perspective, you can't just try to change your sleep schedule, you have to tweak everything else in support. When do you consume caffeine? When do you exercise? What do you eat and when? When do you stop looking at glowing screens? What kind of lighting do you have in your environment, and when? You may need to experiment with all these variables to find what allows you to shift your sleep schedule.