Either Get Busy Sleeping or Get Busy Rising

Avoid lingering awake in bed by reprogramming your mind and your phone

Photo by Shane on Unsplash

For many of us, sometimes it can be hard to get out of the bed in the morning. Maybe we’re depressed or anxious. Maybe we’re just cold or still sleepy. Part of us feels we should get up and get going. But another part longs to return to slumber: either to retreat from the day’s worries or to catch up on needed sleep. We’re torn between two urges and thus indecisive.

By default, we neither rise nor return to sleep, but linger awake in bed: either recursively deliberating over the decision in our heads or scrolling on our phones to distract ourselves from the decision. We end up with the worst of both worlds: getting neither restorative sleep nor invigorating action. We just spin our brain’s wheels and feel even worse than we felt when we first awoke.

It needn’t be so. There are ways to avoid the morass of indecision: to either get busy sleeping or get busy rising. One way to be more decisive is to predecide your course of action. Decide now, while you’re fresh and not struggling with the temptations of the moment in question, what you’re going to do when you wake up tomorrow morning and your mornings thereafter. If you make that resolution precise and unambiguous—and if you write it down—you will be more likely to remember and abide by it when the moment comes.

Of course the primary factor for whether to sleep or rise is the time. So it’s key to predecide what exact time is your threshold for either trying to go back to sleep or getting up.

Again, be exact. If you’re wishy-washy about that threshold, you will probably get stuck in self-negotiations again when the morning comes.

Also be precise about how you’re going to either return to sleep or arise. If the method is ambiguous, you will have to figure it out in the moment, and you may not have the will or clarity to do that amid your groggy morning brain fog. So you’ll again default to lingering.

An “implementation intention” formula for this would be:

• Whenever I awaken, I will immediately check the time.

• If it’s before X o’clock, I will Y (a prescribed action for going back to sleep).

• If it’s X o’clock or after, I will Z (a prescribed “kickstart” action for getting up and getting going).

You can prescribe whatever actions work for you. For me, turning on audio cues helps with habit formation. I like to use certain audiobooks (my “bedtime stories”) to prompt my brain to sleep and certain music (my “arise anthems”) to prompt my brain to awaken. My current go-to bedtime story is Carl Jung’s autobiography: Memories, Dreams, Reflections. My current initial arise anthem is John William’s Prelude and Main Title March for Superman: The Movie.

I also find referring to a checklist useful for reminding myself of steps in my rising routine that I might otherwise forget. I use the Notion iPhone app for this, but you could also use Apple Notes.

To make my morning motions super-simple, I use the iPhone’s Shortcuts app, which makes it “drag-and-drop” easy to program push-button routines for your phone. At the top of my Home Screen, I have a “Bedtime Story” shortcut that I can tap that automatically plays the appropriate audibook and sets a sleep timer for 15 minutes. And right next to it I have an “Arise” shortcut that I can tap that automatically plays my Arise music playlist and opens my Arise checklist.

So my waking implementation intention looks like this:

• Whenever I awaken, I will immediately check the time on my phone.

• If it’s before 5am, I will tap my Bedtime Story shortcut and try to go back to sleep.

• If it’s 5am or after (or if I’m still awake after the audiobook stops), I will tap my Arise shortcut, get up, and follow my Arise checklist.

(If I ever want to automate it even further, I could probably create just one “Waking” shortcut to tap that uses an “If” function to launch one subroutine if it’s before 5am and another if it’s after. I’m not sure if I want to try that yet.)

You can use software to reprogram your devices, and you can use implementation intentions and checklists to reprogram your mind and your habits. Both can help you avoid lingering awake in bed and make it easier to either get busy sleeping or get busy rising.