在天亮之前起床是个好习惯，这将有助于你的健康，财富和智慧。——亚里斯多德
早起三光，晚起三慌。——中国谚语
早起的习惯是天生的还是后天养成的呢？在我身上，它显然是在后天养成的。在我20岁之前，我很少在午夜前睡觉，几乎总是睡的很晚，通常我会一直睡到每天的傍晚才起床。
但是后来的一段时间我不能继续忽视成功与早起之间的紧密联系了，尤其是在我身上看到了这一点。在我那些少有的早起的日子里，我意识到我的生产效率不 光是早上，而是整整一天都非常高。并且这样做我感觉非常好，我决定养成早起的好习惯，于是立即将闹钟调到了凌晨5点.........
........第二天早上，我在快到中午时才起床。
Hmmm.........
我又进行了多次的尝试，基本上每一次都是在那个时间段醒来。我开始怀疑我的身上是不是没有携带早起的基因。每当我的闹钟响的时候，我的第一反应总是 想将它关掉然后回去继续睡觉。这个习惯我又保持了几年，但是最终我偶然发现了几篇关于睡眠的调查研究，它们让我意识到我在这个问题上一直是错误的。只要我 能把这些调查研究得到的方法应用到我自己身上，我就可以养成一个持久的早起习惯。
使用错误的策略很难使你养成早起的习惯，但是使用这些正确的策略，却相对容易的多。
最通常的错误策略是：你认为，如果你想要早起的话，你最好早点去睡觉。因此你会计算一下你现在一般每天要睡几个小时，然后计算出需要在新的基础上往 回移动几个小时。比如说现在你从午夜（夜晚12点）睡到早上8点，你预测如果你在晚上10点睡的话，那么第二天你就可以在凌晨6点起床。听起来似乎很有道 理，但是这通常会失效。
目前关于睡眠模式有两个主要的流派。其中一个学派认为你应该每天都按时睡觉，并按时起床。就好像在这两个时刻都有个闹钟一样——你试图在每天晚上的同一时刻入睡。这看起来好像适应于现代社会的节奏，我们需要有一个准确的日程安排表，并且要保证每天有足够的休息。
另外一个学派认为你应该根据身体的需要，累的时候就去休息，睡到自然醒就要起床。这种方法植根于生物学说，我们的身体知道我们需要多少睡眠，因此我们应该听从它们的命令。
通过试验，我发现对我来说两个都不是最佳的睡眠模式。如果你重视你的生产效率的话，它们都是错误的，以下是我这样说的原因：
如果你的睡眠时间固定，那么有时候你可能不是很困就要去睡觉。如果你需要花费超过5分钟的时间才能够入睡的话，这说明你并不是很困。你醒着躺在床上 浪费时间，却不能入睡。另外一个问题是你认为你每天都需要同样长的睡眠时间，这是一个错误的假设。你的睡眠时间应该根据每天不同的情况而有所不同。（译 者：我觉得还会有这样一个问题，比如说你假设你每天都需要睡够8个小时，可是你有时候早上会提前醒，但是这时候你告诉你自己：“我还没有睡够，在睡一会 吧。”可是事实上，你几乎难以再次入睡，你只是在床上磨时间，把你认为你需要的睡眠时间磨完了才会起床
）如果你根据身体的需要去睡眠，很有可能你的睡眠时间会超过你实际需要的睡眠时间——大多数情况下会超出很多，比如说每周会超出10-15个小时（这 相当于整整醒着的一天）。许多以这种方式休息的人每晚上休息的时间都超过了8个小时，这通常是过多的。而且，如果你每天早上在不同的时间起床，那么你每天 起床的时间就难以预测。因为有时候我们的生活会失去节奏（译者：比如说大学生的周末，一般都是3点之后才睡觉，而平时基本上都是12点睡觉，这样就会打乱 生活的节奏），你可能会发现你的睡眠时间变得飘忽不定。
最佳得解决方案是把二者结合起来。方法非常简单，很多起早的人都在自觉不自觉中使用这个方法，虽然如此，它对我来说还是一个心理上的巨大突破。解决 的方案是当我感到瞌睡的时候就去睡觉（只有当我感到瞌睡的时候），然后在每天的固定时间（每周七天）设置闹钟，响了就立刻起床。因此我总是在每天的同一个 时刻（我定的是早上5点）起床，但是我上床睡觉的时间每天晚上都有所不同。
当我实在困了的时候我才会上床睡觉。我测试睡意的方法是：如果我不能够连续不间断地读完一本书的一两页，我就要准备去睡觉了。大多数情况是当我上床 后，我会在三分钟之内睡着。我舒舒服服地躺下，然后立即就睡着了。有时候我会在晚上9点半就上床睡觉了，有时候我又会一直到午夜12点才睡觉，通常的情况 是我在晚上10点到11点之间上床。如果我一直不想睡，我会一直忙到我不能睁开眼睛才去睡觉。在这段时间内，读书是一个很好的选择，因为当我困得实在不能 在读下去的时候，这一般是显而易见的，我就会马上去睡觉。
每天早上当我的闹钟响的时候，我会把它关掉，伸一个长长的懒腰，然后坐起来。我这时候什么都不想，因为我知道，我赖在床上的时间越长，我接着再睡的可能性就越大。因此一旦闹钟响了，我就不允许我去想再睡一会的好处。即使我很想再睡一会，我通常也会立刻起床。
在坚持这个模式一段日子后，我发现我的睡眠规律逐渐变得有节奏了。如果前一天晚上我的睡眠时间不够充分，第二天晚上我自然而然地就会提前睡觉以补充 足够的睡眠。而如果我的精力非常旺盛，一点都感觉不到累，我就会睡的少一些。我的身体学会了什么时候将我叫醒，因为它知道我通常会在每天的那个时刻起床。
这样做的一个很好的效果是，我平均每天晚上睡觉的时间减少了90分钟，但是我却感觉更轻松，我想这主要是因为我在床上的时间基本上都在睡眠中。
我得知这样一个情况，那些失眠的人都是那些明明不瞌睡却要上床睡觉的人。如果你不瞌睡，而且你发现自己无法立即入睡，那么立即起来，让你的头脑保持 清醒一段时间。一直等到你的体内开始分泌激素，你的意识开始变得模糊，你再去睡觉。如果你能够在你瞌睡的时候去睡觉，在一个固定的时间起床，那么你的失眠 症将会不治自愈。第一天晚上你可能要待到很晚，但是你会在上床之后立刻入睡。你可能会因为整晚只睡几个小时而在第二天起的太早时（相对太早）感到很累，但 是经过一天的忙碌之后，你就会想在第二天晚上早一点上床睡觉。经过一段时间后，你就能养成每天晚上大概都在某一个时间上床，并且迅速入睡的习惯。
因此如果你想成为一个起早者（或者只是想更多的控制你的睡眠模式），那么就试试这样做吧：只有当你太瞌睡而不能继续坚持下去时才去睡觉，每天早上都在同一个固定的时间起床。
附上原文：
It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
- Aristotle
Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon.
But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high correlation between success and rising early, even in my own life. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticed a significant feeling of well-being. So being the proactive goal-achiever I was, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 5AM…
… and the next morning, I got up just before noon.
Hmmm…
I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. I figured I must have been born without the early riser gene. Whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that blasted noise and go back to sleep. I tabled this habit for a number of years, but eventually I came across some sleep research that showed me that I was going about this problem the wrong way. Once I applied those ideas, I was able to become an early riser consistently.
It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it’s relatively easy.
The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep you’re getting now, and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from midnight to 8am, you figure you’ll go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable, but it will usually fail.
It seems there are two main schools of thought about sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same times every day. It’s like having an alarm clock on both ends — you try to sleep the same hours each night. This seems practical for living in modern society. We need predictability in our schedules. And we need to ensure adequate rest.
The second school says you should listen to your body’s needs and go to bed when you’re tired and get up when you naturally wake up. This approach is rooted in biology. Our bodies should know how much rest we need, so we should listen to them.
Through trial and error, I found out for myself that both of these schools are suboptimal sleep patterns. Both of them are wrong if you care about productivity. Here’s why:
If you sleep set hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that you’re assuming you need the same number of hours of sleep every night, which is a false assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day.
If you sleep based on what your body tells you, you’ll probably be sleeping more than you need — in many cases a lot more, like 10-15 hours more per week (the equivalent of a full waking day). A lot of people who sleep this way get 8+ hours of sleep per night, which is usually too much. Also, your mornings may be less predictable if you’re getting up at different times. And because our natural rhythms are sometimes out of tune with the 24-hour clock, you may find that your sleep times begin to drift.
The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches. It’s very simple, and many early risers do this without even thinking about it, but it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.
I go to bed when I’m too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldn’t read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I’m ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, I’m asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately I’m drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9:30pm; other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If I’m not sleepy, I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when I’m too sleepy to read.
When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up. I don’t think about it. I’ve learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I don’t allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.
After a few days of using this approach, I found that my sleep patterns settled into a natural rhythm. If I got too little sleep one night, I’d automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasn’t tired, I’d sleep less. My body learned when to knock me out because it knew I would always get up at the same time and that my wake-up time wasn’t negotiable.
A side effect was that on average, I slept about 90 minutes less per night, but I actually felt more well-rested. I was sleeping almost the entire time I was in bed.
I read that most insomniacs are people who go to bed when they aren’t sleepy. If you aren’t sleepy and find yourself unable to fall asleep quickly, get up and stay awake for a while. Resist sleep until your body begins to release the hormones that rob you of consciousness. If you simply go to bed when you’re sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, you’ll cure your insomnia. The first night you’ll stay up late, but you’ll fall asleep right away. You may be tired that first day from getting up too early and getting only a few hours of sleep the whole night, but you’ll slog through the day and will want to go to bed earlier that second night. After a few days, you’ll settle into a pattern of going to bed at roughly the same time and falling asleep right away.
So if you want to become an early riser (or just exert more control over your sleep patterns), then try this: Go to bed only when you’re too sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning.
原文出处：
How to Become an Early Riser
译文出处：
http://angelived.org/2007/05/22/how-to-become-an-early-riser/
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