These days, I usually wake up between 5 and 6 AM without an alarm. I've slept enough. In other words, I went to bed early! I go to sleep at 11 PM. I don't know if it's the same for others, but for me, waking up between 5 and 6 AM is quite early. I also think 11 PM is early to go to bed. After thinking about how I wake up early in various ways, my conclusion was this: To wake up early, just go to bed early. What? You think I'm joking? No. I believe it's an eternal truth. You might ask, "Can't you sleep late and still wake up early?" Maybe. But that's unhealthy and unsustainable. So I won't cover that here.

Now, let's explore how to go to bed early.

Two Reasons Why I Can't Go to Bed Early

"I worked hard today, so I deserve to play"

I don't stay up late because I hate sleep—I stay up late to reward myself for the hard work I put in today. I play games or watch YouTube. The harder the day, the more people crave rewards. The problem is that rewards are endless. They know no satisfaction. At night, "just a little more" easily becomes "just a little more more," and eventually, I choose immediate pleasure over sleep. I'll leave tomorrow's me to deal with the lack of sleep!

The illusion of "I have plenty of time in the early morning"

I tend to procrastinate on things I need to do and try to handle them at night. Why? I think it's because of the illusion that "I have early morning hours available."

For example, when I used to stay up late, around 10 or 11 PM, thoughts like this would naturally come to mind:

"Phew, I played too much. But there are still 3 hours until 2 AM, so I still have time to do this."

The moment you think you can "pull out more time," you keep postponing what you need to do now. Of course, if something is actually due tonight, that's an exception—you just have to do it. But on most days, the illusion of "I have the early morning" pushes tasks into the night and ultimately pushes sleep further away.

So how did I manage to go to bed early from this state?

The Simplest Solution: Letting Go (And Breaking the Vicious Cycle)

To go to bed early, you need to know how to let go. By letting go, I don't mean living carelessly. I mean if you want to sleep at 11 PM, you need to either finish or cleanly abandon anything that would drag past 11 PM.

  • The moment you think "just a little more and I'll be done"—it's already not going to end.
  • Nighttime productivity is often not "real productivity" but "paying off mental debts."

Ultimately, people who go to bed early are those who boldly end their day early. I hold back tears and push today's unfinished tasks to tomorrow. Because I need to sleep early.

What's important here is that you need to make this decision "on normal days" and "even more decisively on days that are already ruined."

flowchart LR
  A[Sleep late] --> B[Wake up late] --> C[Tired start] --> D[Day gets delayed] --> E[Plans fail] --> F[Cram work at night] --> G[Sleep even later] --> B
  G -. Intervention: Let go and sleep .-> B

This vicious cycle becomes stronger when you have "the desire to salvage today." So on days when I've already woken up late or when tasks have piled up excessively, I make the decision even simpler. If I woke up late today, or if there's too much to do, I need to boldly reduce tasks and just sleep to break the vicious cycle. I believe saving tomorrow's me is more productive in the long run.

Day Design is Key: The Ability to Leave Nothing Undone

If you find yourself letting go too often, you need "a day design that leaves nothing to let go of" rather than better letting-go skills. Needing to let go frequently might be a signal that I'm overloading my to-do list. And frequently letting go doesn't feel great. That doesn't seem very sustainable either.

So I sometimes ask myself:

  • Do I really want to do all of this?
  • Is this truly necessary for me?
  • Does it have to be done today?

I plan to write a separate piece on this as a framework for figuring out "what's truly important to me."

So what matters is day design ability. I don't put "what's possible today" on my to-do list, but only "the amount that lets me sleep at 11 PM." And within that, there are priorities.

First, I do the things that truly cannot be postponed to tomorrow. I know. It's hard for me to practice this too. But there's no other way. If it's something truly important to me and also urgent, the point is not to procrastinate.

When you design your day well, what changes is simple:

  • Tasks don't get pushed to "night."
  • The lingering "regret" decreases.
  • Instead of letting go, you "end as planned."
  • So falling asleep becomes easier.

In other words, to go to bed early, you need to plan your day well. It looks difficult, but nothing in the world is easy! Ha ha.

Give Rewards in the Morning, Not at Night

Rewards given at night are endless; rewards given in the morning have an end. Even if you finished work early, if your reward mentality explodes afterward, you'll end up staying up late again. So I moved my rewards to the morning (see Why I Wake Up Early: Moving Free Time to the Morning).

  • I wake up early and play.
  • In the morning, there's an upper limit: work or the start of the day. So excessive rewards are structurally difficult.
  • On the other hand, nighttime rewards easily become "more, even if it means less sleep."

For me, this was the key mechanism for breaking the vicious cycle.

Conclusion

In summary, the conclusion of this post comes down to three things:

  1. If you want to wake up early, you need to go to bed early.
  2. To go to bed early, you need to recognize the two traps that arise at night:
    • The reward mentality of "I worked hard today, so I deserve to play"
    • The illusion of "I have plenty of time in the early morning"
  3. And the solutions are simpler than you think:
    • On normal days, boldly give up on remaining tasks to protect your 11 PM bedtime.
    • If you're letting go too often, reset your plans realistically and only include "the amount that lets you sleep at 11."
    • Move rewards to the morning instead of night, so they end before becoming excessive.

I hope this personal post helps those who read it.

(Bonus) How to Wake Up: Powerful Punch to the Pillow

Someone once shared a tip with me. Just take it for fun. One method for waking up early is this: Before bed, throw a powerful punch at your pillow. The key is to shout out the time you want to wake up with each punch. "6 o'clock! Six! SIX!!!!!"

For me, this method has been kind of a cheat code(?), a secret weapon, so I've only used it a few times in my life. But it worked every time I used it.

Here's why I think it works:

  • This is retrospective, but when I resorted to this secret weapon, I usually had something really important coming up, so I was probably already mentally prepared.
  • It's stimulating in many ways(?). You use arm strength, you speak out loud, and you hear your own voice. It's also visually violent. A powerful punch to a pillow? The awkwardness that comes after the punch, combined with visual, auditory, and tactile sensations, makes the situation more shocking, which inevitably creates more pressure to wake up.

Use this secret weapon(?) only when you really need it.